NAHB’s Bill Owens: What Renovo Reveals—and What It Doesn’t

When Renovo Home Partners collapsed into Chapter 7, it took down a cluster of brands that, on paper, looked like the safest possible bets: long-established, well-known remodelers with deep local roots and strong reputations. For many in the industry, that's what made the failure unsettling. If companies like Reborn, Dreamstyle, NewPro, and Minnesota Rusco could disappear inside a national roll-up, what does "reputable and established" really mean?

"It sent a pretty big ripple through the industry," said Bill Owens, vice chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), in an interview with Pro Remodeler. But from his vantage point, it is not evidence that the remodeling sector itself is unstable.

Owens describes current conditions as a comedown from the extremes, not a collapse. The steep growth of the COVID-era Home improvement market—which fueled the overpriced sales of these companies—has settled back to "normal," even if jerky-jerky.

Despite material price volatility, cautious consumers and political, economic, and geopolitical uncertainty, he sees a cautious but functioning market—"a pretty good picture overall." 

Renovo's collapse was a one-off, not a house of cards

Owens stresses context when considering the Renovo collapse. Renovo's revenue footprint, while significant, represented a sliver of what he pegged as a roughly half-trillion-dollar remodeling market. From that angle, he views the collapse as serious and harmful for those affected, but not as proof of a systemic house of cards.

And while he counsels consumers to "hire good contractors with long track records and local roots," he acknowledged that is precisely what just failed—strong local operators with long histories. The risk came from how those zero-debt, cash-flow-positive companies were owned and aggregated, not from how they were built. That's an important nuance, and Owens doesn't try to wish it away.

Why national models struggle

Owens has heard predictions of mass consolidation and witnessed attempts at it in the home improvement industry for decades, including big-box programs and national brands. Some have carved out sustainable niches, particularly in single-line replacement work (Reborn Cabinets was the refacing face of Costco Wholesale). The broad promise of a seamless national remodeling platform, however, has repeatedly fallen short of expectations. In practice, consolidation has been slower and shallower than predicted.

He attributes that to the business's basic structure. Remodeling, in his view, is fundamentally a service delivered through relationships, reputation, and local knowledge. In the interview, he emphasized how much outcomes depend on who is on the ground in a given market—how they sell, build, communicate, and stand behind the work. That people-driven variability makes the sector harder to standardize than many investors expect.

None of that means large or multi-market firms can't succeed—in fact, several successful examples exist. It does mean, in Owens' framing, that financial engineering alone doesn't substitute for culture, operations, and trust built job by job.

What NAHB can—and can't—tell remodelers

NAHB's formal response has focused on fundamentals. In coordination with NARI, the association has promoted messages that are familiar to most building professionals: be transparent, documented, licensed, and insured, pull the proper permits, close jobs correctly, and make it easy for homeowners to verify you. The new addition to the list: "Ask who actually owns the company. If the firm was recently sold to an investor or conglomerate, understand who is financially backing your project. Ownership changes can affect stability and accountability."

Owens also urges contractors to actively help clients do that homework—share references, explain local requirements, invite scrutiny. In normal circumstances, he believes, markets are good at distinguishing durable operators from short-term players. "Bad news travels fast" at the community level; firms that consistently do things right tend to be the ones still standing.

Regarding the Renovo episode, he acknowledges that there are limits to what any checklist would have caught. When decisions are being made far above the local office, a homeowner can't fully underwrite capital structure risk. That, implicitly, is part of why he treats Renovo as an outlier rather than a template.

Succession without the spin

For owners considering their own exit, Owens' comments fit into a broader conversation that now includes Renovo as a cautionary reference point. Private equity is one option, not the only one.

Owens' own firm, Owens Construction of Columbus, Ohio, is pursuing a different path, bringing a next generation into the business, aiming to preserve culture and reputation without introducing a layer of leverage or short-term pressure to flip the business. The through-line, in his view, is alignment. Whatever the exit strategy, the question is whether the people controlling the company's future understand how remodeling businesses actually work.

Looking ahead

In terms of outlook, Owens remains steady. With an aging housing stock and persistent demand for upgrades, repairs, and efficiency improvements, he expects remodeling to remain a large, necessary, and resilient market. High costs and cautious consumers may keep growth in check, so he does not see conditions that mirror what fueled the Renovo buying spree.

Taken together, his message is deliberately narrower than the headlines: Renovo is a severe failure, but it is not a verdict on remodeling in general. It is what happens when a set of strong, local companies gets plugged into a structure that doesn't fit the underlying business. The work itself—and the firms grounded in it—are playing a longer game.

This article is part of continuing coverage of the Renovo collapse.