Housing Trends
What a Homeowner Wants & What They Can Afford
This issue will focus on the Residential New and Reroofing Market, a large segment of the industry. There’s quite a bit of changes in home buyers attitudes and trends recently. Taking note of the real estate trends and analyzing the available statistical information that’s online can be helpful to your residential marketing efforts.
One can learn where a potential homeowner wants to live and what they want in a home. Having this information can help you when marketing your reroofing skills. Knowing what a homeowner is looking for in a home will give insight about whether you should encourage a flip-for-profit project or a long-term investment.
With home mortgage rates not coming down to pre-pandemic levels, and home prices still rising, it’s harder than ever for first-time buyers to get into the market. If they are able to purchase a property, they most likely qualified as a two-income family. Even saving for a down payment can break the budget. Hawaii comes in with the highest average home down payment. During the last few months, the average down payment on a home in Hawaii was $84,640. That’s not spare change.
On the other side of the coin, home prices in several luxury markets are falling. Of the top ten wealthy zip codes to report declining prices, eight are in the West with seven of those in California alone. The top wealthy zip code in the West to register a decline is 94904, located in Greenbrae, California, reporting just over a 50% drop in average home value since last year.
But declining prices may not be enough. Many potential buyers are looking to make the move to another state to find more affordable housing. Internet search data reveals that Texas is the number one state where people want move, with 133,633 searches during a recent month. Other states high on the list include Nevada and Arizona. Within California, people are looking to move to areas with lower housing costs. Fresno was recently rated as the top city in California where people want to move, and the reason given was solely based on the lower-than-average home prices.
Once they are able to purchase a property, the last thing this strapped-for-cash couple wants is to spend even more money on “frivolous” items, such as a new roof. Here, roof repair is probably all they can afford at the moment and would be right for this situation.
What features people want in a home can be telling. For example, during a recent month, the feature that was number three on the list of searches was for homes with pools. There were 4,298 searches for homes with in-ground pools with 163,079 available nationwide. Just a few years ago, having a home with a pool was the number one must-have item and the number one feature when it came time to sell. This is an interesting decline and perhaps indicating that homeowners are now looking to be more practical and cut expenses.
During this same period, the number one internet search was for homes with elevators. There were 25,212 inquires for houses with lifts with only 29,119 available nationwide. That’s about six times the number of people who wanted homes with pools, and a dramatic shift toward practicality.
More potential buyers are looking for convenience, practicality, and longevity. As our population ages and people live longer, an elevator pretty much turns a multi-level home in to a single-story structure for someone with mobility issues. With assisted living facility prices increasing, people are looking to stay in their home longer, so they’ll be more inclined to purchase quality home improvements that last.
So how does this information translate into higher roof sales? Practicality and durability seem to be more and more valued as time goes on. Know your clients. Are they going to be moving in five or ten years, or is this their forever home?
Let’s face it, nobody wants to have their house reroofed, but if it becomes inevitable, you’ll want to sell them a roof system that is tailored for that homeowner. Do they need a roof that will immediately increase the value of their home and still look good when it comes time to resell, or are there other factors to consider? Perhaps what they really need is a system for that forever home that promises they’ll never have to reroof again in their lifetime. According to current trends, more likely than not, they’ll go with the high-end roof system.
Marc Dodson,
Editor
