General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLumber is through the ROOF!
Lumber mania is sweeping North America
A lumber frenzy has taken over homebuilding, Home Depot, and the internet.
https://www.vox.com/22410713/lumber-prices-shortage
While the memes are a joke, the situation is real: Demand for lumber has exploded in recent months, and suppliers have struggled to keep up. Much of the industry has been on its heels since the Great Recession, and it slowed down production accordingly. Those sawmill closures and such arent easy to reverse, even if someone might have predicted things would pick up now.
Prices have, in turn, skyrocketed. For years, the price of 1,000 board feet of lumber has generally traded in the $200 to $400 range. Its now well above $1,000. (One board foot is 12x12x1 inches, and the average new single-family home takes about 16,000 board feet of lumber to construct.) A new house that would have cost $10,000 in wood to get off the ground a couple of years ago now costs $40,000 worth of wood assuming, that is, you can even get your hands on the lumber.
Not only has it surprised me, its just surprised the whole industry, how quickly we came roaring back. Housing and construction, repair and remodel, thats where so much money was pointed by American consumers that the sheer scale of demand was hard to fathom, Stinson Dean, CEO of Deacon Lumber, a lumber trading company based in Missouri, told me.
Its adding about $36,000 to the price of a typical newly built home and almost $13,000 to a typical apartment, said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.
calguy
(5,345 posts)Kali
(55,027 posts)at least for plumbing parts. holy shit.
Response to underpants (Original post)
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Carlitos Brigante
(26,509 posts)Response to Carlitos Brigante (Reply #41)
hamsterjill This message was self-deleted by its author.
PortTack
(32,819 posts)Decades now. Who says you have to use lumber?
WarGamer
(12,494 posts)underpants
(182,988 posts)Then suddenly I see the wood again. ????
localroger
(3,634 posts)When they built their house 25 years ago my parents wanted metal framing, but they couldn't find a contractor who would do it. Cold formed (bent sheet metal) Metal studs are not load-bearing, and will twist and buckle unless they are supported by the wall material on either side. So you still need enough wood to hold up the roof -- or hot-formed (extruded) steel beams, which are much more expensive still and radical overkill for a residential house. (A steel beam theoretically strong enough to replace a 2x4 would be so thin it would buckle, so you have to use much more steel than you "need" to frame a house.)
Amishman
(5,559 posts)President Biden needs to temporarily lift all tariffs on imports of building materials.
The longer this goes, the worse the lasting impact on home affordability.
WarGamer
(12,494 posts)spooky3
(34,517 posts)Who gives away wood?
Disaffected
(4,572 posts)almost as expensive as Viagra.
leftieNanner
(15,190 posts)That burned thousands of homes. The rebuilding costs are skyrocketing here. It's all so awful.
A friend of mine lost her home and when she went to the city to get building permits (with the insurance company giving her 12 months to rebuild) she found out that the county had shifted the flood plain so that her lot where her house used to sit is now not buildable. She is truly stuck! Hope she finds a solution soon.
msongs
(67,478 posts)uponit7771
(90,370 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)Disaffected
(4,572 posts)I have a "cedar log" house (built in 1975) and it must be worth a fortune now.
OTOH, I wanted to build a simple box out of 1x6s and a little 2x2 (around 30"x16" . Home Repo wanted almost $60 for it!
Anyhow, bought a v nice plastic tote box for 12 bucks instead - a lot cheaper and, better than wood.
Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)The redwood log cabin has some serious issues, but it totally defines rustic
Disaffected
(4,572 posts)is the 1/2 mil for the cabin only or does it include some land?
Disaffected
(4,572 posts)is the 1/2 mil for the cabin only or does it include some land?
Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)It's basically a tear-down, but a couple of decades ago I could have comfortably lived in it, playing a good game of arrested decay.
Purrfessor
(1,188 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)Everyone knows you can built a house from SCRATCH
Purrfessor
(1,188 posts)mopinko
(70,298 posts)and man, it's ugly, too.
just bleak, mud colored crap. it's depressing.
Response to mopinko (Reply #16)
Cafe Cat This message was self-deleted by its author.
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mopinko This message was self-deleted by its author.
mwooldri
(10,303 posts)Demand has been outpacing supply for months now. When things run slow in glass, I might be called upon to haul lumber. Haven't had a single lumber load in over a year. It's all building supplies.
Hassler
(3,395 posts)Dollars a sheet to about fifty in the past year.
MontanaMama
(23,366 posts)I buy 4x8 sheets of plywood and OSB that used to be considered junk in the labor trades...I just purchased 20 sheets of OSB at $49.85 per sheet. It was $8.52 per sheet 18 months ago. My neighbor is a contractor and he tells me that bids for construction are only good for 24-48 hours because the pricing for lumber and plumbing parts are so volatile.
lame54
(35,343 posts)Roc2020
(1,619 posts)homeowners I have to admit is tempting. I'm not selling though.
paleotn
(17,997 posts)Takes a while to work out the kinks.
sarisataka
(18,883 posts)Will see their insurance rates increase.
Ferrets are Cool
(21,112 posts)CaptainTruth
(6,615 posts)...just regular primed finger-jointed pine, & it was 55 cents a linear foot, that's almost $9.50 with tax for a 16 ft piece, & that's just a tiny strip of base shoe.
Ford_Prefect
(7,927 posts)wide-spread catastrophic weather haven't helped this situation either. Hurricanes, tornados, and severe flooding haven't exactly reduced demand for whatever supply has been able to produce. The homes lost to forest fires had similar impact on supply. These conditions have also raised prices for rental and standing homes in our area far above what market value should be as people move here to escape weather, fires, and COVID.
I don't know how many here recall that when the 2 Gulf wars and Afghan war got into gear there was so much plywood and MDF diverted to military use it sent the prices through the roof. Regional demands are causing some of the same thing to happen now, IMO.
Demovictory9
(32,489 posts)RussBLib
(9,055 posts)we've already cut down so much and we are not that great at replanting.
gotta have it! humans gotta have it!
We should have been growing hemp on an industrial basis by now. That shit grows so fast and hempwood is tougher than a ton of regular wood. We could have all the frikkin' hempwood we'd need, if it wasn't for stupid knee-jerk anti-cannabis laws.
We have so many opportunities, and squander so many.
Amishman
(5,559 posts)The fires in Oregon last year killed a lot of trees - but they are still salvageable for lumber.
Loggers are literally in a race against time to cut as much as they can before it rots in place.
https://www.koin.com/news/special-reports/oregon-timber-owners-work-feverishly-to-salvage-burned-wood/
For years we were getting a ton of very cheap imports of lumber from Canada, enough that some US saw mills shut down. Now Canada is producing less due to pine beetle problems in BC. There are also major bottlenecks in scaling up production due to limited kiln drying and pressure treating facilities.
mrsadm
(1,198 posts)Has nothing but logging trucks and crews everywhere!
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I grew up in the Adirondack foothills. I would really hate to see that area (the Adirondacks) exploited for lumber. It's just so beautiful, it would break my heart if it was opened up to industry.
Cuthbert Allgood
(5,002 posts)and I had to frame in the 3 walls. Was shocked when a 2x4 was over $6.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)The real issue is OSB. Can't build much when a sheet of OSB is $60.