Lumber prices

[Jazzy]

The home improvement market is bracing for a bumpy road.

Two of the largest home improvement retailers, Home Depot (HD) and Lowe's (LOW), warned of softness in the market in recent earnings reports, indicating the year ahead is likely to be a difficult one as inflation weighs on consumers.

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I canceled an additional deck to my home when the price doubled from initial job quote to the final quote due to lumber and materials.

Have you had to cancel any home improvements due to the increase in building materials?

 

[Lamb]

I won't be building a new house any time soon! We talked about moving toward the ocean when my husband retires, and building a new home would have meant we got the home we actually wanted. That's still a ways off, but will lumber still be out of control in a decade?

 

[tango]

Lumber has come down a lot recently. I delayed some work on my house when the price of the beams I wanted went from $10 to $28. A couple of months ago they were back to about $14. Curiously treated lumber in that size was cheaper than untreated, which suggests the price might drop a little further.

When I framed a wall over the summer I was paying something like $12 for 10-foot 2x6 beams. The price has come down a bit since then. I don't know if it's started to go back up, the room I want a lot of beams for is full of other stuff I needed out of the way. I'm hearing conflicting reports of where the market is headed - with interest rates higher than most people are used to the market for housing is softening, which would normally indicate the price of lumber will soften. But then some analysts are talking of sawmills slowing production to try and support the price, so that might put a floor under softening prices.