Builder Magazine: Since the height of tariff worries in 2017, some building materials prices have begun to stabilize. As of June 2018, both lumber and OSB have steeply dropped in price. Lumber prices fell by 43% from June to December 2018, moving to just under $350 per 1,000 board feet, while OSB prices fell 52%, to just under $250 per 1,000 square feet, according to Random Lengths. Nevertheless, these drops are relative; prices are still 10% to 12% higher than the previous record, which was set in 1997.
2 comments:
The idea of shifting prices on materials of a period of a few years is something that never occurred to me too much. This is something that you wouldn't notice too much as a homeowner. You probably wouldn't even notice this if you were an avid DIYer like me. While I am often working in my shop at home both on personal projects and projects for the house, I am never buying more than a handful of sticks of lumber or just a couple sheets of plywood at a time. Because I am buying so little at a time, I feel like my checkouts at Home Depot are always under 100 dollars. For this reason, it would be hard to see a small shift in the price of these goods. For companies buying huge amounts of materials, however, I can so how this would affect them a lot. It is sad to see an entire company having to disband because of this market change.
These increases are staggering to see. A lot of the markets that are discussed in this article are known for being very stable and have shown stiff and stead adjustments in years past. As of recently, the sharp increases have had a significant impact on many industries that are just not suited to take such a hit. Seeing this increase in entertainment, specifically, the movie industry has required some outside the box thinking with hopes of keeping fabrication prices down.
In many ways, the shift in material prices has really pushed production as a whole to think more green and reuse a lot of the preexisting structure they already have. Not only is this a greener option but it also tended to increase the labor on-site labor onsite. The idea of building something from scratch is a mentality of the past given these sharp increases in material prices, as we see them continue to rise the coming year I will be interested to see how it continues to affect our industry.
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