State of the Residential Construction Industry
Principia surveyed 171 C-level executives across three key segments of the construction industry: building product manufacturers, distributors and builders.
All respondents expect next year to show a slight rebound of around 3% to 5%, which has been the perennial hope of the last few years.
Principia believes that industry executive's sentiment is mirroring consumer confidence, or lack thereof. There have been signs that the economy is stabilizing but lingering fears of a double-dip recession continue to undermine confidence in an imminent strong recovery.
We do see pockets of expansion especially in the area of repair and remodeling activity and in the product categories typically associated within this sector.
Interestingly, for each time period surveyed builders were more positive in their outlook than distributors who in turn were more positive than building product manufacturers as shown on the subsequent figures. This is most likely a reflection of the margins achievable at each step of the value chain – with greater margins achievable closer to the property owner.
Download (.pdf format) the entire survey.