Lumber is through the ROOF!

[underpants]

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 aren’t 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. It’s 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, it’s just surprised the whole industry, how quickly we came roaring back. Housing and construction, repair and remodel, that’s 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.

“It’s 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]

1. I'm glad I don't have any major projects planned.

[Kali]

2. so is steel

at least for plumbing parts. holy shit.

[Carlitos Brigante]

41. Just watched this about 10 mins ago:

[PortTack]

4. The rest of the world's advanced countries have been using metal beams for structural support for

Decades now. Who says you have to use lumber?

[WarGamer]

6. that and CBU...

[underpants]

12. I thought that the metal studs was a thing a few years ago

Then suddenly I see the wood again. ????

[localroger]

37. Metal studs are not self-supporting and are much harder to work with

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]

33. steel framing is crazy expensive now too, and extremely hard to find

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]

5. CBU and metal framing FTW!!!

[spooky3]

7. Gives new meaning to the Progressive ad where Jamie asks

“Who gives away wood”?

[Disaffected]

15. Yeah, getting wood these days is

almost as expensive as Viagra.

[leftieNanner]

8. Last September we had a terrible fire

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]

10. one suspects insurance co must pay her the rebuild cost whether she rebuilds or not nt

[uponit7771]

11. +1, a lot of the "reimburse" vs give a straight out check which is still bullshit

[Brother Buzz]

9. Lumber prices are so high I'm entertaining the idea of parting out my house

[calguy]

13. lolol

[Disaffected]

14. LOL

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&quot . 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]

21. There's a 1890's era log cabin in the Berkeley Hills that can be had for a cool half a million

The redwood log cabin has some serious issues, but it totally defines rustic

[Disaffected]

36. It appears to have issues all right but

is the 1/2 mil for the cabin only or does it include some land?

[Disaffected]

38. It appears to have issues all right but

is the 1/2 mil for the cabin only or does it include some land?

[Brother Buzz]

39. A little over a half acre

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]

30. I'm selling my Scrabble tiles: $100 each.

[Brother Buzz]

34. Cool, I'll buy an S, two C's, an R, a T, and an H!

Everyone knows you can built a house from SCRATCH

[Purrfessor]

45. HaHa. Good one. Sold. Includes free shipping.

[mopinko]

16. so is tile.

and man, it's ugly, too.
just bleak, mud colored crap. it's depressing.

[mwooldri]

18. And not enough truck drivers either.

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]

19. According to our contractor, plywood has gone from ten

Dollars a sheet to about fifty in the past year.

[MontanaMama]

24. It's the truth.

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]

22. 4 month wait to get my 30 ft fence built

[Roc2020]

23. Yeah the price some are offering to

homeowners I have to admit is tempting. I'm not selling though.

[paleotn]

25. Pent up demand turned loose.

Takes a while to work out the kinks.

[sarisataka]

26. This is why homeowners

Will see their insurance rates increase.

[Ferrets are Cool]

27. Yeah, my projects are just piling up because I don't want to spend the price of lumber atm.

[CaptainTruth]

28. No kidding. I just bought base shoe for a house I'm working on...

...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]

29. I can't speak for how much the COVID catastrophe has affected this but the several years of terrible

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]

31. wow

[RussBLib]

32. I hope this situation does not result in massive clear-cutting of forests

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]

35. there is a surplus of logs available, in Oregon they are racing to cut it down before it rots

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]

40. My entire home area in upstate NY ...

Has nothing but logging trucks and crews everywhere!

[smirkymonkey]

42. Where do you live in upstate NY?

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]

44. We replaced a shower in our basement

and I had to frame in the 3 walls. Was shocked when a 2x4 was over $6.

[BGBD]

46. Sticks are high, but

The real issue is OSB. Can't build much when a sheet of OSB is $60.