Climative helps homeowners understand where and how to invest in sustainability home improvements … [+]
The home remodeling process is being upgraded just as remodeling is growing in demand. Technologies to serve both the homeowner and the contractor are being imagined for every part of a home improvement process.
First, homeownership is shifting to remodeling, as homeowners choose to stay in place and leverage the lower financing. Second, homeowners are trying to extend their dollars with more sustainable solutions that might lower energy costs and make the home last longer. Third, homeowners are remodeling to protect themselves from the next big climate event and stay safe in the home. And, finally, the staying in place means aging in place, which also means upgrades to live comfortably and get around safely in the home.
All of these remodeling demands are fueling the growth of the remodeling industry. Abbe Will, a researcher at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, writes that annual spending for home improvements and maintenance is projected to grow from $472 billion to $477 billion through the third quarter this year.
Remodeling To Stay In Place
Staying in place could mean a number of things, including changing a bedroom into an office, or vice versa, creating an outdoor space, designing an indoor gym, and, maybe most common, updating the kitchen or a bathroom since nearly 70% of homes are more than 20 years old.
These home improvement investments are a commitment. Houzz reports that 62% of homeowners plan to stay in their homes for at least 11 years following renovations.
Every one of these projects happens in three phases according to Koda Wang, the founder of AI renovation platform Block.
“The homeowner journey starts with dreaming, then there is planning, then there is hiring and building,” he said. “Homeowners drown in months of guidance and ideas. What to do with permits, materials, flooring—there is so much information, but it is so generic. A bathroom renovation could cost $10,000 to $100,000. It’s such a wide range. Even then they struggle to find the right contractor. The contractor the neighbor uses, may not be the right one for me.”
Two homeowners could have a much different approach, where one has all the materials selected, and just needs to contract the labor, and another homeowner may need someone to do the design, material selection and the work. Both could benefit from the power of AI to facilitate the process.
Block uses AI to democratize access to professional renovation support, and to empower homeowners to … [+]
“We’re using AI because it’s good at tackling information,” Wang said. “People don’t know where to turn for information they can trust and information that is right for them.”
Plus, Google reports that 15% of daily searching is brand new, or has never been searched before, which means that the way people are looking for information is changing all the time. This makes the power of AI that much more valuable.
The Home Improvement Research Institute’s data shows that homeowners focus on quality of work, licensing and insurance, reputation, and customer service and support before cost when selecting a pro. So, that selection process relies on the trust and relationship the two parties create. Block is solving for that with an AI-powered vetting process.
Julie Kheyfets, the CEO at Block, says they only accept about 7% of contractors who apply so that they can maintain a high bar of quality.
“We also make sure to expose the feedback and metrics to the contractors themselves and how they stack up to the rest of the network,” she said. “They want to know why they lose a homeowner and how they can improve. They are usually a stand alone business owner and don’t have a lot of tools to grow business or get feedback.”
It also has major cost benefits on both sides of the equation.
“The platform intelligence helps homeowners avoid the expense of hiring an architect, which on average is above $10,000,” she said.
“The homeowner is faced with the most stressful transactions of their life,” Wang said, so cutting costs is a big help. “They don’t know how long it is going to take and what it will look like.”
For the pro, the AI helps write proposals, a major time and cost savings. It also helps homeowners understand the proposals.
“Sometimes proposals from different contractors are hard to compare,” Wang said. “Some are by room, some are by trade.”
Block offers all the technology to both the contractor and the homeowner at no cost. The company receives fees only when the homeowner and the contractor decide to work together and there is an actual transaction.
Big-box retailer Lowe’s also invested in technology to help the homeowner manage all the equity sitting in their home.
Lowe’s unveiled its Digital Home Platform at the 2025 CES to give homeowners access to free, personalized information about products in their homes.
Brian Dell, the director of innovation, product strategy, and design for Lowe’s, said that currently the program can be used to access and store manuals, warranties and other documents, get product recommendations, get maintenance reminders, and access educational materials.
Appliances purchased with a MyLowe’s Rewards account within the past five years will automatically appear in a user’s profile, or the user can add appliances not associated to the rewards account.
“We’re building towards a future where our customers have all the information about their home and home maintenance needs in one place — think digital twin for their home,” said Chandhu Nair, Lowe’s senior vice president of technology.
Users can set up a high level of personalization with their unique interests and goals, their level of handiwork, and manage it all from this one platform.
