The confinement we spent until June 2020 has made us spend much more time with our family and do other activities that we did not use to do in our daily life.
The fact that we have spent many days locked up in our homes has led us to think about making changes in our homes to increase their level of comfort or adapt them to new needs such as enabling specific workplaces.
We have all come up with many ideas for small or large renovations. Projecting extensions in the apartments and chalets and looking for the best use of the useful space, conditioning of terraces, use of attics etc... Improving the garden of the chalets of the Moraleja and in Encinar etc...
On the other hand, many people who lived in the center of big cities or in neighborhoods with few green areas took the step of buying a house in the outskirts to opt for freedom and nature, hence in La Moraleja, Ciudalcampo and Encinar de los Reyes have been the areas with more sales ever achieved in the same year. In many of these cases, the new homes acquired have required a general update.
All this has led to a rapid growth in demand for all types of construction and renovation services to meet these new needs, which has come completely unexpectedly and by more than 20% compared to a standard year.
With the increase in demand for home renovation and refurbishment, we are faced with the problem of shortages in building materials caused by the mobility restrictions and production limitations that the entire world has suffered due to the impact of COVID-19. In addition to the intrinsic rise in the cost of materials, this is aggravated by the cost of production of the same derived from the rise in electricity, and if that were not enough, we add to this the shortage of labor to undertake reforms due to the growth in demand.
The workforce was at a minimum due to the pandemic and the sudden increase in demand could not be met at the same rate as its growth.
In such an unstable situation, budgeting for reforms is complicated by the fact that the phenomenon of rising material prices does not seem to be over yet.
Materials such as steel, aluminum and iron have seen increases of between 20% and 50% in the last 12 months.
In general, construction costs have risen between 10 and 15%, and this means that construction and renovation companies may face losses, since many material increases cannot be passed on to the end consumer due to closed contracts.
Everything indicates that we are still in a phase of instability and that it will still take several months to adjust. It will probably take a period of time similar to that required to eradicate the pandemic so that we can all live and develop our activity under normal conditions.