Houzz Stat: Hurry up and wait

General contractors and remodelers, design-build firms, and interior designers all reported longer project backlogs as of Oct. 1 than they did as of July 1. “Backlog” refers to the wait time an average firm faces before starting a new midsize project due to its current project commitments.

“It is hard to pin down why for some of them the backlog actually increased — it could be that projects are taking longer to complete,” says Nino Sitchinava, research economist at Houzz. Labor shortages also could be to blame. However, Sitchinava cautioned that it’s too early to know the full explanation, particularly since Houzz began tracking renovation project backlogs just three months ago.

Wait times for design-build firms are the longest of all. Design-build firms reported average wait times of 7.7 weeks, the longest of any of the six groups tracked in the survey. The average project backlog reported by these firms is also an uptick from three months earlier, when the backlog was 7.4 weeks.

Wait times for general contractors and remodelers average more than seven weeks. General contractors and remodeling firms reported the next-longest wait times, with average backlogs of 7.1 weeks as of Oct. 1, just a slight rise compared with three months earlier, when the average backlog was seven weeks.

Designers saw their backlogs rise. Designers reported wait times of 4.5 weeks, also a small rise from three months earlier, when the average wait time for firms in this group was 4.3 weeks.

The numbers come from Houzz's research and surveys of professionals.