Have you priced building materials lately ?

Wow !

Yep, huge price increases since June. I design roof trusses and our prices have skyrocketed. Roof sheathing is crazy. Some places won't even sell it to you if you aren't a regular customer. Not enough to go around. The derecho here two weeks ago isn't helping matters either.

And that's if you can find them in the first place.

We're in the midst of a pretty extensive remodel right now. Materials costs have gone way up, and there are delays with our flooring, appliances, furniture, railings, and trim. Our contractor said it's good that we started when we did (end of June), because now lumber (especially treated lumber), plumbing, and electrical supplies are getting scarce.

When everything was shut down, lots of people started remodeling their decks. Composite decking is taking awhile to get now too.

Yep. I was at a local supply house, and there were 2 customers there, picking over the scrap/irregular/extra pile of composite.

It is World market for materials. I believe we need to get ready for this as a new normal.

Material costs did not go down in the recession a dozen years ago. They have gone up since. Commodities do not recognize global borders, they follow the cash.

At the top end of the market it will make no difference. In the bottom 1/2 of the market it is going to have a great effect.

One of the challenges coming up is all the people that have built McMansions. Many of these places will have differed maintenance issues. Given the size of many of them, the average homeowner can not take care of them . They need a team sized care group. Just wait until they are 30 years old. This will not be a pretty sight.

The BLM used to run a lot of sawmills to help deal with the forest overgrowth and its now a very low number and I seen it mentioned the other day and they said it would not be cost effective to produce lumber.. Id like to see how they came to that conclusion.

McMansion development across the street from my development was built in 1994, finished sometime in 1998-99. Starting to see those exact same issues over there, and those issues are no doubt compounded by all of the foreclosures that happened there when the bubble burst in 08.

April 2018 I priced a FG Impact prehung door post Irma from Home Depot at $1200 less a 15% discount. Priced same door/manufacturer 3 weeks ago, is now $1850, no discount.
2 weeks ago I priced 11 typical Vinyl Impact windows installed, they gave me a price of $28K, but they would give me a discount.

I am constantly appalled at the prices of even basic building materials... 2x4's (really 1-1/2x3-1/2 of course), a sheet of plywood, etc.

Of course it's expensive, that stuff doesn't grow on trees... oh wait

Must depend on where you live. Bought a winter condo 2.5 yrs ago and have been remodeling it a room at a time since.

This summer I started helping my son remodel a home that he and his fiance purchased. Kitchen, two bathrooms, plumbing and electrical upgrades. I looked at some receipts from my condo vs his recent purchases and notice that drywall was actually cheaper now than 2 yrs ago. Plumbing materials and fixtures are min higher. Cabinets were the same price. The supply houses by me are well stocked and that is in both Ohio and Florida.

Pretty common after a large scale weather event for prices to increase as there are not enough materials to go around for a period of time. Saw this throughout the US when I worked catastrophe claims for an insurance company.

I tried to buy a couple of 2x6 the other day for a small project and the local lumber yard said "all out". Don't know when we'll get more. A few miles up the road the next lumber yard had a stack of them. So hit or miss around here.

Kind of funny to run out of lumber in Oregon! I have about 100 big fir trees on my property. Most of them are in the 18 inch diameter range but the big boys are close to 36 inch diameter. If I had a sawmill I could make some serious lumber from those trees.

Have you priced new homes lately

YIKES

Around here a brick ranch will only stay on the market for a few hours to a few days. People are very ready to pay asking price and more. My son just sold a house that was on the market for less than a week and it was priced at 479k. It is crazy around here right now with both building materials and real estate. He is planning on building a house this year and the cost has already gone up 15% in one month. Ouch!

Yep! Stuff sells in hours around here. My buddy is an agent.....can't find $250k houses to sell. He listed a $300k ranch on a postage stamp lot last Sat morning.....had an accepted offer by noon. I live in a subdivision of 2000 sq ft homes on acre lots. Most are in the $250k range.....IF one goes on the market...it's gone before they get the sign up.....and usually for over asking price.....crazy!!

The price of building lumber here has gone crazy, and clear pine (or any clear softwood) is even crazier. I bought a small load of clear pine for the new porch pillars and each had a tag stating they were from...New Zealand. New Zealand! No wonder it's expensive! But, most mills here are running at partial capacity, and totally underestimated the market, figuring the fake-demic would keep people home and building demands low. So, now I have to buy expensive lumber imported from NZ.

And if you want a REAL shock for wood prices - my dad restores old wood boats. Select hardwoods and marine-grade plys are way expensive. Drives home the addage...measure 7 times, cut once and hope!

Cost of lumber is up 164% since April 1 adding $14,000 to the cost of an average new home. Up 15% in just the last week. Lots of factors causing the shortage and price increase. Canada closed it's border to the US, tariffs on lumber imports and the latest price increase is due to the devaluation of the dollar.

There is a cost to printing trillions of new money out of thin air. Gold isn't $2,000 an once because it suddenly became more valuable it's because the dollar lost value.

I've been calling some of the build-on-site shed companies to throw up an 8x16 in my backyard and nobody is returning calls or emails. Either they are super super busy or their pricing is upside down right now.

