Articles

Consumer spending on home grew 20 percent in 2021 over 2020, which followed an 8 percent advance in 2020 over 2019. While 2020 growth didn’t come close to the unprecedented increase in 2021, it was still double the average 4 percent year-over-year advance tracked from 2010 after the recovery from the last recession. Read More

The National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA) released its Kitchen & Bath Market Index (KBMI) for Q1 of 2022. The quarterly report, which is aimed at measuring the health of the kitchen and bath industry, found that the industry enjoyed a successful opening quarter of the year, growing 12.6% in Q1, with industry professionals expecting further growth as the year continues. Read More

Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2022, following an increase of 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021. Read More

One of the largest problems is the rapidly aging demographics facing developed economies. For an economy to grow, there must be a balance of consumers and producers. This balance necessitates a growing population that skews to the younger end of the spectrum. An aging populace creates a lack of producers and tends to grind down growth as workers retire and begin pulling money and other resources from the economy. Read More

Before March 2020, the COVID-19 virus seemed like something sort of far away. While world health experts had been nervously tracking and documenting its spread and there were some isolated cases in the United States, people didn’t think it would be very serious. One of the biggest shifts is how consumers shopped, with a dramatic shift to online. Digital Commerce 360 estimates that the pandemic contributed an extra $219 billion to ecommerce’s bottom line over the past two years, with consumers spending $871 billion online in 2021. From March 2020 to February 2022, U.S. consumers spent $1.7 trillion online. Read More

The last five years saw some of the most cataclysmic changes in society and the economy since the Great Recession. And the last two years were even more tumultuous. Between the global pandemic, an ominous war abroad and major swings in consumer mood and sentiment, it’s hard to pick what the most significant event is. Indeed, there’s a meme going around that says, “When they said history repeats itself, I wasn’t expecting all of the 20th Century in the last two years.” Read More

There are growing concerns of an impending housing bubble. While the housing market is obviously seriously overheated, there are several reasons to think that it won’t end up as another bubble bursting. Lenders are much more cautious now than they were during the housing boom leading up to the Great Recession. Read More

Sales of new single‐family houses in April 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000, according to estimates released jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 16.6% below the revised March rate of 709,000 and is 26.9% below the April 2021 estimate of 809,000. Read More

Confidence in the market for new multifamily housing turned downward in Q1 2022, according to results from the Multifamily Market Survey (MMS) by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). Read More

After expanding by 5.9% in 2021, The Conference Board expects global economic growth to slow to 2.9% this year, representing a downgrade of 1.0 percentage point from the February global economic outlook. Read More