BUILDER Magazine

Demand for dealer-installed systems is growing.  Parks Associates' 2001 Home Security Forecast predicts that penetration of these systems will increase from 18 percent of all U.S. households in 2001 to more than 30 percent in 2009.  New single-family starts will constitute the fastest-growing market.  The report also expects a 10 percent annual growth rate in multiple-dwelling housing units.

From the article "Installed Security."

One-third of U.S. dial-up Internet subscribers want to upgrade to broadband service in the next 12 months, according to Parks Associates' latest consumer study Bundled Services & Residential Gateways. Additionally, 28 percent of broadband subscribers intend to purchase home networking solutions in the same period, indicating that subscriber growth for these advanced technologies will remain modest but steady.  This research supports Parks' previous forecasts, which predicted that ...read more

What makes these alliances possible is the growth of structured wiring, without which many integrated electronic services could not exist.  A 2000 survey of home builders conducted by Parks Associates in Dallas found that 56 percent of builders now offer structured wiring as either standard or optional.  "We've been talked about converging security with add-ons for 10 or 15 years," explains Kurt Scherf, Parks' vice president of research.  "But that convergence couldn't really hap ...read more

Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates predicts that by 2004 more than 40 percent of new homes will be equipped with structured wiring. That promising statistic is validated by high levels of consumer interest.

From the article "Head of the Class."

Other experts are more ambivalent. "He's either the greatest huckster since P.T. Barnum or he has invented a technology that will make the AOL-Time Warner merger meaningless," says Parks Associates' Kurt Scherf, referring to AOL's recent acquisition of Time Warner's data networks. But Scherf adds that you can never say never. "Nothing surprises me anymore," he adds.

From the article "Electric Dreams," by Charles Wardell

"Home networks will revolutionize the way consumers live and work in the home," said Tricia Parks, president of Parks Associates, in her opening address at the company's Forum'99 conference. "Builders of power," she  added, "are paying attention."

The October conference offered these predictions:

55 million people will have Internet access by 2002.

Structured Wiring will be installed in 40 percent of all new homes by 2004.

In the next 10 years, 20 million households will ...read more

Now that structured wiring is going into new homes — thanks largely to demand for fast access to the Internet and the desire to work at home — home automation can't be far behind.  "You've got to have the infrastructure in the home to even think of [home automation]," says Kurt Scherf, an analyst for Parks Associates, a Dallas firm that researches emerging home technologies. Scherf predicts that five years from mow about 40 percent of American homes will be built with some sort ...read more