The woodland owner that borders my farm, and has a major tree harvest. They are transporting ash logs at full length- not cut to 12 or 16 foot. They are taken to the mill, and loaded into shipping containers about 80 feet long for transport to China.

I need my outdoor living area built, which includes a balcony. I learned yesterday that lumber is getting up there to make the composite the more sensible way to go. Neighbor had a concrete floor poured last month. he mentioned that concrete has really jumped in price.

They've said a lot of it is because people are or were doing all sorts of projects while they were stuck at home.
Then when you think of it less employees at the mills and doing the work for the same reasons, the trucking issues, the border issues etc... and how much of the "new" wood has hit the market yet. When I was at home depot the other day some racks of wood didn't even have prices on them.
I bought a new tin shed, I usually wait on buying materials until I need it to avoid the warping problem. I also planned on building a loft over my cars. Guess I'll look at other alternatives.

Yeah the missus and I had a vacation trip planned for our 25th anniversary. But when the Covid shut everything down we decided to build a pergola for the back yard using some of the money from the trip.

Had to go to three different lumber yards here in town to find enough clear rough-cut cedar to do the job--and that was back in late April. Things were already getting tight.

Might be a good time for me to start selling my old barn wood....

Its always been a good time to sell old barn wood, the yippies love it.

Ive 3 skids of OSB, one skid of 3/4 advantech? locking decking and 400 framing 2x4-s and a 100 8 footers I bought 3.5 years ago stored cool, indoors and covered. .... im fixin to hit CL and sell by the sheet and stick.

Mopar parts money there.

I blame the builders. If they built reasonably sized homes instead of the maximum allowable on the lot there would be more materials available. I honestly don't know who is buying those things or why. There are subdivisions around here with 4000 sq. ft. homes on postage stamp sized lots - so close the gutters touch. The day the new owners move in there's a "room for rent" sign at the curb!

Come on now, we still have our freedoms right?

If someone wants to build a house 2x the size they need and can afford it and pay the bills thats great, better then 4 1000sq ft welfare homes on the tax payers dime.

Parts money...Great idea!

I know 4 people that sold homes this summer all sold in 1 or 2 days for asking price or above. Prices ranged from $400k to $750k.
Lady across the street sold her house 3 times in 1 month.
Houses over $1M + are actually losing value around here.

I'd tend to agree after reading some of the responses here. pretty much no shortage of building mat'l here on the right coast, I do my home repairs/remodeling so I see the base/mat'l costs only, and honestly while everything increases gradually in price, home building mat'l costs here haven't really been all that outrageous, and all the lumber yards/home box stores that I've patronage for the last 25+ years are always fully stocked..... about the only shortages/price gouge we see is plywood during hurricane season

The border is not closed to commerce, just to non essential travel. Now, the tariffs, that's a whole different story. I have always been of the opinion that the only beneficiary of them is the government. The actual cost is a burden only to the end user. The government rakes in fees, the middlemen adjust their wholesale prices to maintain their profits, and the end user (you and me) pay for it all.

Not sure i exactly agree, they markup for a profit all their material costs, and if that includes a tariff, it also is in included in the markup. Its not overly disclosed, but that's business, make it anywhere you can. Puiblic always gets it in the end.

I work in commercial construction. Some of the delays in stupid stuff like light fixtures is crazy. I have read that the lack of inventory will ease up by November/December, but I doubt we will see much of any reduction in prices.

We ordered our light fixtures 2 months ago, and were told 1-2 weeks. Not only do we still not have them, they haven't even made it to the US warehouse. We were just told now the arrival date is 9/7, which means we won't likely have them for 1-2 weeks after that.

Just checked again on the stove/fridge we ordered, no ETA. Flooring is supposed to be 9/1, but that's not going to happen, I don't think.

Furniture, we ordered 7/4, and were told 6 weeks. On Thursday, they called and said "sometime in October."

Last weekend I went buy some 3/4 plywood for a work table project. $45 a sheet for just just basic pine. I paid $33 in June. This week I had to buy some osb to board the windows for the hurricane.....$23 a sheet usually $12 or less..2x4s over $4. It’s nuts.

I can’t imagine the cost to actually build a house now.

Hope you made it thru this one better than Rita. You're right about the OSB. I was in Home Depot the other day for something, and noticed the price for 7/16 osb was almost $17 a sheet when there wasn't even a tropical system on the water! I paid $6 a sheet when I built my garage in 2007!

The slight 15 mile jog kept the main damage a few miles east. We had 50-70mph winds. Amazing to be within 40 miles as the crow flys away from lake Charles and not have near the damage. My power went out at 1:30am but was back on by 10am. I also just put in a generac in June after selling my Satellite.
I was wondering if you were out working the storm.

Doors and door hardware are really crazy lead times right now, too. Steel doors, fire doors, wood--all have unusually long lead times.

I bought a couple of 2x4s 8' long from the local lumberyard as I like to do business locally...Damned near 10.00 each!

Our gas range died two days ago. Yesterday we started shopping, and almost everything is out of stock with no date. We bought one that might be delivered in late October, but I don't have a good feeling about that.

We ordered ours months ago, still no ETA.

Wife is in a tizzy about holiday baking, but the upside is that I'll probably smoke a turkey breast again for Thanksgiving. Good recipe.