Hello! Welcome to Toolbox’s blog page
This is the second in a series of short pieces that we’re writing for our community to share thoughts, insights and news on new product launches.
We’d love to hear from you! You can visit our website, follow us on Instagram or drop us an email. And make sure you join our waiting list for early access when we go live later this year 🚀
The UK’s £110bn home renovation boom 🏠
It’s fair to say that the last 18 months have thrown up a few surprises for us all, and many aspects of our lives after the pandemic are unlikely to ever be the same again.
Work has gone more remote, holidays have gone more local, and many industries, like retail and banking, have seen huge growth in their online and digital channels.
One trend that has caught many people by surprise though is the huge acceleration in spend by households in the UK on renovations and home improvements.
New research suggests that households spent more than £110bn on home improvements since the first lockdown begain in March 2020.
5 million Brits redecorated rooms in their homes, 1.5 million built an outhouse and over a million built home-gyms and extensions.
The figures released in June 2021 by Powered Now estimate that Brits have spent an average of £2,011 per person on home refurbishments, while the UK property market has witnessed a 10.9% rise in average property value.
New numbers released in June 2021 shows that the UK Planning Portal received 63,497 applications for planning permission in England and Wales in May 2021, up 52% compared with May 2020. That’s a lot of applications in one month!
So yes, there’s a boom in this sector. But is this actually a new trend?
‘Improve don’t move’ has actually been quietly trending for a while now
Aside from actually buying a house, spending money on home improvements is one of the biggest investments people in the UK will make in their lifetimes.
The pandemic has definitely accelerated this trend, as homeowners were in their properties for long periods of time, creating a pressing need to improve their living environments, make room for remote work, exercise and family time.
But the trend of ‘improve don’t move’ has been growing long before lockdown began.
Data (above) released as long ago as 2018 by Hiscox suggested that the number of homeowners choosing to improve their homes rather than move rose fivefold in the years between 2013 and 2018. By the end of 2018, more than four million households across the nation were actively engaged in home improvements of some kind.
So what’s been driving this?
The macro trends in the UK property market have been influenced by a broad range of factors, including rising house prices and a national housing shortage. Brexit also drove a lot of uncertainly in the market between 2018 and early 2020.
The UK’s ongoing cladding crisis has made buying new-build apartments an un-attractive prospect for many, and this has meant that investing in an older property, in need of some work (for want of a better word, a ‘doer upper’) is the only viable option for many first time buyers, especially in urban areas.
Fluctuations in stamp duty rates have both frozen and poured fire on the housing market in the UK over the past five years in equal measure.
Despite all of this growth, homeowners and tradespeople are still at great risk of losing money through un-secured payments in this industry
We have seen first hand the problems that can arise for homeowners when things go wrong on a build.
The current renovation boom has driven a significant squeeze on the supply of tradespeople, construction firms and also building materials in the UK. This means that the process for a homeowner is harder than ever.
The Toolbox platform supports homeowners through their entire renovation journey. If you book your renovation through Toolbox, we’ll deliver the work end to end, fix the price, and guarantee the job. That means that if something breaks, or doesn’t quite look like you hoped it would, we’ll come back and put it right.
This is the new way to renovate your home!
So that’s it! Want to find our more? Visit our website or drop us an email today at hello@yourtoolbox.io.
Take the stress out of renovating. Sign up to Toolbox today!
In our next blog we’re going to dive deeper into the Toolbox product and talk about the exciting features that we’re going live with later this year.
