Home Building Trends Affecting the AV Integration Industry

This week’s post is about how the housing market affects the audio / visual integration business. When the economy suffers, less new homes are built. When less new homes are built, less potential clients are available to residential audio / visual systems integrators. When the economy is strong, about 1 million new homes start construction per year in America. In 2010, construction began on only 587,600 new homes. In 2005, almost 2 million houses were built. 2 million to 587,600 is a drastic drop over five years. That means that there were only about a quarter the number of prospective new home construction clients for audio / visual integrators in 2010 (Crutsinger, 2011). That cannot possibly be good for the industry, but perhaps there is a solution.

     Permits filed to initiate construction on existing homes has gone up 24 percent over the past year. Instead of trying to purchase a new home, people are resorting to remodeling (BuildFax remodeling, 2011). Enter the audio / visual systems integrator. As people make significant upgrades to their existing houses, they will likely want to add some new electronics to it. Retrofitting electronics and structured wiring into existing buildings has become a good source of income for some companies. Having to work around an existing structure instead of designing the building and the system together is one downside to this approach. But it can be done. One of the benefits to the integrator is that the project can be completed more quickly. Typical new construction projects can take over a year to complete, while a retrofit may only take six weeks. Potentially, an integrator could make the same amount of money on a project that lasts six weeks or a new construction build that takes two years (LeBlanc, 2007). So, in a time when less new homes are built, audio / visual integrators can rely on retrofitted installations to supply their income.

BuildFax remodeling index. (2011, September 19). Retrieved from http://www.buildfax.com/public/remodeling/index.html

Crutsinger, Martin. (2011, January 20). Few homes built in 2010. Retrieved from http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Few-homes-built-in-2010-966993.php

LeBlanc, Tom. (2007, October 25). Houston audio video and custom integration services. Retrieved from http://www.cepro.com/article/houston_audio_video_and_custom_integration_design_services_retrofit_as_a_fi/K291