US Housing Market Full-Year 2022 & Softwood Lumber Prices January 2023

As January 2023 got going, while hardly a big rush, there was an increase in sales — and therefore prices — of several specialty lumber items. Even benchmark WSPF 2x4s popped up a little bit, although more due to significant supply being taken offline than growing demand. There were inklings, however, that customers are making […]

Full-year 2022 US housing starts and new home sales data has been released and while the dampening effects of rising mortgage rates remain, the numbers for December show a slight uptick. In 2022 the US began building 1.55 million homes, just a -3% drop from full-year 2021. Single-family starts in 2022 totalled 1.01 million, down […]

It is important to note that month-over-month starts and permits have indeed dropped, however new building and permits activity for the first seven months of this year were up compared to January to July 2021. The latest US housing starts and US new home sales data, for July 2022, continued the downward trend seen in […]

An old adage often used by Madison’s to explain the typical seasonal cycle of lumber prices is, “Labour Day is the beginning of the end and US Thanksgiving in the end of the end.” Meaning that lumber prices usually drop around Labour Day then keep falling until US Thanksgiving, which normally marks the lowest prices […]