Posted on 06/15/2021 7:09:01 PM PDT by dynachrome
Lumber prices are falling back to Earth.
Futures for July delivery ended Tuesday at $1,009.90 per thousand board feet, down 41% from the record of $1,711.20 reached in early May. Futures have declined 14 of the past 16 trading days.
Cash lumber prices are also crashing. Pricing service Random Lengths said Friday that its framing composite index, which tracks on-the-spot sales, dropped $122 to $1,324, its biggest ever weekly decline. The pullback came just six weeks after the index rose $124 during the first week of May, its most on record. Random Lengths described a chaotic rout in which sawmill managers struggled to provide customers with price quotes. It said late Tuesday that its index had dropped another $114, to $1,210.
Economists and investors have wondered if sky-high prices for wood products would doom the booming housing market. Builders raised home prices and many stopped selling houses before the studs were installed, lest they misjudge costs and sell too cheaply. Lumber became central to the inflation debate: whether a period of runaway inflation was afoot or high prices were temporary shocks that would ease as the economy moved further from lockdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
A few weeks back I was running around central Missouri and the local commercial yards were having home builders out the KC suburban area showing up and buying out everything they had because the large metro area commercial yards were oversold and projects were stopping half finished due to shortages.
It was a joke.
That can happen in very short term.
Some mentioned Lowes, they are a retail lumber supplier.
Contractors us building supply companies. Selection and quality is the issue for builders. And the sales are huge packages. Totally different market than retail lumber.
Contractor supply company never buy in less than truckload lots.
DIY supplies hardly ever buy full truck loads.
The credit risk in the Contractor supply companies is significant.
I will admit that a few times in my career we had certain markets that had a Price-in-effect-at-time-of-shipment condition with limitations. We had that with Reinforcing and certain steel coil stock in ‘74 but you had a limit-up price to work with to mitigate the risk.
Thank you
About 20 years ago, I bought a truckload of graded lumber from a smaller mill a couple of states away for building a subfloor for a somewhat large house, and it came at about a third of retail including transportation. But the lumber was very green and wet. It was cross-stacked immediately after unloading (just in case, for curing) and built as quickly as possible.
Same with another load for the framing and roof.
This is something happening all over- it is being called ‘hardship’ by the builder and IS being written in the contracts.
A new fence might be nice, but if the old one is still solid but ugly, might be easier to just take off your eyeglasses.😉
Thank God because we have to buy 28 OSB squares to put the new roof on Mom’s house. Mr. GG2 is out tracking them down this morning.
Yes. Small lumber mills in NM (I lived there from 1972-1986) were well know for quality issues relating to moisture.
It is good if you do what you did. The atmosphere that is normally very dry.
If you leave it bundled it will change color.
The big mill solution is Kiln Drying. In the right time of the year. In most of NM and in parts of Texas it can be air dried if you stack it with slats so air can circulate.
Hope it didn’t warp too much in the dry process.
I look forward to the panic buying that the ComDem_Insanity have caused to happen. I like to see more stability.
I learned to hate the left beginning in the 1960’s. Some things only get worse with age. Totalitarianism in all forms is evil. But when it comes to Leftist and Islamist crazies, they are close tie for worst.
I’ve done battle with the left since the mid 1970’s. Have no illusion how truly evil they are. Some are just useful idiots, the leaders are as evil as Charles Manson.
Probably won’t fall too fast.
I was building an entertainment project in the midwest when I had a themed decor of an area in bamboo increase in size and scope. The owner had been pleased with how some natural fire treated bamboo looked better than artificial.
I hired a direct truck with double team drivers out of Miami, flew a superintendent to a Miami warehouse to buy natural bamboo and because I knew that curing and fire treatment soaking would cause cracking bought twice the amount I knew I needed. I then had the double team of drivers drive back to Missouri.
The double amount turned out to just be enough after all sorts of loss and extras. Those costs still turned out to be less than the artificial and look better.
Yeh its going to be around $3,700.
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