Australia's renovation industry is currently struggling under the slow pace of the country's property market, according to a report from the Housing Industry Association (HIA).
These thoughts have been put forward by HIA senior economist Shane Garrett, who blames the frustrations on the "slump in activity between 2011 and 2013".
It seems that the issues of hesitant recovery are due to how consumers feel about the market and about market conditions in several of Australia's states.
Mr Garrett also said that: "Dwelling price growth is also pretty unspectacular in a number of important markets."
Areas of strong capital growth, such as New South Wales and Sydney have found a greater demand for major renovations on houses, instead of consumers choosing to relocate somewhere new.
Growth figures from the HIA indicate that renovations activity will increase by 0.4 per cent in 2016.
So following, it predicts that the activity will grow by 0.6 per cent in 2017 and a larger increase of 3.0 per cent is expected in 2018.
In terms of money, the rising figures between now and 2018 will bring the total volume of renovations activity to $30.62 billion, according to the HIA.
Although this is a positive move forward for the renovations sector and is likely to have a positive knock-on effect for the property market as a whole, the HIA remains worried about recent interest rate rises.
Speaking on this, Mr Garrett said: "The recent tightening of mortgage credit conditions casts an unwelcome shadow."
He has commented however that a positive effect of the slow rise of the home renovations market is its "labour intensive nature", which has caused a rise in employment in this area.
Voicing the thoughts of the HIA, Mr Garrett said he is confident overall that the recovery, although moderate, will continue and will spur on improvements in economic growth and employment.
