Softwood Lumber Prices

As December dawned winter weather came on across North America, causing the usual drop in construction activity thus lumber sales. Price levels dropped accordingly, but only for benchmark items. Sellers were able to keep prices level on many dimension lumber and panel items. However, the obvious slowing demand into the end of the year suggested […]

As is historically usual for this season, demand — and therefore prices — of most softwood lumber items dropped during the US Thanksgiving holiday week. This time of year is normally marked by slowing construction activity thus lower demand for dimension lumber. Of course, the past two years have not been normal. As forest industry […]

Bumping up and down in recent months, sales of new US single-family homes actually increased in October. There were 632,000 new single-family homes sold last month, which is up +7.5% from the downwardly revised September rate of 588,000 and is a -5.8% drop compared to October 2021 when it was 671,000. Only 15,000 new homes […]

Sales of new homes in the US have bumped up and down for the second half of this year and recovered upward once again in October. While it is true that a slow-down is apparent in both construction and home buying activity, it is important to note that new building activity year-to-date remains almost even […]

Even while actual prices remained flat, there was a general sense of the usual seasonal slowdown coming for sawmills and the lumber industry. This is because the order files at producers have shrunk from a month to barely two weeks. Expectations are, that as construction activity drops off during the winter months, lumber demand will […]

The latest North American construction framing dimension softwood lumber prices and market commentary, by Madison’s Lumber Reporter for the end of November 2022 Check back with the Madison’s Lumber Reporter website madisonsreport.com often for the latest updates for the latest developments and updates. In the week ending November 25, 2022, the price of WSPF 2×4 […]

In mid-November the annual North American Wholesale Lumbermen’s Association gathering took many traders away from their desks to hob-nob with their colleagues, often determining between themselves the condition for lumber sales to the end of the year. As such, sales were slow but somewhat consistent, and prices remained steady. True winter weather came on in […]

After a pop the previous month, sales of new US single-family homes dropped again in September. There were 603,000 new single-family homes sold last month, which is down -10.9% from the downwardly revised August rate of 677,000 and is a -17.6% drop compared to September 2021 when it was 732,000. Only 6,000 new homes sold […]