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remodeling clients are tapping savings, retirement accounts, securities and the like. But 20% of his firm’s dollar volume still involves some form of financing, particularly for higher-cost projects.

Where do these folks go for their money? Case says local and regional banks and credit unions are increasingly important sources. They tend to know the local real estate environment better and “are willing to look at [applications] more holistically.”

Some clients are using the Federal Housing Administration’s renovation financing program known as FHA 203(k). Others who have solid equity stakes, high credit scores and other assets they can bring to the table are persuading large national banks to give them a mortgage. And a few are pulling on lines of credit that weren’t yanked or slashed during the recession.

What Case and other remodelers are not seeing is clients who fret about paybacks from the improvements they make. Most owners want assurance that their renovations will enhance the property’s market value, but boom-time expectations of immediate 100%-plus returns on investments are gone.

Most people are happy with modest returns, remodelers say, which is right in line with what’s happening overall in the real estate market: a slow, modest recovery, spurred by modest and realistic expectations about where we’re headed and how fast we’ll get there.