TORONTO — Home renovation spending, which saw a record high last year in Canada, took a dive in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. That trend is finally beginning to reverse, according to a report from real estate consultancy firm Altus Group. It says Canadians spent $80 million on renovations last year, outpacing overall economic growth. “If we go back to last spring, interest rates were tumbling, so we were riding quite high,” Altus CEO Peter Norman told CBC News. Norman says that although renovation spending is expected to fall in all provinces this year, the latest data shows activity heating up in May and June as homeowners resumed paused projects or picked up new ones. Lines of credit are an increasingly popular way to finance renovations.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, the annual growth rate of home equity lines of credit doubled and nearly tripled for personal use,” said Melanna Giannakis, manager of a Meridian Credit Union branch in Fonthill, Ont.
