Each quar­ter, the Home Improve­ment Research Insti­tute (HIRI) part­ners with The Farnsworth Group to sur­vey con­trac­tors on a rotat­ing list of top­ics, as well as their indus­try and busi­ness sen­ti­ment. The most recent Con­trac­tor Sur­vey cov­ered top­ics such as con­trac­tors’ role in home improve­ment, how projects are financed, and the rela­tion­ship between con­trac­tors and customers.

Data was col­lect­ed from an online sur­vey admin­is­tered to more than 500 respon­dents across five indus­try seg­ments from Feb­ru­ary 3 to Feb­ru­ary 25, 2021. Respon­dents includ­ed remod­el­ers and gen­er­al con­trac­tors from var­i­ous trades whose work was at least 50% res­i­den­tial. All respon­dents were also required to do most of their work in the remod­el­ing space, regard­less of trade.

The Q1 study reveals inter­est­ing sta­tis­tics about con­trac­tors’ work­ing rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als in the plan­ning and financ­ing stages of home improve­ment projects.

Study highlights:

Financing, Warranties and Customer Satisfaction Indicators

• Though rough­ly one-third of home improve­ment projects require financ­ing, slight­ly few­er than 60% of con­trac­tors offer financ­ing options to their clients. How­ev­er, pros who offer financ­ing are twice as like­ly to do so inter­nal­ly rather than work with a financ­ing partner.
• War­ranties are near­ly ubiq­ui­tous­ly offered by pro con­trac­tors, with more than 90% offer­ing some sort of war­ran­ty. Qual­i­ty of work/​labor is the most com­mon type of war­ran­ty, with more than 80% of com­pa­nies offer­ing this type of guarantee.
• War­ranties have a pos­i­tive effect on project expec­ta­tions and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. How­ev­er, the largest pos­i­tive impact on these per­cep­tions comes from a customer’s pri­or rela­tion­ship with the contractor.

Professional/​Customer Working Relationship Insights

• The most com­mon way for pro­fes­sion­als to plan a project is for clients to come for­ward with a gen­er­al idea that the pro devel­ops into a plan. In fact, more than half of con­trac­tors sur­veyed claim their clients tend to be more hands-on, either work­ing with the pros on each step to devel­op a project plan or pro­vid­ing a plan to their con­trac­tor upfront.
• Con­trac­tors report that over­all their cus­tomers have influ­ence over the prod­ucts or brands that are used for their projects: 34% say that the selec­tion is always cho­sen by the cus­tomer while 30% say they request cus­tomer input.
• On aver­age, slight­ly less than one-third of pro­fes­sion­als work on projects that involve a design­er or archi­tect. Accord­ing to sur­vey results, work­ing with one of these pro­fes­sion­als often makes the job easier.

For access to the full report and oth­er home improve­ment mar­ket insights, join HIRI today.