Aussies love a good renovation, but the numbers from one source shows we’re not doing it as much as we used to.
This isn’t the greatest news for tradies and builders, given that for many of them renovations are a strong source of work.
We’re definitely “glass half full” type of people here at Trade Risk, but it’s still important to keep an eye on the economy and relevant data.
Online tradie marketplace serviceseeking.com.au recently released numbers showing how demand for renovation work has dropped dramatically over the last 12 months.
Their figures show that renovation jobs posted on their website had dropped by a whopping 30.4%.
The average value of jobs confirmed via their website dropped even further, by 36.9% over the last 12 months.
Jeremy Levitt, joint CEO at ServiceSeeking.com.au, had this to say about the figures:
“The second quarter of the financial year is typically the strongest quarter for renovation activity, however, it has been quite subdued.”
He also suggested that falling property prices had a lot to do with the decline in demand for renovation work:
“Property prices are the most important factor weighing on the demand for renovation services.
“As home owners see the value of their most expensive asset deteriorate, they are less likely to invest in it and hence the value and volume of renovation activity drops.”
Of course serviceseeking.com.au is just one source of business for tradies, and there could be a whole host of reasons why their figures are lower, but it’s certainly an interesting insight.
It’d be interesting to see how tradies and builders who don’t have to use services like this to source their business.
This is just an assumption, but perhaps tradies and builders who don’t rely on such services will be doing better than those who do need to pay for leads…?
Tradies leaving self-employment
We Looked at our own data for the last six months to see what we could find.
When a tradie chooses to cancel or not renew their business insurance due to closing their business, we ask them why.
For most it’s a career change (31%) or a better offer to go back on wages (22%).
Those who were honest enough to say they simply couldn’t make enough money to stay afloat made up 16%.
Of the remaining 31%, most chose not to provide a reason for closing their business, whilst a small portion (3%) told us they were retiring.
We’ve only been asking these additional questions for the last six months, so we’re unable to look back and compare them to the previous twelve months in the same way that serviceseeking.com.au has done.
It does give some insight into why tradies are going out of business however, and it’ll be interesting to look back in another six months to see how the numbers compare.
