Lumber "shortage"

[1918ColonialRevival]

Wow. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, though. It's a shame something as simple as a wooden fence has become nearly unobtainium.

I just hope this idiocy starts to calm down by this fall. I have a half-rotted porch to replace and I don't know how many more winters it has in it!

[Gothichome]

I saw a tractor trailer full of lumber heading for the US boarder, was looking for the police escort or at least a Brinks security truck but saw none.

[phil]

forgive my lousy artwork ..
these things used to be abpout 5 bucks now they are 14 northern pesos each here now , but anyway..

what I have done is stack them if you want it taller, drill holes and use spikes to get them to the height you want for the bottom rail. that can be a retaining wall if you want one as well.. and then make two sawcuts like this:

then you can stick the old fence pickets in there after trimming about 3 inches off the bottom to remove any rot.

you can use them for the posts and as well for the top rail. if you use them as posts put the flat side against the fence and leave the rounded part facing you.

nail the rounded part back in place, save the strip for other fence repairs.

I think it's a pretty cheap and easy way to make an old fence sturdy again and use as much as possible over. put the removable parts towards your property leaving the nice side out and then you can remove the strips and change pickets if you need. I like to stick a thick galvanized washer between that bottom strip and put some nails through the holes just to act as a spacer to let any water out of the gap area. you can paint a wood preservative on the sawcuts. they are usually pressure treated and normally not too expensive.
you can get a few different sizes.

plant the end of the posts in gravel and if you want cement put that near the ground but dont create a concrete cup for water to collect or the post will rot.

a lot of fences fail because they use 2x4s for rails , then sometimes they put a second 2x4 for strength. the 2x4's droop then the pickets fall out. this way that bootom rail cant; bend down and droop so easy it is sitting on the ground. and the wood preservative will make them last oh around 20 years or so..

the slot doesnt ned to be as deep as I drew it but you get the idea now.

[Lily left the valley]

{snip}what I have done is stack them if you want it taller, drill holes and use spikes to get them to the height you want for the bottom rail. that can be a retaining wall if you want one as well.. and then make two sawcuts like this:

Thanks for the idea, Phil. I will definitely keep this in mind.

We talked to her yesterday and made the offer that if she was only getting plastic because of costs, we'd be happy to chip in for a wood style which she is open to, thankfully. It's pretty evident it will be a while until she has the funds, so now we're just thinking about shoring the worst post from our side as we had done the last time one of them was getting bad before her cousin fixed that one so at least we don't have to worry about it hitting Sean's car. Probably won't get to that tomorrow, but definitely early next week at worst unless we get rain.

[Lily left the valley]

Saw this article tonight...
Lumber is adding $34,000 to the cost of a new house: BofA report

"Among these high construction costs is the price of lumber. Lumber prices have spiked in 2021, driving up housing prices even higher. 'Given the rapid rise in lumber prices,” the report says, “the total cost of lumber and manufactured lumber products for an average single family home has soared 184% from April 2020 to April 2021, rising to $48,316.'"

[SarahFair]

There is no shortage. This is a pure lie by the elites (think Koch brothers, whom own Georgia Pacific).

My husband's family owns a logging business that cuts large tracts of timber.
They are so busy right now, they can not keep up.
Sure, a lot of houses are being built right now, but nothing like it hasn't in the past. There is plenty of wood.

...and unfortunately the loggers are not seeing the benefits of higher wood prices, that doesnt trickle down. The only higher prices they have seen is fuel.

They are bleeding people dry with high house prices, which means high mortgages, which means more interest, which means more money for the banks, which means more money in the pockets of the elites.

I'm all for capitalism, but not faulty capitalism and crooked markets.

[phil]

Here I see 4 story wood framed apartment buildings going up , a couple burned down during the construction phase. maybe that trend is affecting the amount of lumber used if that trend is a general one and not just local. lots are doing renos because life was interrupted with covid but they still spend on their houses so lots of new porches , fences etc. a lot of mills near me closed but the ones left require a lot less manpower with technology. We have the technology to do more and faster but the trees only grow so fast and they aren't releasing the timber rights. if the mills dont have logs they close. there is a lot of fighting now over the last of the old growth. cutting the trees down is fast compared to growing them. over the past 100 years we figured out how to cut and process them faster and we lived high on the hog compared to other places but that trend is slowing now because it has to. cashing in on selling off natural resources never was a sustainable practice, of course, but it lasted a few generations.

[1918ColonialRevival]

There is no shortage. This is a pure lie by the elites (think Koch brothers, whom own Georgia Pacific).

Exactly. Which is why I put the original title in quotes. Just like the supposed oil shortage in part of the Great Recession. Nobody seemed to notice all the heavily laden tankers low in the water off the entrance to several major ports because they weren't allowed to go in and offload their cargo.

