HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — A third round of stimulus checks is already hitting some bank accounts, and a survey on the home improvement site Modernize.com says there's a good chance part of your money will go toward making changes around your house.
Two furniture stores say they've already seen people fixing up the spaces.
Ashley Manczka is expecting to receive her third stimulus check this week. She says she already used part of the last two rounds to buy new furniture, but she says finding a kitchen table was a struggle.
"We started back in November, looking around trying to find what we wanted, and the one set that we really wanted. They said it would be June or July before it came in," said Manczka.
She says most stores had wait times between two and six months. Steven Durham is the owner of Home Furniture and Mattress in Warner Robins. He says they've seen a big increase in demand for furniture.
"The supply and demand thing kind of started as a snowball effect from the beginning of the shutdown and pretty much exactly a year ago. A lot of our factories were shut down for several, some of them several months. That created a backlog in factory orders," he said.
Durham says quarantining, remote work, and virtual schooling likely explains the rise in business. He says you can save time if you buy something already in stock, but custom orders may take a while.
"If a customer wants to change the fabric or change the pillows or anything like that," said Durham.
Ben Evans is manager of Mobley Furniture in Perry. He is also seeing more business.
"Just people wanting stuff, and they want it now. It's just they're ready to do it and they're ready to get it," said Evans.
Both Durham and Evans say they are doing what they can to get ready for the next rush.
"Now that the next round of stimulus checks is going out, we expect that to change a little bit," said Evans.
"We're preparing our inventory we're preparing our warehouses. We're buying more we're trying to keep more on hand for our customers, so that way, when there is a demand and there is the rush of the immediate stimulus checks and things of that nature, that we can be here and be of service to people," said Durham.