Australia’s $31.4 Billion home renovations market

Australia’s $31.4 Billion home renovations market
Staff ReporterDecember 7, 2020

The future increase of home renovations are expected to take up the slack in weaker levels of new home building, according to the Housing Industry Association.

In the HIA's latest Renovations Roundup, senior economist Shane Garrett, said the turnover of existing homes also generates additional renovations demand which is important because many renovation jobs are initiated by the new buyers of aging houses.

“With new home building set to fall back over the coming years, there will be increased reliance on home renovations activity as a source of demand within the industry," he said. 

“Home renovations’ demand has a lot going for it at the moment: low interest rates, a strong pace of dwelling price growth in key areas and healthy labour market conditions in the larger cities. Our renovations market survey also indicates that the price of houses in Sydney and Melbourne is persuading homeowners previously considering moving house to instead embark on major renovation projects in their current homes.

Overall, we anticipate that renovations activity will continue to grow modestly over the next few years and take up some of the slack that will result from weaker levels of new home building. With annual home renovations expenditure topping $31 billion, the sector packs quite a punch across the Australian economy.

"In 2016, we project that activity will grow by another 3.0 percent, with the pace of expansion slowing to 1.4 pe cent in 2017. Growth is expected to pick up to 2.4 percent in both 2018 and 2019. Overall, the volume of renovations activity is anticipated to increase from $31.38 billion in 2016 to $33.37 billion in 2019, an overall expansion of 6.3 percent. 

The report noted the volume of activity increased by 4.7 percent in 2015, the strongest growth since 2010.

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