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DIY spending surges to seven-year high

Christina Hoghton
Written By:
Christina Hoghton
Posted:
Updated:
31/05/2016

We spent a record £6bn on DIY last year, improving our homes rather than moving

DIY spending increased by 13% in 2015 to a whopping £5.8bn, reaching the highest levels since 2008, according to research by Lloyds Bank. This is the equivalent of £210 per household.

However, we are spending less on professionals as we increasingly prefer to do it ourselves. The amount spent on tradesmen’s services fell by 15% between 2014 and 2015 to £1.6bn.

This resurgence in DIY has seen spending on tools and equipment for home improvements, ranging from plumbing tools to lawnmowers, increase by 5% from £4.8bn in 2014 to £5.1bn in 2015.

Andrew Mason, Lloyds Bank mortgage products director, said: “Taking a DIY approach to home improvements helps cut costs and provides homeowners with the opportunity to put their own distinctive stamp on their property. This indicates a growing confidence in the housing market and wider economy, in stark contrast to the sharp fall in spending between 2007 and 2011, which reflected the worst of the economic and housing downturns during this period.”

Maintaining our property

Overall home maintenance spending was also up in 2015, with total spending on home maintenance (i.e. DIY and tradesmen’s services) increasing by 0.3% to £7.38bn in 2015. This was the third successive annual increase, taking overall spending on home maintenance to its highest level since 2008 (£7.9bn).

And Lloyds Bank revealed that over the past 10 years spending on home maintenance has had a strong link to the performance of the housing market. Spending dropped by 31% between the peak of the housing market in 2007 (£9.0bn), and the bottom of the market in 2011 (£6.3bn).

As the housing market picked up between 2011 and 2015, spending on DIY increased by 18% again to bring home maintenance spending closer to 2005 levels.