My husband's family owns a logging business that cuts large tracts of timber.
They are so busy right now, they can not keep up.
Sure, a lot of houses are being built right now, but nothing like it hasn't in the past. There is plenty of wood.

...and unfortunately the loggers are not seeing the benefits of higher wood prices, that doesnt trickle down. The only higher prices they have seen is fuel.

Yep - it's all in the markup. The corporate executives have to pay for that new yacht somehow while sticking it to the consumer! The logging companies' operating costs have gone up, but they haven't reaped any of the benefits of the increased lumber prices. I'm seeing overpriced, low quality lumber sitting in pallets unsold now. I always thought when demand dropped and there was a glut of supply, prices dropped commensurate with the demand. Guess that rule no longer applies, as prices around here haven't budged.

They are bleeding people dry with high house prices, which means high mortgages, which means more interest, which means more money for the banks, which means more money in the pockets of the elites.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I always believed the so-called real estate "boom" of the mid 2000s was nothing more than a ploy to get as much real estate in the hands of the bankers and elites as possible. They were writing loans by the minute that they knew people would never be able to pay for, knowing that they would ultimately get the property when the loan defaulted. This was exhibited more around 2010 or so when we had more foreclosures than the country had ever seen, yet the banks never put the foreclosed properties on the market. We had one in our neighborhood that was foreclosed in 2009 and sat for over a DECADE abandoned while the bank refused to sell it. All the while, the poor house deteriorated to the point that it was looking like it was in danger of becoming beyond saving. Fast forward 15 years and it's starting to happen again. Seemingly overnight, houses that were selling for $350k-$375k a year or so ago are now bringing $550k+ after only a day or two of being on the market. Yet, unemployment has skyrocketed over the past year. Makes one wonder what's really going on, as you can't have that large of a demographic who can comfortably afford a payment on a $550k house, to the point there are thousands of them selling in the area every month. As an engineer, one of my chief duties is to look at data and identify patterns. Nothing that is going on right now is making sense, unless this is a way to say we have had 40% or so inflation in less than a year.

I'm all for capitalism, but not faulty capitalism and crooked markets.

Agree 100%. There's almost no competition anymore. If anyone tried to stand up a small business to grow and become competitive, they would be regulated out of business within the first year or two while the fat cats get fatter.

[Lily left the valley]

There is no shortage. This is a pure lie by the elites (think Koch brothers, whom own Georgia Pacific).

Exactly. Which is why I put the original title in quotes. Just like the supposed oil shortage in part of the Great Recession. Nobody seemed to notice all the heavily laden tankers low in the water off the entrance to several major ports because they weren't allowed to go in and offload their cargo.

My husband's family owns a logging business that cuts large tracts of timber.
They are so busy right now, they can not keep up.
Sure, a lot of houses are being built right now, but nothing like it hasn't in the past. There is plenty of wood.

...and unfortunately the loggers are not seeing the benefits of higher wood prices, that doesnt trickle down. The only higher prices they have seen is fuel.

Yep - it's all in the markup. The corporate executives have to pay for that new yacht somehow while sticking it to the consumer! The logging companies' operating costs have gone up, but they haven't reaped any of the benefits of the increased lumber prices. I'm seeing overpriced, low quality lumber sitting in pallets unsold now. I always thought when demand dropped and there was a glut of supply, prices dropped commensurate with the demand. Guess that rule no longer applies, as prices around here haven't budged.

They are bleeding people dry with high house prices, which means high mortgages, which means more interest, which means more money for the banks, which means more money in the pockets of the elites.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I always believed the so-called real estate "boom" of the mid 2000s was nothing more than a ploy to get as much real estate in the hands of the bankers and elites as possible. They were writing loans by the minute that they knew people would never be able to pay for, knowing that they would ultimately get the property when the loan defaulted. This was exhibited more around 2010 or so when we had more foreclosures than the country had ever seen, yet the banks never put the foreclosed properties on the market. We had one in our neighborhood that was foreclosed in 2009 and sat for over a DECADE abandoned while the bank refused to sell it. All the while, the poor house deteriorated to the point that it was looking like it was in danger of becoming beyond saving. Fast forward 15 years and it's starting to happen again. Seemingly overnight, houses that were selling for $350k-$375k a year or so ago are now bringing $550k+ after only a day or two of being on the market. Yet, unemployment has skyrocketed over the past year. Makes one wonder what's really going on, as you can't have that large of a demographic who can comfortably afford a payment on a $550k house, to the point there are thousands of them selling in the area every month. As an engineer, one of my chief duties is to look at data and identify patterns. Nothing that is going on right now is making sense, unless this is a way to say we have had 40% or so inflation in less than a year.

I'm all for capitalism, but not faulty capitalism and crooked markets.

