NARI History

NARI is the national trade association committed to service to the professional remodeling industry. It is an association with a proud past and a promising future.

  As the voice of the remodeling industry, NARI represents professional remodeling contractors, specialty contractors, manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, lending institutions, utilities, design firms, and publishers of information dedicated to remodeling.

  The association as we know it today is the result of the merger of two industry groups, responding to two United States Presidents of different political parties in two different eras.

  In the early Thirties, during the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt called on industries to form associations to promote and encourage economic recovery. The Northeast Roofing Siding Insulation Contractors Association (NERSICA) was formed in 1935 in response to this request.

  Thirty years later, with chapters forming across the country, NERSICA changed its name to the National Remodeling Association.

  In the Fifties, President Dwight Eisenhower encouraged Operation Home Improvement in his belief that it was more economically sensible to rehabilitate existing than to build new. The National Home Improvement Council (NHIC) was organized in 1956 as an industry response to President Eisenhower's encouragement of home improvement.                                                                           

  By the late Seventies, the two organizations were growing and expanding, and by this time, providing similar services to professional remodelers, so merger talks began.

  These talks led to the merger agreement of 1982 that led to the formation of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI), the trade association of professional remodeling.