This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate
A construction worker is seen building a home in the Harmon Grove development on Wednesday, June 2, 2021 in Niskayuna, N.Y. This December prices are rising again after a drop from the summer. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union file)
Builders and customers are getting hammered by lumber prices with no particular end in sight.
Lewis Dubuque, executive vice president of the New York State Builders Association, has been watching the cost of lumber rise and fall in a volatile manner this past year.
“The price went down over the summer. It started to come back in the fall (and) now it has spiked again,” he said.
John Bartow, executive director of the Empire State Forest Products Association agreed. He said costs in almost every aspect of the industry are “skyrocketing” across the United States, specifically in the Northeast.
In New York, the forest products association looks at three broad price structures: softwood lumber, hardwood and veneer productions and paper and pulp.
Much of the high prices is linked to softwood lumber, which the state doesn’t produce much of and relies heavily on Canada for, Bartow explained.
“What you’re paying for a two-by-four-by-eight today is three (to) four times what you would have paid for it 20 months ago,” Bartow emphasized, noting that costs for a range of products from raw materials to papermaking chemicals is up anywhere from 90 to 125 percent.
The treacherous combination of supply constraint and steep prices has pushed some builders to limit what they can do. Price jumps and supply chain woes are hurting virtually everyone from builders up to suppliers. And Canadian providers are especially taking a hit.
Dubuque said one prominent Canadian supplier for his association’s members, Pollard Windows and Doors, has temporarily paused its distribution to the U.S. until it can get things in order. Pollard Windows and Doors did not respond to the Times Union’s request for comment.
Canada, according to the Northeastern Retail Lumber Association, supplies the country with about 14 percent of its lumber.
NRLA President Rita Ferris said Canadian suppliers are “under a lot of pressure” because of the floods British Columbia recently experienced.
“Those floods ruin(ed) the transportation infrastructure – the roads and rail access – and that has slowed the shipments down 25 to 30 percent,” she said.
Data from NRLA determined the price of lumber similarly was up about 26 percent in the past month, which, whether by coincidence or not, aligns with how much British Columbian shipments are down.
Lumber was priced at $1,044 per 1,000 board foot as of Monday, whereas roughly a month ago, the price was $772 per 1,000 board foot, according to Ferris.
To further complicate Canadian suppliers’ challenges, the lumber tariff nearly doubled last month from 8.99 percent to 17.9 percent. It’s a tax on Canadian imports that is being “passed on to consumers,” Ferris noted.
In most cases, Ferris found builders are “eating the losses.”
“They’ll give a price for a new home and the price is good for 30 days. By the time they go to fulfill the orders for the material, something like a flood happens, and the price is 25 percent higher,” Ferris said.
On the flip side, builders are regularly adjusting their prices and passing along some of the cost to buyers.
An organization called the American Building Materials Alliance is working to arrange a softwood lumber agreement to retain more stability in pricing. Ferris said the federal infrastructure bill should help, but other major bills are stalling in the government’s wings.
She anticipated 2022 will prove another strong year for builders, although not without a host of challenges and putting out a few fires.
“It always works out long-term, but it’s going to take a little while,” she said.
Shayla Colon is a Native New Yorker who previously worked for Hearst CT Media. She now covers business news for the Times Union in Albany, N.Y. When she’s not reporting, find her working out or tucked away in a corner with a book, preferably Hemingway or Fitzgerald.
