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Friday, October 27, 2023
Building Material Prices Continue to Stabilize in September
Builder Magazine: It was slightly more expensive to build houses in September, with the cost of unleaded gas and diesel pushing up builder expenses even as the cost of labor continued to escalate due to a shortage of experienced workers.
4 comments:
Abigail Lytar
said...
I am very happy to hear that the price of building materials are continuing to stabilize. Having such an inconsistency in pricing has made it very difficult for builders to be able to accurately predict prices for estimates and it has also placed a burden on the market. I found it interesting that the price of softwood increased which reversed its trend. Over the past 18 months it had been decreasing consistently. Of course with the price of softwood going up it will affect builders. I know personally that it will affect some of the theatres I’ve worked at because they will not have accounted for the uptick in wood prices and they already have a pretty small budget. I will be interested to watch the prices to see if the price of gypsum keeps going down and to see if the price of softwood keeps increasing.
I'm very happy to hear and see that prices are starting to become more consistent, although I fear we won't be able to go back to the prices of pre-pandemic (maybe a few years before that). I do understand that inflation happens and will affect all areas of life, but it is getting increasingly harder to keep shows of similar sizes in the same budget. While this was at it's worst during covid, it is still a hardship we need to continue thinking about moving forward as TD's. Lumber prices since 2021 have been going down, but are still high enough that it makes budgeting much harder and is the reason that some theatres have started bringing in touring shows from outside instead of building it themselves. As they say in the article, it is hard to predict how prices will continue playing out and whether or not we will see another large rise in prices. They also talk about how while prices are hard, finding good workers is also getting harder. There was a large wave at the start of the pandemic that saw lots of blue collar workers leaving their jobs, and we are still feeling the impacts of that today.
It is interesting to read this article and this data in terms of the United States as a whole. Coming from California, it has been a crazy ongoing issue of house prices increasing basically exponentially and not being affordable to the lower middle class and below. This is the first time I really started to look at house prices as a whole United States spectrum, and I am glad to hear that the cost of building homes are becoming more stable. I guess I don't really know about the cost of building a home in California, and I am wondering if the selling price is just increasing with no other justification other than being in California. Originally, I would only think that material cost was the main factor in how much building a house costs. However, it makes a lot of sense that things change month to month depending on gas and diesel costs, as well as labor. With inflation, I feel like not only will all of these areas have an increase in cost, but it is also important to make sure labor is getting liveable wages with all of this.
I actually have a lot of family members who are involved in home construction and selling and all of that stuff, so I had heard a lot lately over the past couple of years about how insanely expensive it is to built houses, and essentially, a lot of projects have been put on hold. It’s definitely good that the prices of building materials are stabilizing because so many different people use those materials, and they’re just so insanely expensive. It is difficult to build a big awesome epic set if the theatre cannot afford the wood to build it. Let alone having the labor, space, and time to construct something, the price of material is insane. I imagine many theatres have been super affected by this shift in material pricing, and that it’s been a big concern for everyone responsible for and connected to the budgeting of a show.
4 comments:
I am very happy to hear that the price of building materials are continuing to stabilize. Having such an inconsistency in pricing has made it very difficult for builders to be able to accurately predict prices for estimates and it has also placed a burden on the market. I found it interesting that the price of softwood increased which reversed its trend. Over the past 18 months it had been decreasing consistently. Of course with the price of softwood going up it will affect builders. I know personally that it will affect some of the theatres I’ve worked at because they will not have accounted for the uptick in wood prices and they already have a pretty small budget. I will be interested to watch the prices to see if the price of gypsum keeps going down and to see if the price of softwood keeps increasing.
I'm very happy to hear and see that prices are starting to become more consistent, although I fear we won't be able to go back to the prices of pre-pandemic (maybe a few years before that). I do understand that inflation happens and will affect all areas of life, but it is getting increasingly harder to keep shows of similar sizes in the same budget. While this was at it's worst during covid, it is still a hardship we need to continue thinking about moving forward as TD's. Lumber prices since 2021 have been going down, but are still high enough that it makes budgeting much harder and is the reason that some theatres have started bringing in touring shows from outside instead of building it themselves. As they say in the article, it is hard to predict how prices will continue playing out and whether or not we will see another large rise in prices. They also talk about how while prices are hard, finding good workers is also getting harder. There was a large wave at the start of the pandemic that saw lots of blue collar workers leaving their jobs, and we are still feeling the impacts of that today.
It is interesting to read this article and this data in terms of the United States as a whole. Coming from California, it has been a crazy ongoing issue of house prices increasing basically exponentially and not being affordable to the lower middle class and below. This is the first time I really started to look at house prices as a whole United States spectrum, and I am glad to hear that the cost of building homes are becoming more stable. I guess I don't really know about the cost of building a home in California, and I am wondering if the selling price is just increasing with no other justification other than being in California. Originally, I would only think that material cost was the main factor in how much building a house costs. However, it makes a lot of sense that things change month to month depending on gas and diesel costs, as well as labor. With inflation, I feel like not only will all of these areas have an increase in cost, but it is also important to make sure labor is getting liveable wages with all of this.
I actually have a lot of family members who are involved in home construction and selling and all of that stuff, so I had heard a lot lately over the past couple of years about how insanely expensive it is to built houses, and essentially, a lot of projects have been put on hold. It’s definitely good that the prices of building materials are stabilizing because so many different people use those materials, and they’re just so insanely expensive. It is difficult to build a big awesome epic set if the theatre cannot afford the wood to build it. Let alone having the labor, space, and time to construct something, the price of material is insane. I imagine many theatres have been super affected by this shift in material pricing, and that it’s been a big concern for everyone responsible for and connected to the budgeting of a show.
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