It's a good time to negotiate a bargain on a home improvement -- even if it won't do a lot for your home's value.

Many homeowners are reluctant to put money into a home improvement for fear their home value will decline anyway.

Home improvements, once used to help boost the value of homes, are the latest victim of the housing crisis.

Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies says home improvements are set to decline by an annual rate of more than 11 percent into the first quarter of 2009.

Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program of the Joint Center blamed weak home sales and the growing inventory of unsold homes for discouraging upper-end remodeling in many areas. Weak home sales and swelling inventories are the byproducts of a housing market plagued by foreclosures and tight underwriting standards.

The fallout prevents new home purchases and refinanced mortgages that often result in cash pulled out for home improvements. The same areas with the worst foreclosure conditions, California, the Southwest and Florida, are also finding fewer homeowners engaging in home improvements.

Still, long term forecasts expect industry growth, Harvard projects a 44 percent inflation-adjusted increase in the remodeling business nationwide from now through 2015.

Homeowners who make home improvements now will be better positioned for the next spurt in home prices.

Published: July 29, 2008

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.