Raising The Roof On Home Renovation

Published July 28, 2017 at 10:00 AM CDT

"This Old House" craftsmen installed an ultra-modern kitchen in the 1904 Renaissance Revival brownstone that was the subject of the first ever New York City renovation by the PBS home improvement series. (Henny Ray Abrams/AP)

Home renovation is booming. We’ll de-construct the reasons why and look at the hot new trends.

Record spending projected this year on American home renovation. Americans might rather move, but the real estate market is very tight. Inventory – homes for sale – tight. Boomers are staying put. Digging in. Remodeling. Millennials are buying what they can, and fixing up. Everybody’s blowing out walls for open space. Looking for the magic change that charms. What works? What’s hot? What’s worth it? We’ve got the pros. This hour On Point: Home renovation mania. — Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Laura Kusisto, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering housing and the economy. ( @LauraKusisto)

Brad Hunter, chief economist at HomeAdvisor, a national homeowner services and improvement website. ( @BradleyHunter)

Eric Eremita, general contractor on HGTV’s “Love It or List It.” ( @EricEremita)

From Tom’s Reading List

Wall Street Journal: Americans Pour Record Sums Into Home Improvements — “A shortage of new single-family homes across the U.S. is pushing up prices and locking many buyers out of the market. The silver lining: a boom in renovations of existing homes. Americans are expected to pour a record $316 billion into home remodeling this year, up from $296 billion a year earlier, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.”

HomeAdvisor: Why the Home Improvement Industry is Worth Billions — “Home improvement spending nationwide is now rising at nearly six percent annually, according to the Leading Index for Remodeling Activity. Three years ago, the annual growth was less than 6 percent. Why the change? One big reason: Homeowner equity. The addition of six trillion dollars in homeowner equity in the past couple years has given many homeowners the confidence and means to tackle the repairs and upgrades they had put off during (and for several years after) the great recession.”

Post Bulletin: House flippers thrive despite housing shortage — “In Rochester, house flippers such as the Reinaldas are using different approaches to thrive in a market where available housing is scarce. But a tightening market still poses challenges and can make house flipping risky for newcomers unfamiliar with the process.”