Home Improvement - Still Growing in 2019

HIRI/IHS Markit forecast expects 5.5% growth in the home improvement products market in 2019 after a strong 6.2% in 2018.

Total home improve­ment prod­ucts sales are expect­ed to increase 5.5% in 2018 to $420 bil­lion in total sales. The Pro­fes­sion­al Mar­ket is expect­ed to increase 6.0% in 2019 over 2018 and the Con­sumer Mar­ket will see a sales increase of 5.3%.

The Nation­al Eco­nom­ic Outlook

• The fun­da­men­tals for the US econ­o­my remain sound. The recov­ery in finan­cial con­di­tions, aid­ed by the Fed­er­al Reserve’s pause in hik­ing inter­est rates, sug­gests that mod­er­ate growth around 2.1% will con­tin­ue through 2019.
• In the first quar­ter of 2019, we expect GDP growth to slow to 1.6%, large­ly reflect­ing a two-per­cent­age-point slow­ing of per­son­al con­sump­tion expenditures.
• Labor mar­kets are expect­ed to tight­en some­what fur­ther, with the unem­ploy­ment rate expect­ed to reach a low of 3.6% this spring, where it will remain through 2020 before begin­ning a grad­ual rise as growth drops below trend.
• Recent volatil­i­ty in finan­cial con­di­tions has been fed by slip­ping con­fi­dence in the strength of the glob­al expan­sion. That stems in part from signs of slow­ing growth abroad, ris­ing uncer­tain­ty over a trade war, and height­ened fears that US rate increas­es will slow growth more than pre­vi­ous­ly expect­ed, per­haps cul­mi­nat­ing in a recession.
• Infla­tion by a vari­ety of mea­sures slipped from the first half of last year to the sec­ond half, thanks in part to steady-to-declin­ing oil prices after a jump from 2017 lev­els, and a slow­ing in import price infla­tion, as the dol­lar rose sharply over the year.

Out­look for the Home Improve­ment Prod­ucts Market

• We expect growth in home improve­ment prod­uct sales to slow slight­ly over the next few years, aver­ag­ing 4.0% in 2020 through 2023. Pro­fes­sion­al Mar­ket growth is expect­ed to be stronger through­out the fore­cast hori­zon on aver­age by 2.0 per­cent­age points over 2020 through 2023.
  

Growth rates of mar­ket size by seg­ment for a 5‑year his­tor­i­cal peri­od, the cur­rent year, and the remain­ing four years of the fore­cast peri­od are as follows: