[CONSUMER RESEARCH] Demand for Pest Management Services Increases

Nationwide survey results released in February show that in the fourth quarter of 2010, remodeling activity was on the decline while discretionary spending on convenience and maintenance services — including pest management services — was on the rise by homeowners. The data was collected from ServiceMagic’s Q4 2010 Home Remodeling and Repair Index, containing information compiled from 1.2 million service requests received through the firm’s online marketplace from October to December of 2010, as well as results from a survey of homeowners and service professionals conducted in January of this year.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, homeowners’ service requests for convenience and maintenance services — including pest control (+30.5 percent); lawn and garden care (+21.5 percent); snow removal services (+20 percent); and handyman services (+16 percent) — were up nationally. But those same homeowners appeared to be less willing to invest in remodeling projects with demand in service requests for additions and remodeling declining 30 percent year over year nationally.

“Significant increases in convenience service categories reflect the growing trend of homeowners paying for home services that in the recent past, with tighter economic conditions, they were choosing to do on their own,” said Craig Smith, ServiceMagic’s CEO.
 

HOME IMPROVEMENT PLANS.
Sentiment towards remodeling activity in 2011 is optimistic with 71 percent of homeowners surveyed indicating they plan to complete a home project in 2011. However, a large majority of these homeowners have longer project timelines with more than 60 percent waiting for 12 or more weeks before beginning their project, an important consideration for PMPs providing “handyman” services. Past survey results have indicated that most homeowners planned to start new projects within six weeks.“Homeowners seem to be cautiously optimistic about investing in remodeling projects and it appears that remodeling activity will pick up towards the second and third quarters of 2011,” Smith said.

“It would have been easy early on in 2010 to hope for the ultimate recovery — perhaps back to 2007 spending levels. But we also observed that, while active, consumers behave differently now,” Smith continued. “It’s a mixed-bag recovery, some strong signs that homeowners plan to stay put for a while and want to increase their home’s live-in value. At the same time, today’s consumer is more discerning and price conscious.”

More Data Available
Visit www.servicemagic.com to download the complete Q4 2010 Home Remodeling and Repair Index, which includes home improvement regional and city data on home project spending trends, as well as specific categories of projects that have seen increases and decreases as compared to the same quarter in the year prior.

This survey was conducted online by ServiceMagic in January 2011. The survey polled 375 service professionals and 1,050 consumers in the ServiceMagic network. ServiceMagic.com data reflects homeowners requesting a professional to hire for home improvement projects. In other words, this data reflects “do-it-for-me” projects and not “do-it-yourself” projects.

With more than 6 million requests from homeowners in 2010, ServiceMagic is a nationwide website connecting consumers with prescreened, customer-rated service professionals.