Lowe’s CEO predicts home renovation on the rise in 2026

Following Home Depot’s announcement that its third-quarter earnings were down year over year, competitor Lowe’s saw its stock up nearly 6%.
Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the home improvement chain’s optimistic outlook for the industry in the coming year.
CEO Marvin Ellison told Yahoo Finance that due to Americans having “significant equity” and feeling sidelined from buying a new home due to rates, renovations will be on the rise next year.
Will home renovations rise in 2025?
In the last year, tariffs on essential raw materials for renovations and homebuilding like timber slowed the industry considerably.
However, as Ellison pointed out, homeowners and renters are also feeling stuck and unable to move into a new home.
In October 2025, active listings rose 15.3% year over year, marking the 24th straight month of gains. But despite inventory growing and rates falling to 12-month lows, homes are spending longer on the market for the 19th straight month (63 days, +5 year on year).
Because of this, Ellison sees a new dawn approaching for home renovations, and using home equity to do it.
“We expect homeowners to start, at some point, to tap into these … home equity lines of credit to start to finance larger, more discretionary home improvement projects, because they’re going to be reluctant to give up those sub-4%, sub-3%, 30-year fixed mortgage rates,” he said.
Homeowners, Ellison said, have low mortgage rates but “hate their kitchen … need an extra garage … an extra bathroom, they need a modernized environment.”
There’s data to back this up. Spending on home improvements and maintenance for owner-occupied homes is expected to stay steady through the end of this year and into mid-2026, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Its latest LIRA report predicts that renovation and repair spending will grow about 2.4% in early 2026, then slow slightly to 1.9% by the third quarter.
“Upward trends in both remodeling permit activity and single-family home sales suggest that demand for home improvement will remain stable in the coming year,” says Rachel Bogardus Drew, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the center. “Despite the modest pace, total homeowner remodeling spending is expected to reach $524 billion in early 2026, a new record high.”
Older homeowners means more renovations needed
The average age of a home in the US is at an all time high, roughly 44 years old.
Additionally, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors®, the typical age of first-time buyers climbed to an all-time high of 40 years.
With both the housing stock and the typical homebuyer on the older side, renovations will be necessary not only to improve the quality of the home, but the longevity of time spent in the home.
For instance, according to an early 2025 report from Charles Schwab, almost half of boomers surveyed (45%) confessed they wanted “to enjoy my money for myself while I’m still alive.” For homeowners, that includes making improvements to their homes to ensure they can stay in them as long as possible.
Baby boomers—those born from 1946 to 1964—spent an average of $14,140 on home projects in 2024, according to an Angi report.
“Homeowners are clearly committed to their homes. Even as economic pressures and challenges to getting projects done mount, the desire to create functional, personalized, and well-maintained spaces is stronger than ever. The optimism for 2025 reflects the enduring value of homeownership as both a financial and emotional investment,” Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angi, told Newsweek.
According to its research, 93% of homeowners planned home improvement projects in 2025, while 46% are looking ahead to large-scale projects over the next five years, such as kitchen remodels (31%) and bathroom upgrades (28%).
This could very much play into a boom in renovations in 2026.
Will uncertainty keep buyers on the sidelines?
Last week, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate was up two basis points to 6.24%, per Freddie Mac.
The constant refrain in recent months is that prospective homebuyers won’t be diving into the market in earnest until rates fall below 6%. Whether that’s on the horizon for 2026 remains to be seen, but confidence is on the rise, not just with economists, but also with homebuilders.
Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes rose one point to 38 in November, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. It’s not a huge increase, but it shows movement.
“We continue to see demand-side weakness as a softening labor market and stretched consumer finances are contributing to a difficult sales environment,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz.
“After a decline for single-family housing starts in 2025, NAHB is forecasting a slight gain in 2026 as builders continue to report future sales conditions in marginally positive territory.”