HVAC & Plumbing Contractors
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 105,000 HVAC and plumbing contractors in the US provide installation, repair, and maintenance services for air handling and water management systems. Just over 60% of HVAC and plumbing contractors are solo operators. Contractors may specialize in residential, commercial, institutional, or industrial service.
Dependence On Construction Industry
Demand for HVAC and plumbing services is highly dependent on trends in the construction industry.
Increasing Sophistication Of HVAC Systems
Demand for improved efficiency in the non-residential market has led to increasingly complex HVAC systems and automated monitoring programs.
Industry size & Structure
The average plumbing and HVAC contractor employs 11 workers and generates about $2 million in annual revenue.
- The HVAC and plumbing contractor industry consists of 105,000 companies (including solo operators), employs more than 1.2 million workers and generates $218 billion annually.
- Just over 60% of HVAC and plumbing contractors are solo operators and generate about $65,200 annually.
- Major customer segments include single family homes (20% of industry business), office buildings (10%), manufacturing and industrial buildings (5%), educational buildings (8%), commercial buildings (7%), health care and institutional buildings (6%), and apartment buildings (4%).
- Large companies include EMCOR Group, Comfort Systems USA, Johnson Controls, and ARS Rescue Rooter.
Industry Forecast
HVAC & Plumbing Contractors Industry Growth
Recent Developments
Sep 13, 2024 - Home Buyers Prefer Bathroom, Kitchen Upgrades
- The recent What Home Buyers Really Want Study by the National Association of Home Builders highlights some plumbing-related home features that are most attractive to prospective home buyers. Study participants were given a list of 28 kitchen and 18 bathroom features and were asked to rate each as essential, desirable, indifferent, or do not want. Top kitchen features include double sinks (78% of buyers ranking desirable or essential), drinking water filtration (75%); and customized backsplash (68%). The leading plumbing-related bathroom features include both shower and tub in primary bath (78% of buyers ranking desirable or essential), private toilet compartment in primary bath (70%), double vanity in primary bath (67%), white toilet tub and sink (67%), granite vanity (64%), multiple shower heads in primary bath (63%), and body spray panel in primary bath (60%).
- New single-family home sales rose 10.6% month-over-month and were up 5.9% year-over-year in July 2024, according to the US Department of Commerce. July’s rise in home sales marked the biggest gain in more than a year as interest rates moved lower. For the week ending September 5, the average fixed-rate 30-year mortgage rate was 6.35%, down from 7.12% a year earlier. Housing industry observers expect mortgage rates to continue trending downward amid anticipated interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, according to Reuters. However, high home prices remain an obstacle for many would-be buyers. The median new home sales price in July 2024 was $429,800, up 3.1% from June but down 1.4 compared to July 2023.
- High interest rates have increased the costs for new multifamily construction and reduced property values, prompting some developers to halt or delay projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. Multifamily housing starts involving five or more units fell 21.8% in July compared to July 2023 and were down 41% from their April 2022 peak. The drop in starts follows a boom in apartment building that began during the pandemic. This year, about 610,000 apartment units are expected to come online, the most in any year since the 1980s, according to data firm CoStar. However, as financing new projects has become costlier, CoStar expects new apartment supplies to slip to fewer than 350,000 units in 2025 and 275,000 in 2026. The influx of new apartment building has created an oversupply in some regions, leading to lower property values and weak rent growth, which has reduced developer and investor appetite for new projects.
- In the second quarter of 2024, there were about 23,000 single-family built-for-rent (SFBFR) housing starts in the US, up nearly 10% from the same period in 2023, according to National Association of Home Builders analysis of US Census Bureau data. During the four most recent quarters, 83,000 SFBFR homes began construction, which is up more than 20% compared to how many were built in the previous four-quarter period. While the historical four-quarter moving average market share for SFBFR is about 2.7% (1992-2012), SFBFR’s current share of the overall single-family market is about 8%. Single-family built-for-rent homes provide an alternative for consumers who want more space but are challenged by a lack of affordable housing inventory and downpayment requirements in the for-sale market.
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