The Garden Room Market – worth £110 million and growing!

Garden Rooms are the largest sector(42%) of the “Garden room and buildings” market. However there out numbered when it comes to volume of units produced, with log cabins taking a massive 77%. This ultimately means Garden rooms have a very high value to volume ratio of roughly 7:2 –  you can make more with less. It’s a great time to be a supplier of garden rooms, but there possibly hasn’t been a better time to be a consumer either.

The internet has empowered the consumer to research and quickly cross-compare suppliers for the best deal. No wonder Cleint Aquisition costs and sales/marketing budgets are high! This is no surprise, as consumers are becoming much more savvy, their demands have sophisticated and some are even going the self build route. We’ve noticing some suppliers offering “design your own” configurators on their sites and self build kits.

The above, was our interpretation of the data we gathered – for the recent competition we entered – which we thought you may find useful:
UK Market for Garden Rooms and Buildings

The market for garden rooms and buildings was worth an estimated £110m at retail prices in 2012, including value added services such as installation. Market sectors have become polarised, with most demand at the lower and higher ends of the sector.

There are 3 main types of garden buildings: modular garden rooms, accounting for an estimated 42% of the market by value, log cabins accounting for around 33% share and timber framed buildings accounting for the remaining 24% share. However, by volume log cabins are the largest sector, holding an estimated 77% share and these are mainly sold as self assembly. In contrast other garden buildings such as modular garden rooms and timber framed buildings tend to be sold with installation included. Homeworking has continued to increase in popularity in recent years and this has contributed to sales of garden buildings. However, whilst garden rooms were initially seen as a solution to homeworking, increasingly they are being used for a much wider range of activities and specification demands are developing accordingly.

Garden rooms and buildings are distributed through a range of different channels including DIY outlets and builders merchants, online, mail order and through garden centres, with manufacturers increasingly selling direct via their own websites. The Internet is having a significant impact on distribution as online research allows consumers to easily compare product specifications and prices, searches may take consumers to companies in other channels and companies with transactional websites can offer a much larger range of products than they can offer in store. Indeed some companies have entered different product sectors to their traditional offering (e.g. supermarkets offering log cabins). There is a diverse range of large and small manufacturers including subsidiaries of large European groups, medium-sized UK companies and family businesses.

The volume of units sold is estimated to increase at a lower rate than the increase in the value of the market and is forecast to reach approximately 32–33,000 units in 2017. The trend for increased customisation of buildings is expected to continue as homeowners want their garden rooms to be more versatile, such as having multi-room rooms, increased glazing and addition of bathrooms & kitchens.
http://www.amaresearch.co.uk/garden_rooms_13s.html
Self Build House Building Market
 
 self_build14

While volumes have seen a slight fall in recent years, the self build market has continued to grow in value terms, reflecting increases in key component cost elements. However, of late land values have fallen at a greater rate than construction and development costs, which have remained broadly flat. As a result, the recovery in the self build sector has been modest since 2011, rising by between 2% and 3% between 2011 and 2013 to reach an estimated £3.4bn in 2013.

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Going forward the market is somewhat optimistic following the Government’s recent announcements on removing planning constraints and increasing initiatives to double the size of the self-build market. Value increases of between 3% and 7% are forecast for the sector going forward to 2018, driven by an upturn in the economy and general housing market and rising consumer confidence. As a result, the value of the self build market is expected to reach around £4.4bn in 2018.

http://www.amaresearch.co.uk/garden_rooms_13s.html
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