Kirk Moffitt thinks that the remodeling industry is in for a difficult winter. “The small jobs will always be there,” says the owner of Moffitt Construction, in Chicago, “but the big ones are going to be fewer and farther between, with more bidders fighting for a smaller piece of the pie.”
So how does his company make sense of the changing market? One of the firm’s primary indicators is the backlog and workload of local architects and concrete contractors. Recently, Moffitt has noticed that architects who are typically busy with residential projects have been taking on more commercial and industrial work. For him, that indicates a slowdown.
He also checks local real estate sales, actual home values, and commodity prices on steel and metals. Moffitt says he can even use the number of “for sale” signs in neighborhoods as a visual tool to guide him. “It isn’t very scientific, but it gives me an emotional gauge on where people are,” he says.