Look at the TV ads that tease you to tart up your home and guess the age of the actors. I’d say from recent ads I’ve seen they tend to be young 30s to young 40s, with a few young-faced 50 and 60 year olds making it into ads promoting replacement windows. They seem a bit older than in ads of a few years ago, but from what I can make out, the message we have drawn from these ads…
Britons appear to be spending ever less on contractors to do up their homes, despite the popular view that people are investing to stay in their homes rather than move. That’s certainly what the official construction output figures show and so do the family spending data released yesterday. And the decline didn’t start with the recession it is far more longstanding. According to the family spending survey, households spend less on contractors now in cash terms than they did a…
I and others have long held doubts about accuracy of the private housing repair and maintenance series within the construction output data. And if there is a fault with the data series it is important that it be addressed if policy makers, analysts and academics are not to draw wrong inferences from it.