More builders are choosing brick as an exterior wall material after years of decline, reports Home Innovation Research Labs. An increasing number of builders see brick as an aesthetically pleasing, high quality, and safe material. Back-to-back years of brick popularity increases show that brick usage is likely to continue its upward trajectory. Home Innovation Research Labs surveyed more than 200 builders on their brick usage and found larger builders are more inclined to use brick than smaller builders. For builders who complete 11 to 50 homes a year, 35% say they use brick more, while 42% of those who build more than 51 homes have opted for brick more often.
Home Innovation then used its Builder Practices tabulation methodology to take another look at the impact of annual home completions on the increase and decrease reported on brick use. This method gives higher-volume builders proportionately more emphasis, or “weight,” than lower-volume builders (Table 1, far-right column), providing a more balanced look at the market. These “weighted” tabulations confirm the growth in brick exteriors reported in the Builder Practices Reports is due to an increase in their popularity among higher-volume builders with 39 percent (39%) reporting an increase in brick use.
Why Is Clay Brick Being Used More Often?
Next in the survey, respondents were asked the reasons why they were using more brick. Each respondent was given a blank space to write in their answer(s) – multiple answers were accepted from each respondent. These open-ended responses were then categorized by the research project team so they could be tabulated and compared.
PB Topical Ref
