The New York Times reports that throughout NYC and beyond, “there has been there has been an addition to the hubbub: Contractors, lines of them, waiting for authorization to ascend the elevator to the apartments they are in the process of renovating.”
All of this is good news for contractors, who have been faced with little to no work in the last couple of years…and the work that they find is bargained down to cutthroat rates.
These days, bargains are harder to find for homeowners, which may be good news overall for the economy. Getting prices back to normal means higher wages for laborers and more money for suppliers, which in turn results in more people with more spending power.
We’ll be keeping an eye out to see when commercial construction starts to pick up. That should be a sure sign that the economy is on the mend.