4 ms·
Crazy to think people were doing construction and remodeling at 3x typical lumber costs
by artursapek 3y ago
Crazy to think people were doing construction and remodeling at 3x typical lumber costs
- envsubst 3y agoThese things are always cyclical, but FOMO is a tough emotion to combat.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoLet's hope being stuck at home for a year is not a cyclical event! That's what drove a lot of it, not FOMO. Building a home office, using a kitchen multiple times a day, schooling from home...
- envsubst 3y agoThat doesn't drive people to pay 3x. What does it is the fear that prices will never come down or that this is a normal.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoIt was only 3x the cost because people had 3x the excess money.
- huytersd 3y agoNonsense. The lumber pipelines were interrupted. It was simple supply and demand unlike all this insane price gouging the grocery stores are pulling off now.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoRight - demand was up because people had more money.
- nightfly 3y agoDemand was up because people had more _time_
- nxm 3y agoAnd money was being printed left and right
- SteveNuts 3y agoHow does that end up in the hands of regular people doing renovation or home builds?
- fragmede 3y agoI'm sure some of it is down to LLCs owned in their names that took out PPP loans from which contractors building a home office were paid out.
- ambicapter 3y agoWhat fraction do you expect that was? Even just giving a completely unfounded guess.
- fragmede 3y agoThe useful question isn't that fraction, though I'd bet it's larger than you'd expect, but how much free money was injected into the economy this way. I'm sure that's a consequential sum, especially if you expand the money we're looking at to include corporations paying other corporations inflated rates, coordinated by having execs/board members in common.
- metaphor 3y agoWere you asleep[1] the entire time? And that's just what Average Joe was pocketing. [1] https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/news/articles/update-three-rounds-stimulus-checks-see-how-many-went-out-and-how-much https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/news/articles/update-three...
- bkjelden 3y agoLumber is not that big of an input to total construction cost.
- harambae 3y agoRight around 15% on a traditional stick build. Not insignificant but not the majority either.
- stephencanon 3y agoAnd less than that as you mover higher-end!
- londons_explore 3y agoLabour is the biggest cost of house building. And during a pandemic, that is almost free, since many people are stuck at home with nothing to do.
- dilyevsky 3y agoYou best believe it wasn’t free. Especially for smaller jobs like flooring it’s often priced based on material. Everyone I know in construction was making $$$ in pandemic
- vel0city 3y agoI think they were talking about DIY. People couldn't really travel or do things outside the house so they might start home improvement projects themselves where as you might be more inclined to hire if you're busy with outside things.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoI assume it varied greatly by region, but my experience was that it was extremely difficult to find workers during the pandemic response. It seemed like a combination of fear and restrictions, plus free money at least in the US. I saw hourly rates for physical labor jobs go through the roof, double the pre-response rates and still couldn't fill positions.
- sokoloff 3y agoGP was suggesting that many people found a supply of labor in the mirror while brushing their teeth.
- artursapek 3y agoLabor was not free during covid, it was harder to find than ever
- fragmede 3y agoI wonder how much of that remodeling was to accommodate a newly required home office due to WFH. If you really needed to have a separate office (eg kids), you simply had to grit your teeth and bear the cost.
- colecut 3y agoIf you didn't have the money, you would make it work... Could do the same even if you did..
- bluGill 3y agoAlso there was little else to spend your money on. It is easy to spend ten thousand on a family vacation and for a couple years you didn't take one. Plus all the eating out you didn't do, movies you didn't go to and whatever else people stopped doing.
- RoyalHenOil 3y agoIt seems weird to think of money as something you have to spend. We just added it to our savings.
- positr0n 3y agoBuilt an entire house at the peak :( It sucked but plans were in motion pre-covid and waiting a year (or two? Who knew back then) would have meant missing the window that minimized disrupting our kids' school lives.
- lostlogin 3y agoMaterial costs are not a lot over half the cost of building (in my experience), and lumbar isn’t all of that. Sometimes timing matters more than other factors.