Recently, the prosperity of the home furnishing industry has rebounded.
Data released by the China Building Materials Circulation Association on May 15 showed that the BHI (National Building Materials and Home Furnishing Index) reached 142.16 in April this year, setting a new high since January 2022. The market performance of the building materials and home furnishing industry has been significantly boosted.
BHI stands for the National Building Materials and Home Furnishing Boom Index, which can reflect the prosperity and market trends of building materials, home decoration and decoration materials.
The data shows that the BHI in April was 142.16, an increase of 13.37 points month-on-month and 26.57 points year-on-year, the highest value in the past 16 months.
At the same time, the sales of building materials and home furnishing stores above designated size nationwide were 162.523 billion yuan in April, a month-on-month increase of 25.72%, and a year-on-year increase of 60.66%; the cumulative sales from January to April were 483.218 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.3%.
The Industry Research Department of the China Building Materials Circulation Association believes that compared with the national new and second-hand housing transaction data in April, the building materials and home furnishing market shows certain differences.
The overall consumer demand is still continuing to release, picking up further based on the first quarter.
What is particularly obvious is the month-on-month and year-on-year sales growth in building materials and home furnishing stores.
The report believes that on the one hand, the BHI index lags slightly behind real estate sales performance, and on the other hand, due to the current increase in the share of renovated existing houses, home decoration no longer relies solely on new properties, and the growth of existing house decoration will become a norm for the future development of the industry.
This is also consistent with the recent judgments of leading home improvement companies on the market.
At Dongyi Risheng’s performance meeting in early May, investors asked how home improvement companies should respond to the shift in the home improvement market from new homes to old homes.
Dongyi Risheng’s management stated at the time that they would improve the company’s digital and technological home improvement service capabilities; extend product boundaries to the entire home and entire project; and improve delivery quality and refined management through digitalization.
However, specific to the BHI sub-index, it shows a more comprehensive trend performance of the home building materials market.
Although the popularity index increased by 4.46 year-on-year to 173.73, the month-on-month performance still fell by 22.95.
Analysis of this report believes that this not only shows that the shift of building materials and home furnishing consumption behavior to online has become a fact when the early epidemic situation has long-term impact on offline sales, but also shows that the consumption potential of building materials and home furnishings is still insufficient.
In contrast, the purchasing power index rose by 25.66 month-on-month and 31.36 year-on-year, reaching 86.26.
Comparing it with the “Popularity Index”, it is not difficult to find that there is a contrast between “see less and buy more” in the market. The transaction volume of consumers entering the store is relatively high, more consumers are willing to pay for consumption upgrades and quality experiences, and the growth trend of unit price per customer has become increasingly obvious.
At the same time, although the broker confidence index has increased compared with the same period this year, it is still declining compared with the same period last year.
According to the analysis, due to the current weak endogenous driving force of the macro economy and the downward pressure on the real estate market, the industry still has hidden concerns about the sustainability of the consumption of building materials and home furnishings.
Wang Jianguo, an Internet strategy expert in China’s home furnishing/design industry, believes that BHI’s new high can be seen as a rebound after experiencing market lows in recent years. After passing the market low period, it is normal for the home building materials market to show an upward trend this year.
He believes that due to the large demand for existing projects and the acceleration of construction progress of some stalled projects since this year, the current optimistic upward trend will still be maintained in a short to medium cycle.
“However, looking at the medium and long-term cycle situation, we must maintain a certain degree of cautious judgment, because the current market performance is still in a relatively dynamic stage of change and fails to reflect the long-term trend of the market.” Wang Jianguo said frankly.
