How Home Improvement Spending Has Changed for 2024 [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Because the rapid­ly chang­ing econ­o­my has impact­ed homeowner’s dis­cre­tionary spend­ing habits, HIRI con­duct­ed a study to under­stand home­own­ers’ macro-eco­nom­ic views and their per­son­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tion, as well as eval­u­ate their home sell­ing and buy­ing inten­tions, and how those fac­tors have con­verged to influ­ence their intend­ed home improve­ment spend­ing pat­terns in 2024. Here’s what we found:

Young adults, sin­gle workers/​families, and unmar­ried retirees report spend­ing 112% less on aver­age for home improve­ment over the past year than all oth­er segments.

When it comes to posi­tion­ing your brand among tar­get buy­ers, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er what they are cur­rent­ly most con­cerned about. This infor­ma­tion can inform your mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing strate­gies and help you to bet­ter seg­ment your customers. 

What HIRI research has found is that those home­own­ers who stat­ed they are most con­cerned about polit­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal issues spent dou­ble or triple the amount on home improve­ment in the last 12 months com­pared to home­own­ers who are most con­cerned about per­son­al or nation­al fis­cal issues. This group of home­own­ers is also the most afflu­ent with 36% earn­ing $160,000 or more and 37% earn­ing between $80,000 and $160,000.

34% of home­own­ers sur­veyed report­ed that they would spend more, or even much more, on home improve­ments in 2024. 43% report­ed that they would spend about the same amount. Only 24% report­ed that they would spend less. More com­mon house­hold line items fac­ing bud­get cuts are vaca­tions, din­ing out, and entertainment.

Right now, a quar­ter of home­own­ers are locked into their cur­rent homes, mean­ing they would look to move if rates improved, but cur­rent­ly have a rate less than 3%. This has dri­ven home improve­ment spend­ing through­out 2022 and 2023, but what about when the lock-in effect subsides?

Expec­ta­tions among the indus­try are that once inter­est rates decline, there will be an increase in mobil­i­ty and an increase in the num­ber of home­own­ers who move; this will pos­i­tive­ly impact home improve­ment spending.

Based on HIRI research, one in three home­own­ers is like­ly to move once rates improve. Of this sub­set, those who are like­ly to move skew younger and high­er income. Half are mil­len­ni­als, mean­ing they are between the ages of 25 – 44, and, three-quar­ters of this group have a house­hold income greater than $80K.

There are 86 mil­lion own­er-occu­pied hous­ing units in the U.S. Based on these find­ings, we can infer that only 6 mil­lion home­own­ers (7%) are like­ly to move until rates drop below 5%, with rea­sons to move hing­ing around mov­ing to a bet­ter loca­tion, nicer home, or big­ger home.

Fur­ther, we can infer that near­ly three times as many home­own­ers, around 16 mil­lion, would become like­ly to move once rates are between 3 to 4%. Sub­se­quent home improve­ment spend­ing cor­re­lat­ed with sell­ing a home and buy­ing a home would increase at this time.

Those who are like­ly to move and those who are locked in are the home­own­ers who stat­ed intent to spend more, or the same. This group of home­own­ers spent between $4k and $7k on home improve­ments between Novem­ber 2022 and Novem­ber 2023.

In 2022, those who are locked into their homes did spend 63% more on home improve­ments com­pared to those who are like­ly to move, but this dif­fer­ence in spend is antic­i­pat­ed to be nar­row­er in 2024. 

Locked-in home­own­ers stat­ed they antic­i­pate spend­ing over $7,000 on home improve­ments in 2024. Home­own­ers who are like­ly to move stat­ed antic­i­pat­ed home improve­ment spend­ing just under $6,000.

As home improve­ment costs increased, 27% of home­own­ers who spent more than $5,000 opt­ed to NOT com­plet­ed oth­er home improve­ment projects and found var­i­ous ways to reduce the over­all project costs, from tak­ing more of a DIY approach to val­ue-engi­neer­ing which mate­ri­als were used, and even reduc­ing the scope of that par­tic­u­lar project.

This means that reduc­ing project costs by reduc­ing mate­r­i­al costs will enable home­own­ers to under­take a larg­er scope of home improve­ments that they already have in mind to do.

As the only non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to home improve­ment research, HIRI empow­ers our mem­bers with exclu­sive, ongo­ing home improve­ment data and infor­ma­tion for mak­ing bet­ter busi­ness deci­sions. Mem­bers are the lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, retail­ers, and allied orga­ni­za­tions in the home improve­ment industry.