When it comes to the Death Care business and your local funeral home “Demographics” do make a difference.  It might not be for a year, or  five years, or even a decade but demographic shifts in neighborhoods, cities, and states will eventually manifest itself in the numbers of death calls that funeral homes receive.

Every year for the last several years the U-Haul Company has published a “Growth Index” which is based on “One-way” rentals of U-Haul trucks and trailers that cross state lines.  It is one interesting data point that allows businesses and others to see trends where the population growth and declines may be going.

For the year 2025 U-Haul has published this year-end article which points out that in the past year the states of Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina have been the states with the largest “net in-migration” of people.  The bottom five, or those with the largest “net out-migration” include California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I’ve been around long enough in my own state to see demographics change drastically and affect the number of death calls funeral homes receive in a number of ways.  I’ve seen blue-collar family neighborhoods in large cities become university and student neighborhoods with little need for a funeral home.  I’ve seen small farming communities lose retired population that has not been replaced as farms became larger in size and fewer in number.  That also reduces the need for a funeral home in that small community. . . . .And, I’ve seen small communities, like I grew up and started business in, become larger as a regional center and the death call numbers rise.

The demographic change can happen both ways — numbers of death calls going up or the number of death calls going down over time depending on the changes taking place.

Final Word:  Two years prior to when I sold my funeral home I put it on the market and withdrew it because I did not believe that the prices offered justified what I believed the business was worth financially.

I knew of our community’s growth and growth projections because I had lived in the community for my entire lifetime.  Around the time that I had first offered the business for sale Site Selection Magazine listed the community as the 6th Top Small City in America for its number of business development projects and CBS News ranked it the 7th Fastest Growing Micropolitan Community in the United States.

After pulling the business off the market I studied our state’s demography reports and its future trend opinions.  I then put together a packet of about 20 pages on these trends and our community’s history of “out-doing” these trends over time.  Working with the late Tom Johnson of Johnson Consulting Group we then included this packet with the financial history of the funeral home and put the funeral home back on the market.

The net result to me was an over 18% increase in the final sales price compared to the previous offers.

Demographics made a difference for me. . . . If you are in a growing community, make sure your suitors know all the value of, not only your funeral home, but your community as well.

More news from the World of Death Care:

• Family cremates wrong body after hospital mistake.  BBC (Great Britain)
• Chinese villagers win battle against forced cremation.  Dawn

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