Remodeling Trends Continue
Low Builder Confidence & Increasing Construction Costs Shape The Market
The quarterly National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) State Projections of Remodeling (SPR) revealed that - between 2023 and 2025 - inflation-adjusted remodeling spending increased by more than 10%. This data supports last's months reporting on the quarterly NAHB Remodeling Market Index (RMI) showed that remodeling projects have increased as remodeling sentiments have remained high and stable for over a year.
Over a fifth of the nation's remodeling spending in the first quarter of 2026 took place in California, Texas, and Florida, with California alone representing 8.0% of the market share - an estimated $22.2 billion. Texas was close behind at 7.3%, or $20.2 billion, and Florida came in at 5.5%, or $15.4 billion. However impressive these numbers, these three did not make the list for the states with the largest change in remodeling spending. Those spots belong to Michigan (up 10.1%), Virginia (up 6.2%), North Carolina (up 4.0%), Alabama (up 8.2%), and Washington (up 3.5%).
Single-Family Homes Prices Continue Increasing
NAHB also announced that many regions of the country saw record-highs in median lot prices last year, even though the nation as a whole did not set a new record high for the first time in five years. Across the nation, the median lot value of a single-family detached home in 2025 declined from $60,000 to $59,000, but lots reached record highs in the Pacific ($170,000), Middle Atlantic ($100,000), Mountain ($95,000), and East North Central ($80,000) areas.
This is as last month's reporting showed that lot sizes in 2025 remain at historic lows, and June's NAHB/Wells Fargo House Marketing Index (HMI) reveals that almost half of single-family builders rated lot availability as "poor." August's HMI report confirmed this continued sentiment. Builder confidence increased by only one point, remaining low due - according to NAHB Chairman Bill Owens - to "high constructions costs and broader economic uncertainty."
These circumstances are also affecting the affordability of existing homes. Increasing mortgage rates indicate that a typical family earning the nation's median income would have to pay 36% of their income on a mortgage for an existing home versus 34% on a new home. The NAHB/Wells Fargo Cost of Housing Index (CHI) shows that the difference is even greater for low-income families, requiring 71% of their income for a mortgage payment on an existing home versus 67% on a new one. In either case, these percentages are higher than the 30% of income that financial experts generally suggest being allocated for housing expenses.
Multi-Family Starts
After multi-family starts were up 17.2% in June compared to a year prior, July saw them fall 16.8%, putting the number 8.9% below what it was in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. The NAHB Multi-family Market Survey (MMS) revealed further that confidence in the market has weakened year-over-year, when looking at the production and occupancy of multi-family residences. Single-family starts fell another 9.9%, finding this category 15.7% lower than it was one year ago. Even as Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington - NAHB's assistance vice president for forecasting and analysis - admits that these numbers are "especially concerning" in light of the shortage of affordable housing, she goes on to say that "permits are trending positively for both single-family and multi-family construction."
U.S.-Canada Tariffs
All this sets a backdrop for the current trade dispute between the United States and Canada, where over a year of talks has collapsed and tariffs have been imposed by both parties on the other. The U.S. tariffs include plywood, engineered wood products, and Portland cement, but NAHB reports that the country is not heavily dependent on these Canadian imports and can source them elsewhere. Steel, aluminum, and copper are subject to tariffs of up to 50%. Given the status of the U.S. housing market and that these tariffs threaten to "heighten market uncertainty, strain supply chains, and increase construction costs," the NAHB "is urging the administration to exempt building materials."
A Glimmer of Hope
Despite rising costs - and the possibility that they could rise still more - the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has revised energy standards tied to grants from the Housing Trust Fund (HTF) and HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME). Due to advocacy efforts from NAHB earlier this year, legislation was stopped that would have changed the minimum energy-efficient standards for certain single-family and multi-family housing programs. According to NAHB estimates, the higher energy codes would have increased the cost of a new home by $9,600 to $21,400, and "take up to 90 years for buyers to recoup the added cost." NAHB applauds the HUD's revision.
As seen in LASN magazine, September 2026.
