Renovation as A business opportunity

The building stock and its connected flows can be viewed and analysed from a number of perspectives. Today, the dominant issue regarding the building stock is the challenge to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The question of whether old buildings should be rebuilt or renovated has been a key focus of research and literature. The rebuild option should result lower renovation activity than has expected. Renovation could, however, be a growing market if the building stock is upgraded. The focus of the study is commercial renovation, which has been analysed from the demand-supply perspective at the industry level. The construction economics and evolutionary economics theories have been applied to the analysis of demand and supply, respectively. The main research material consists of three cross-sectional surveys and official statistics. Renovation covers a diverse range of business sectors. In some of these sectors the customers, operating methods and building technologies used are virtually identical to new construction. The development of information technology and production technologies has helped construction sector companies to meet this type of demand in both markets. Traditional construction sector companies have not viewed the more challenging renovation market as an attractive enough option. As a result, buildings are demolished or rebuilt instead of repaired or renovated.