This release is the newest of many developments from the Lowe’s Innovation Labs, including a kitchen visualization experience, a room measurement tool, and a custom GPT that delivers home improvement product recommendations via generative AI.
Lowering Ownership Costs With Energy Efficient Remodeling
All age profiles are interested in energy efficiency for its cost benefits to the home.
In a recent report from the Home Improvement Research Institute, cost savings was the number one driver for energy efficient projects across all age groups by a wide margin.
“We have $1T of retrofits to do in North America,” said Winston Morton, CEO at AI-based platform Climative. “Only 1.5% of building stock gets retrofit per year, but it’s a positive return on investment, so why aren’t we doing it?”
Climative uses AI to create personalized low-carbon plans for buildings so owners can make faster, better decisions to lower their building’s emissions, make them more comfortable, and save money. Climative’s AI-assisted can be personalized and to provide a clear path forward to undertake building energy retrofits that even can be phased out over time.
“The goal of Climative is to give the customer an easy way to show them how much money they would save over the life of the retrofit,” Morton said. “We look at what the cost would be after rebates. We can show that the ROI is three years and where you can invest. The homeowner also can fill in a survey to further collect information to fill in the gaps of what isn’t collected through our data sources.”
Customers can go an additional step to have an energy assessor visit and do an onsite audit.
In a similar vane, the U.S. Department of Energy partnered with Google to connect Google Search and Google Maps users with trained home energy technicians recognized with a new distinction: Energy Skilled. The designation means a worker has the skills needed to work with modern building systems for reduced energy use and cost.
Another climate tool was put forward to a collaboration with construction project management platform Buildxact and the Advanced Building Construction Collaborative to simplify the process and the information to decarbonize the housing stock.
Based on years of analysis and multiple national labs, the process is facilitated by both a consumer version and a pro version of an online tool that offers assembly recommendations to get a property to zero carbon alignment.
The technology makes it fast and easy to complete energy upgrade projects by streamlining the process to develop a bill of materials of property-specific energy upgrades, to build an estimate, and to connect to a dealer to order materials.
Symbium is another useful technology focused on permitting for residential decarbonization projects, such as solar, energy storage, and heat pumps. It provide instant permitting for homeowners and contractors, allowing them to visualize a project’s possibility and then submit and manage permit applications.
The technology is driven by the company’s Complaw technology that processes and digests local regulation in seconds to provide the proper permitting.
Just deciding to do a home remodel is the right starting point from a sustainability perspective. Not only do renovations extend a home’s lifespan, but renovating instead of building new homes can mean cutting carbon emissions from up to 150 tons for new construction to less than 50 tons for a renovation.
Remodeling To Stay Secure
In a time with increasing climate events, remodeling to stay safe is on more homeowners’ minds. The new Lowe’s platform will tie in resiliency factors for weather-based home preparation that can be informed by geographic specific weather alerts.
“It will not just solve the problems after they have them, but prepare and set you up for success,” Nair said. “Climate readiness is home dependent, so you have to have an idea of the geography.”
By studying the impacts of severe weather and understanding the role of home design, the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety developed the FORTIFIED program that connects homeowners to contractors trained on specific measures for stronger, more resilient homes.
The program was developed by testing solutions in a lab where structures can experience torrential rain, 130-mph winds, and hail.
The program’s online assessment helps homeowners understand what is needed for their specific property and then can connect them to a trained contractor.
Updating To Age In Place
Fifty-five percent of Boomers and Gen X homeowners’ home improvement projects in 2024 were focused … [+]
According to the Census Bureau, the majority of homeowners are more than 65 years old. The most recent estimates show that 39% are less than 35; 63% are between 35 and 44; 71% are 45 to 54; 76% are 55 to 64; and 79% are older than 65.
More data from the Home Improvement Research Institute shows that 55% of Boomers and Gen X homeowners’ home improvement projects in 2024 were focused on upgrades to age in place.
Plus, Houzz reports that 66% of homeowners address special needs when upgrading bathrooms aging household members.
These upgrades, such as wider door frames, more hand rails, repositioning outlets, securing grab bars, living on one level, better lighting, and no shower curbs, can be understood and executed more efficiently with technology like Block.
Future Of Remodeling
Will with the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies shared that the slight gain in remodeling activity will represent little more than a 1% increase year over year with the projection for the remodeling market growing to an estimated $509 billion.
That’s a big industry, and a big opportunity, opening the door to much more technology that helps visualize and complete remodeling projects and the dollars flow through.
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