In the early 2000s, some in the residential-construction industry predicted that, in the not-too-distant future, the United States would reach its new-home saturation point.
The result would be a corresponding growth in the remodeling industry because the houses that had been built in the 1980s and 1990s would require major updating.
Although some builders added remodeling components to their businesses, the bursting of the housing bubble and the eight-year real estate downturn that followed brought residential construction to a crawl. The shortage of credit for small- and medium-size builders prompted many to turn to remodeling just to survive.
About 15 years from now, it’s highly unlikely that those early-millennium predictions on the housing industry’s future will come to pass.
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