The light at the end of the Home Show

“Doing it hard.”
“Struggling.”
“An incredibly tough year.”
These were the words used to describe many people’s experiences in 2024, but particularly that of those in the construction industry.
Building and related trades have certainly been in the doldrums: work has dropped off, trades shops are nearly empty, builders are working on their own projects just to keep their employees busy, insolvencies are up and staff are being laid off.
Many financial commentators say the key economic change that’s needed to breathe life back into the sector is for interest rates to come down.
On August 14 they did. The Official Cash Rate dropped a quarter of a percentage point, to 5.25.
Three weeks later the Auckland Home Show kicked off its four-day extravaganza of house plans, spa pools, landscaping, tools, decor… anything at all connected to the country’s favourite obsession, our homes.
The Detail went there to pick up the mood of stallholders and customers, and their stories all pretty much lined up – it’s been hard, but there’s some light around the corner.
Rowan Powell from A1 Garage Doors in Auckland has an elaborately set-up stand – he says he needed to invest in it to bring in the customers.
“It’s been an incredibly tough year,” he says.
The firm has had to lay off 25 – 30 percent of its staff, but Powell says it’s grateful for what work it does have.
“You hold on to every penny you’ve got, and you get through,” he says. “There’s a bit of a glimmer of hope, with interest rates coming down, but really what’s happened is all the investors who were spending money and had projects… they’re all frightened. It’s going be interesting to see how long it will take for them to come back and have confidence again.
“Good times will come. Auckland’s a great place to live, since I’ve been here [for 25 years] there’s been two recessions we’ve been through, this will be the third, but there’s always been an upside. It will bounce back, give it two years. Anyone who says there’s confidence now is dreaming, but time will tell. I might be wrong.”
Creative Kitchens designer Dawn-Lee Oberdries says the past 18 months have been hard, “but we’ve noticed a change,” she says.
She thinks people have begun accepting the economic conditions and realising they just have to get on with things, and are committing to building new homes.
“People [coming through] are really knowing what they’re wanting. They’re not necessarily tyre-kickers like they have been in the past.”
One trend to have come out of Covid lockdowns is that everyone now wants a pleasant outdoor area to entertain in, which anecdotally has seen those selling decking, pergolas, outdoor furniture, spas and the like coming out slightly ahead of the rest of the industry. People like ShadowDeck director Darrel Grace says he’s been okay, but builders coming through have been doing it hard.
Many of the punters The Detail talked to on the Friday of the show were trade-related, and confirmed what stall-holders were thinking.
Like many builders, Dillon O’Leary of Downright Construction has turned to building his own projects so he can keep staff on board while he waits for things to pick up.
“There’s definitely been a slow-down period,” he says.
But “there’s quite a few signs that things are starting to pick up. We have good relationships with a couple of architects who say that their leads are starting to come in quite a lot quicker now. There’s a process which eventually feeds down to us, so hopefully we start to feel that soon.”
Other visitors told us trades costs were coming down slightly; that they’ve become more budget-conscious and have simplified their ideas; or that they were there to look, not buy.
However recent retiree Liam Moorhouse pointed out that high interest rates were good for people who had savings and no mortgage.
“In the long-term it will bounce back,” he says.
He hadn’t made budgetary adjustments for renovations, however, “you’ve got to remember that I’m not the decision-maker,” he says.
“And in [my wife’s] world, she doesn’t care what it costs. ‘This is what I want you to do’ and that’s it. And you wake up and… it’s happened.”
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