Homebuilding Data Provider · Head-to-head
IKEA Global Product Catalog vs NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data
Which homebuilding data provider data fits your job: IKEA Global Product Catalog, or NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
IKEA Global Product Catalog
NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data
Coverage, side by side
| IKEA Global Product Catalog | NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data | |
|---|---|---|
| Temporal | Snapshot only - status holds until it changes | ~500 monthly observations per series from January 1985, seasonally adjusted |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| IKEA Global Product Catalog | NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data | |
|---|---|---|
| Name-like label | `name` product name as merchandised, e.g. KIVIK, plus `product_series` KIVIK and variant Gunnared blue | `Month x Year` grid headed by series names such as 'Housing Market Index' and 'Traffic of Prospective Buyers' |
| Entity identifier | `itemNo` 29499701 with dotted display form 294.997.01 | None - rows are keyed by series name, month and region |
| Headline number | `price` 1349 with `currencyCode` USD - a transactable amount | `Housing Market Index` 35 on a 0-100 diffusion scale - a balance of opinion |
| Forward view | None - the row describes only what is on the shelf now | `Single Family Sales: Next 6 Months` 43, builders' own expectation |
| Location encoding | Storefront market - roughly ninety country-and-language sites, each with local pricing | `Northeast / Midwest / South / West` Census region columns, national alongside |
| Approval signal | `aggregateRating.ratingValue / reviewCount` - 3.9 across 353 reviews on one listing | `Traffic of Prospective Buyers` 23 - foot traffic through model homes |
| Physical specification | `packageMeasurements.*` 57 in / 24.94 cu.ft / 93.9 lb per package, text plus numeric, and `Materials` composition by component | None - no field describes a physical good |
| Commercial state | `availability.stockStatus` HIGH_IN_STOCK, `availability.homeDelivery.isAvailable` true, per-store cash-and-carry flags | Special-question internals: 35% of builders cutting prices, average cut 6%, incentives at 63% |
| History in the row | Snapshot only - status holds until it changes | ~500 monthly observations per series from January 1985, seasonally adjusted |
What each does better
IKEA Global Product Catalog
It gets all the way down to the object. Fifteen fields resolve a single SKU: itemNo 29499701 beside its dotted display form 294.997.01, typeName separating a sofa-with-chaise from a three-seat, color normalized to blue, and product_series / product_variant tying the row back to the KIVIK family and the Gunnared blue cover. NAHB cannot describe any physical good, and does not try.
Materials at component grain. The Materials text breaks composition out per part - back and seat frame in fiberboard, plywood, solid wood and particleboard; seat cushion in high-resilience cold foam at 2.2 lb/cu.ft.
Freight, last-mile and warehouse planning can start from the row itself.
Commercial state, per door. availability.stockStatus, availability.homeDelivery.isAvailable and per-store isAvailableForCashCarry flags turn one product into a market-by-market availability map, and aggregateRating.ratingValue / reviewCount (3.9 across 353 reviews on one listing, 3.7 across 44 on another) adds the demand-side verdict. The NAHB hub holds no merchandise column anywhere in its dictionary.
NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data
It looks forward. The single most valuable cell in the pairing may be Single Family Sales: Next 6 Months at 43 - builders' own expectation of where they stand by spring. The IKEA catalog is constitutionally unable to forecast; it knows what is on the shelf, not what will be ordered next quarter.
Forty years of unbroken memory. Table 2 lays the national index out as a year-by-month grid from January 1985 (a reading of 50, precisely at the neutral line) through the 1990-91 slump (42 in January 1990, falling through the mid-30s) to this August's 35 - roughly 500 observations per series. Cycle dating, seasonality and regime analysis all need exactly this shape, and no product catalog accumulates it.
Regional decomposition. Northeast, Midwest, South and West readings ride alongside the national figure, with three-month moving averages smoothing the noise - so a divergence like the South holding up while the West softens is visible inside one table rather than stitched from four sources.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit. Let the unit of analysis decide.
If the unit is the market - dating turning points in residential construction, reading builder expectations before they show up in permits, splitting national weakness by Census region - NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data holds observations the catalog will never produce, across a history longer than most analyst careers.
Three quick tests settle most cases. Only the IKEA side travels. Need to know whether builders expect better or worse sales in six months, or when sentiment last crossed the 50 line? Only NAHB reaches it. Need the goods-side and the construction-cycle side reconciled? That is the both-of-them case, and in home-furnishings-versus-housing work it comes up constantly. Sample both.
Sample both, pick by fit. See IKEA Global Product Catalog · See NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data
Fair questions
Is IKEA Global Product Catalog better than NAHB Housing Economics — HMI, Starts & Market Data?
Different instruments, so the scorecard only matters within a lens. The IKEA catalog scores 8 of 10 on Datadory's quality rubric against NAHB Housing Economics' 7, but one earns its points on SKU-level commercial detail and the other on forty years of unbroken monthly sentiment history. Pick by the unit you analyze: a bookcase or a builder.
Can you get builder sentiment out of IKEA Global Product Catalog?
Not directly. Sentiment lives in NAHB Housing Economics: the composite Housing Market Index at 35 this August, with the traffic-of-prospective-buyers component down at 23.
Do the two datasets overlap anywhere?
Only structurally. Each carries a name-like label - 'KIVIK' on one side, 'Traffic of Prospective Buyers' on the other - and each sits pooled in Datadory's homebuilding slice, but there is no shared key between an article number and an index month. Teams bridge them by calendar time and by mapping storefront markets onto Census regions - a join Datadory finishes before delivery.
Which dataset covers more ground?
Depends on the axis. The IKEA catalog spans tens of thousands of SKUs per major market across roughly ninety country-and-language storefronts but only the present moment. NAHB Housing Economics spans one country and about 500 monthly observations reaching back to January 1985 but no merchandise at all. Breadth-now versus depth-then.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Either record arrives alone or merged onto one delivery calendar, aligned so the calendar-and-region join lands already done - delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Name the markets, categories and date windows when you request the sample and it comes pre-cut with both field dictionaries attached.