Lumber, plywood prices skyrocket

New York Times via Houston Chronicle ^ | May 1, 2004 | BERNARD SIMON

[snopercod]

TORONTO — Lumber and plywood prices have shot up so rapidly in recent months that they are tearing the profit out of home construction for some builders and threatening to dent the booming housing market.

Paul Kuszmaul, president of Kuszmaul Builders in Champion, Ohio, said the run-up in prices had left him unsure whether to push ahead with a condominium development in the Mahoning Valley, between Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

Since January, he said, the cost to build each condo unit in the project had risen $4,000, largely because the price has more than doubled for oriented-strand board, a widely used substitute for plywood made by pressing long wood strips together using adhesives.

The product has been rapidly displacing plywood as a construction material because it is cheaper to make, can be made from the limbs and roots of trees as well as trunks, and is more uniform in quality. Almost three-fifths of all structural wood panels now sold are oriented-strand board, or OSB, compared with a quarter in the early 1990s.

Prices of both OSB and plywood reached records one week last month. According to Random Lengths, a trade publication, 1,000 square feet of -inch OSB sells for $503 in the north-central United States; this time last year, the same amount cost $170. Half-inch four-ply southern pine plywood is up to $523 for 1,000 square feet, from $240 a year ago.

Plywood prices began to rise last year in late May and early June, dropping late in the year, before increasing sharply in January.

Prices of other types of lumber have also risen, although less sharply. And the buoyant metals markets, especially for steel, have also driven up costs.

"It's almost a rocket ship ride," said Jim Enright, general sales manager at Rosboro Lumber, a plywood manufacturer in Springfield, Ore. "The activity level since the beginning of the year has been phenomenal."

The ride has been less exhilarating for buyers. Brian Catalde, president of Paragon Communities, a builder in Playa del Rey, Calif., said that the cost of the lumber used in building a typical entry-level home had roughly doubled in 18 months, to $24,000.

A handful of manufacturers dominate the OSB market. Five companies account for three-quarters of all sales in North America. They are Louisiana Pacific, Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific in the United States, and Nexfor and Grant Forest Products in Canada.

One reason for the price surge is that production of the boards has not grown fast enough to make up for the loss of plywood, because of the closing of older plants.

[duk]

LOL- your suppose to scrape them before using them! I bet you burned a saw blade or two also.

[Liberty Valance]

I do believe this uptick in lumber prices bodes well for existing home sales.

[EggsAckley]

I think you're right. New homes, however........not good.

[MHGinTN]

The loghouse I spent my childhood in was chinked with wire mesh, Budweiser beer cans (they used 'key' openers then), and concrete. The logs were more than one hundred years old that were used to build it after moving it from a TVA lake inundation, and it doesn't have central heat or air ... but it was one sturdy house! Only problem is the big horses that salute everytime they ride by ... pausing, they leave such piles.

[snopercod]

We sprayed water seal on the forms as a release agent, but the concrete got into all the cracks and knot holes anyway. Each sheet weighed a lot.

Yup, I burned a lot of carbide blades on that stuff. It was one of those many ideas which seemed good on paper...

[RightWhale]

market "perma-frost" as a building material

There is a way to use permafrost to advantage. Some work at Prudhoe Bay is done in winter so by summer it is all done and the permafrost is not damaged. Just down the road from here there is the CREL Permafrost Tunnel, which has been around for quite a while as an eye into dynamics of permafrost. It's kind of cold in there, though.

[lewislynn]

I was licensed in CA way back when, but couldn't tolerate the excessive regulation and left the miserable state.

-----I can't find a "real job" here in NC

In the end it all comes down to the best places to live. If you like it there don't complain.

[rogator]

You can get fiberglass strands added to the mix for about $5.00/yd.

[RightWhale]

Sawdust and cardboard was used here in the early days. It works well enough for a while.

[Hank Rearden]

Its like ordering 45 pounds of nails...only a 'minute horny clockwatcher' would do somthing like that...

Ohhh, you gotta sober up if yer gonna watch commercials!

I do believe The Donald is saying "minute-hoarding clockwatcher".

Yours is funnier, though.

[blam]

Beer Can House, Houston

[RightWhale]

That might be very effective for fine structure such as surface texture if you don't want your exposed walls to be plain flat slabs.

[tubebender]

I heard on cBS radio today that there is a shortage of cement because of a China building boom???

[duk]

Worked on a house that was made of old tires! Sounded cool untill you try to wire, plumb, trim, and otherwise decorate with normal stuff.

[petercooper]

Speaking of lumber, what is better to line a gravel driveway at the beach. Railroad ties or maybe some cedar 6x6's? Thanks

[MHGinTN]

Wonder if the family emptied them all before using them? The guy who build our house did, to the tune of a case a day!

[sunshine state]

I heard the same thing. Apparently they are building a huge dam - the Three Rivers Dam or the Three Gorges Dam - and they are sucking up the world wide cement/concrete supply. It's supposed to already be causing trouble in FLorida.

[lewislynn]

A handful of manufacturers dominate the OSB market. Five companies account for three-quarters of all sales in North America. They are Louisiana Pacific, Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific in the United States, and Nexfor and Grant Forest Products in Canada.

Isn't there still a Bush tariff on lumber products from Canada?

[blam]

From the Beer Can House link:

"Milkovisch loved beer (had a six-pack a day habit) and believed it was a cure-all for everything. He had saved the cans for years and finally come up with a use for them. He sliced off the tops and bottoms and used the sides to cover the exterior of the house. His wife protested, but he kept at it. She just didn’t allow him to touch the interior. "

Milkovisch and his wife are both dead now. The kids maintain the house. When I lived in Houston, a friend of mine lived on that street.

[MHGinTN]

I'm fond of the notion that he didn't let the cans go to waste!