13
PRO INSTALLER NOVEMBER 2014
PRO NEWS
@proinstaller1
ALL CLEAR FOR
GROWTH IN
THE DOMESTIC
GLAZING MARKET
A buoyant housing market and a growing economy will sustain growth in the market to 2018
Growing consumer confidence, a burgeoning
housing market and a
low interest rate environment helped boost
the domestic glazing
market in Great Britain
in 2013. And growth
looks set to continue
through to 2018. “We’re
entering the longest
period of prolonged
growth for this market
since the nineties”
says Robert Palmer, director of Palmer Market
Research.
After continuing to decline
in the first quarter of 2013,
the market dramatically
switched to growth in the
second quarter, ending up
for the year nearly 5% higher at £3.78 billion. By sector,
the market in new build
housing shot up 17% and
in home improvements by a
more modest 4%. Only social housing refurbishment
failed to see an increase,
down just over 2%.
Government initiatives, in
particular the Help to Buy
scheme, have had an important effect on new build
and will continue to do so
through to 2018 and even
beyond. Rising interest rates
will be something of a dampener but even so by 2018 the
market is forecast to be 50%
bigger than it was in 2013.
The strengthening housing
market itself is also helping home improvements as
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homeowners feel that these
are now worth making
again. The higher number of
housing transactions boosted the replacement market
which saw growth for the
first time in ten years. Overall the home improvement
market will grow by nearly
a fifth between 2013 and
2018.
More negatively, funding
issues after the winding
down of the Decent Homes
Programme will mean little
or no growth in social housing refurbishment over the
period to 2018.
But 2013 saw other important trends. Aluminium
started to make a comeback
with its share growing from
5% to 8%. Disappointingly, bi-folding doors failed
to maintain the growth
it saw in pre