Often, with such good deals to be had of late in the Real Estate
market Nationwide, people have been swooping up homes with
potential to thus completely remodel them to restore the home to
its once lovely state of grandeur. The increase in home sales
coupled with the still drastically low interest rates are the cause
for such a progression in home improvement efforts. Kermit Baker,
the Director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center
went on to state, Strong growth in sales of existing homes and
housing starts, coupled with historically low financing costs, have
typically been associated with an upturn in home remodeling
activity some months later. While the housing market has faced some
unique challenges in recent years, this combination is expected to
produce a favorable outlook for home improvement spending over the
coming months.
This all comes from the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity
from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
They predict that for the rest of 2012 home improvement spending
will continue to increase and should be at its strongest all the
way through the middle of 2013 upon where it is expected to reach
double digit growth figures.
The most successful home improvement stores across the Country,
The Home Depot and Lowes brought forth surprisingly mixed results
concerning the last quarter. Lowes shared that per share income was
up 68 cents however this is even to Lowes per share improvements
from a year prior and is actually 2 cents less than the estimated
70 cent climb it was expected to make in the aforementioned past
quarter of 2012. Moreover, total revenue was down 2% although much
of this should be attributed to the fact that the company closed 27
of its stores.
Home Depot, on the other hand, was quite successful in the last
quarter and reflected the same positive findings that home
remodeling is on the rise. Their per share profit beat out prior
estimates of 97 cents per share with a reported $1.01 per share
profit in this years second quarter. This, it must be noted,
highlights a substantial difference from the 86 cent per share
profit looking to year-over-year statistics from the same quarter
in 2011. For Home Depots total revenue, there was a 1.7%
improvement while the same-store revenue also went up by 2.1%.
More Information: Boston Business
Journal