Agree 100%. There's almost no competition anymore. If anyone tried to stand up a small business to grow and become competitive, they would be regulated out of business within the first year or two while the fat cats get fatter.

It's not a conspiracy theory at all, and the big lie of capitalism is again rearing its ugly head. Capitalism was never about pulling one up by their bootstraps, it's about who can squash the competition the fastest so they get "too big to fail", and then we, the taxpayers, are expected to bail them out. The few exceptions historically is when the government came down hard on businesses and graciously allowed the richest to give some money away while getting tax cuts to do so (see Rockerfeller, Carnegie, et al) and then everyone pretended all was well.

I listened to a great This American Life podcast, The Giant Pool of Money, not long ago that really explained how the housing crash happened. The podcast itself is old, but I had just found it recently after listening to something else on that site. The short answer? After the country suffered a long span of deregulation, Alan Greenspan told the Global Pool of Money "Not helping you anymore". So they looked for a better source of money. So what tech bros developed (because of old data backing their trajectories) was a bad pyramid scheme hidden behind the shiny wrapping of a brand spanking new financial investment instrument, Mortgage Backed Securities--which failed spectacularly, yet was allowed to happen because the newly minted schemes they made grew too fast with no regulation until the cycle hit capacity and went bust. The financial instruments (CDOs) allowed everyone that had a slice of the pie to have less and less accountability for their piece. Everyone bought in because mortgages were supposed to be a safe investment. You back them, you'd get your money back when the mortgage got paid off and a bit more. Except the lending standards had gone south, and no one bothered to think about that. (They start talking about this in the podcast around the 11 minute mark.)

I actually was ghostwriting a book in NJ for one of the small potatoes folks years ago that had connections at Countrywide, but he ended up back in Federal Prison and the book never got finished. (Yes, back. I met him between stints--lifelong rags to riches scam artist that just swam up from stealing product rather than money at work to more lucrative scams until he couldn't easily worm his way out anymore.) He was helping facilitate these sales between no one that would ever be an actual homeowner. They literally were hiring people to just come in and sign paperwork for homes they would never live in. Essentially, selling and reselling properties over and over, inflating the price a bit more each time. Yes, Countrywide did have some legit want to be homeowners they lent to (the subprimes), but as folks may recall, most of them should have NEVER been lent the money, hence the subprime name. They were set up to fail, so Countrywide could seize the property back and put it back into their pool.

The biggest difference between now and then? The folks with oceans of cash are not "backing" the risky mortgage practices and their product: untenable mortgages. This time, they're just buying up the properties themselves and hedging their bets on the actual product rather than the mortgages that should have never happened in the first place. If the crash doesn't come and this is allowed to continue, it's going to get to the point over time as old homeowners die out with no direct heirs to move in where no home is owned by anyone other than a corporation. Because they'll just keep up this ridiculous practice when they kids who moved from their rural town to the big city sell the old house because they don't want to live there.

Most of the sales are going to property management holders and flippers of all scales. The bust cycle is coming, it's just a matter of when. There was also an article not long ago about Ketchum, ID where all the properties are getting snatched up by folks who just want a home that's "THEIR" home in that resort area for the one week a year they might go there. The working class is pushed out already--they're talking about setting up tent cities for teachers and nurses, it's so bad. Then you also have cases like San Francisco shortly after Big Tech decided to make it home.

Recent report related to whether we've got shortages or not: Shortages: Inflation in Disguise?
Older published lookback with Planet Money on the Crisis Review talking about how much went south in two weeks.

[1918ColonialRevival]

Big Tech is another one. I was just a kid when it happened, but I remember the anti-trust litigation that occurred with the Bell Telephone Co. and the resulting "Baby Bells" that they were all broken up into. I also remember reading about the Standard Oil company and its dissolvement in the 1910s as a case study in a class I took many years ago. I question why that has not happened with any of these so-called tech giant corporations yet. Then there's the "too big to fail" bailouts funded by all of us who live in the US. For example, General Motors leadership made a series of bad decisions over the course of a couple of decades that brought them to the brink of bankruptcy around 2009. Instead of going under, they were given a taxpayer-funded lifeline along with several other corporations.

But back on topic, you are right about who is buying a lot of the houses this time. A lot of the transactions I'm seeing are listing a property management, investment, holding company, LLC, etc. listed as the buyer. My question is, if the majority of the overpriced real estate transactions are being done by firms who are land-banking, are any of these properties even being occupied? My neighborhood is supposed to be owner-occupied only with the exception of a couple of investment properties still in the same hands as they were when we were made an historic district. Those were grandfathered under the condition that if the property changes hands, it becomes owner occupied.

I said it in 2006 and I'm saying it again. What's going on now is not sustainable in the long term. There's a big crash, correction, whatever you want to call it, coming. Could be months, could be a year or more, but all it needs is a catalyst.