When Housing Froze: Why Home Depot, Lowe's, and Sherwin-Williams Are All at 52-Week Lows

Same cause, three different responses

Three U.S. housing-linked dividend stocks are sitting at the bottom at the same time: Home Depot, Lowe's, and Sherwin-Williams. The reason is essentially one thing — housing softness.

When people don't move, they don't redo the kitchen, swap the floors, or repaint. Mortgage rates have stayed higher for longer than expected, existing-home turnover has fallen to multi-year lows, and that shock flows straight through to these three companies' revenue.

What I find interesting, though, is that three companies hit by the same storm are allocating capital in completely different ways. Let's take them one at a time.

Sherwin-Williams — a 52-week low right after finishing its buyback

Sherwin-Williams just completed a $16.58 billion buyback program, retiring 106.98 million shares over its life. And right after it finished, the stock fell to a 52-week low. It trades around $398 against a low of $294.32 — about 5% off the bottom.

The cause is housing turnover. Paint demand tracks home sales. On the Q1 call, management shifted full-year volume guidance from growth to a low-single-digit decline. The consumer brands segment — the DIY side — is the weakest spot.

But the real edge here is that Sherwin owns its distribution. It runs over 5,000 company-operated stores across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, and sells paint directly to the contractor walking through the door. Nobody else in the industry is vertically integrated at this scale.

• Q1 2026 sales of $5.67 billion (+7% YoY), net income of $534.7 million
• Gross margin expanded 90 bps despite soft demand; full-year EPS guidance reaffirmed
• Three segments: Paint Stores, Consumer Brands, and Performance Coatings

That last one — Performance Coatings, the industrial side for cars, planes, and factory floors — keeps generating revenue even when housing is dead.

On dividends, Sherwin is a Dividend Aristocrat with 47 straight years of increases, three years shy of King status. But at a $3.20 annual dividend and a 1.04% yield, it isn't an income stock. Sherwin returns cash through buybacks; the dividend is the cherry on top.

Lowe's — a 62-year Dividend King with heavy DIY exposure

Lowe's CEO Marvin Ellison called this "the most difficult housing market since the financial crisis" on the Q1 call. The stock trades around $215.3, about $7 off its 52-week low and down 27% from a $293 high.

The key difference versus Home Depot is the customer mix. About 60–65% of Lowe's revenue comes from the DIY customer — the homeowner painting the bedroom or installing a backsplash themselves. Home Depot leans more on the pro. So when the consumer pulls back, Lowe's feels it more.

In Q1 the company booked $96 million in pre-tax expenses tied to two acquisitions (Foundation Building Materials and Artisan Design Group), margins compressed, and the stock fell about 3% the next morning.

The underlying numbers tell a different story, though. Q1 sales of $23.1 billion (+10.3% YoY), adjusted EPS ahead of estimates, and online sales up 15.5%. Those two acquisitions opened a roughly $250 billion market in new-home construction and multifamily — a segment where Lowe's previously generated zero revenue. The company estimates the U.S. will need around 12 million new homes by 2033.

On the dividend, Lowe's is a Dividend King with 62 straight years of increases. The annual dividend is $4.80, the yield is 2.23%, and the payout ratio is around 40% — plenty of room to keep growing.

Home Depot — the company that paused buybacks to protect the dividend

Home Depot returned more cash to shareholders over the last 12 months than anyone else on this list: $9.2 billion in dividends in fiscal 2025. And the stock is still at a 52-week low. It trades around $313.7, about 8% above its $289.10 low and down 27% from the high.

CFO Richard McPhail described the environment as a "broken housing market" on the Q1 call. Small projects under $1,000 are still happening, but anything bigger has stalled — that's the heart of the slowdown.

Yet the business itself isn't broken. Q1 sales of $41.8 billion (+4.8% YoY), comparable sales up 6% — positive comps in the worst housing environment in years. With 2,361 stores, over 1,280 SRS distribution locations, and more than 470,000 employees, it keeps gaining share with professional contractors.

The most interesting part is capital allocation. Home Depot has paid a dividend for 156 consecutive quarters (39 years) and raised it 1.3% this year. The annual dividend is $9.32, the yield 2.98%. Meanwhile, fiscal 2025 buybacks were zero. The SRS acquisition added debt, so management paused buybacks until leverage normalizes, expected in the first half of 2027.

In plain English: forced to pick between the two ways to return cash, Home Depot chose to pay the dividend and stop buying back stock. That's about as strong a signal as a company can send about how seriously it takes its dividend.

Three stocks, $10,000 over 30 years compared

Same housing slump, but the outcome splits on income versus growth.

Stock	Dividend yield	10-yr div growth	Annual price appreciation	Year-30 value	Year-30 monthly dividend
Sherwin-Williams	1.04%	12.19%	12.22%	~$418,579	~$318
Lowe's	2.23%	15.67%	11.55%	~$813,975	~$4,108
Home Depot	2.98%	14.14%	9.07%	~$797,562	~$6,837

Sherwin is the pure growth name where most of the value added comes from price appreciation; Home Depot is the income champion at $6,837/month by year 30; Lowe's sits in between with the highest dividend growth rate and the largest ending value.

My take

Don't treat these three as one basket. Want monthly cash flow? Home Depot. Want a balance of dividend growth and capital gains? Lowe's. Want total return weighted toward buybacks and price appreciation over yield? Sherwin-Williams. The shared risk is exactly one thing: when housing turnover finally normalizes. The longer that takes, the longer all three see their earnings recovery pushed out — and that's worth pricing in honestly.