Apr 18 2008 12:32PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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If your market's been down and you're looking for good news, turn the page. At Tuesday's Remodeling Futures Steering Committee Meeting in Cambridge, Mass., director Kermit Baker said in his Remodeling Trends and Outlook presentation that the national remodeling outlook likely will not see any improvement until 2009.

"Currently, the second half of this year is shaping up to be weaker than the first half," Baker said. Harvard has based its predictions on three major indicators which they use to formulate their Leading Indicator for Remodeling, all of which have negative trends: contractor payrolls, remodelers' future expectations for business, and pending sales of existing homes. Bruce Christensen, General Manager - Home Improvement at GE Money provided some insight into the finance side of the remodeling business, saying that qualifying clients in 2008 will be "more challenging" than in 2007 and that over the last year, FICO scores have became much less reliable indicators of whether a client will actually pay off his debt. 

Manuel Gutierrez, Director of Market Research at Kohler, said that his company is still seeing "high-end stability" in the remodeling market and that they didn't see a decline in sales for remodeling projects until two months ago. What is going on in your market, I wonder? Everyone seems to have a different story (although mostly negative), another indication that the market is as fragmented as ever and that location, location, location matters.