The Rising Price of Home Improvement

This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s priced a home improvement project recently – the costs are going way up. But is this really news? Prices are going up everywhere, right?

Well, the home improvement industry is especially positioned to be hit harder by today’s specific economic factors than some other industries.

One obvious problem is the price of gas. If you think unleaded prices are bad then have you taken a peek at diesel recently? Its meteoric climb over the recent quarters has vastly outpaced consumer gas. The sometimes big, bulky materials needed for home improvement have to be shipped to your local hardware and lumber store on those trucks. And when their prices go up so do ours.

Gas prices have hit contractors, too. A job 60 miles away might have been no big deal a couple of years ago but today the cost of driving to that same job every day for a week or two could very well be impossible under the same prices. So the contractor is forced to raise his prices or just turn down the job.

Material costs are going up, too. When you’re involved in a home improvement project and you need to cut costs what material do you fall back on? I’ve got one word for you – Plastics. But plastics and vinyl aren’t so cheap anymore because they’re made from petroleum.