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Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

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Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#331

Post by throwaway316943 »

edrxty wrote: post #57
hellbannedguy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wait. I'm an licensed inactive General Contractor. If 14 months ago, they were building them for $450,000, I'd wait. I'd shop around for another contractor too. A young guy starting out, might save you a lot. (There's no way to verify he knows what he's doing though.) If you are some what handy, it's not that difficult to owner build your own house. That is if you get the blueprints past the town's council. G…

Assuming you are very mechanically inclined but not particularly well versed to traditional construction, what does one do to learn more about this process?

Build a shed first. There are lots of free designs online. Choose one with a window so you’ll know how to frame openings and fit windows and doors. Put the type of siding you’d want for the house on it.

Then build a detached garage, get experience with pouring a slab, attaching walls to a foundation, trusses, more practice with exterior doors and windows, insulation, wiring. If you’re really feeling confident you could put a half bath in it to practice plumbing.

You should be ready for the house at this point. You’ll either love it or hate it so much you’ll just hire someone to do it for you. Having a shed and garage on site is a big plus for building a house since it gives you a warm dry place to work and store your tools. I’ve known people who built their garage first so they could live out of it while building the house, only works if you’re a bachelor though.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#332

Post by AngryData »

mgkimsal wrote: post #13

"If high prices held you back from building, you are in luck, as the tables have now turned" Except... many builders will find some other reason/excuse where prices are high to keep prices high. We were looking at building a house - talked to builder last November and... looking at $470-$480k range (ballpark estimate). Lumber was going higher, but we'd reduced the house plan size. Lumber kept going up... and up... Th…

You also have to remember that the construction industry itself is constantly in a boom and bust cycle and we are in the boom cycle right now, it would have been more expensive now than a year or two ago even without the pandemic or any other economic factors, just those other factors have nudged it up a bit higher.

Couple years from now it will settle down and carpenters and tradesmen will be fishing for jobs again and lowering prices for consistent work instead of like now where they can throw out a even the shittiest net and catch over their limit.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#333

Post by okuboheavy »

Hendrikto wrote: post #205
okuboheavy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately a container house will always end up both more expensive and worse than a traditionally built house. Containers are fantastic as containers but terrible for making a house with. As soon as you start cutting holes in them they lose a great deal of their structural strength which is their main advantage. Terrible to insulate and for condensation as well. The exception is if you’re happy with a single cont…

Could you elaborate on the high prices? I have a friend who plans on building a container house, and who is convinced that it will be much cheaper than a traditional house. Note that we live in Europe, where homes are build from stone and concrete, not wood and cardboard.

You can build a container house that’s cheap but it won’t be nice. You can build a container house that is nice but it won’t be cheap. I spent a very long time looking into this as I really wanted to have a container house. Unfortunately the more research I did the more I realised what a bad idea it was. A container is great because you have a basic structure and it’s watertight from day one. However, getting to that point with a regular build is actually pretty straightforward. Everything past that point though is a massive pain in the ass when you’re drilling or cutting into corten steel. Adding insulation, windows, electrical fittings, everything else ends up being a pain and/or 3 times more expensive and/or 3 times more time consuming. It gets to the point where you basically just building a regular house inside the container anyway and you realize that you just don’t need the container in the first place. As I said before there are really specific instances where it makes sense but if you look at all the container houses that look really nice, the build cost is always insanely expensive. Often two or three times the cost of an equivalent regular house.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#334

Post by vibrato2 »

542458 wrote: post #10
llbeansandrice wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, people were saying/thought that this was runaway inflation and not a result of supply chain issues because of COVID and tons of people suddenly having to spend way more time in their house because of COVID? Maybe I'm ignorant of the inflation argument more than anything else but it doesn't even pass the sniff test in my opinion.

There seems to be a group of people who predict hyperinflation at the drop of a hat. I’m not sure if it’s paranoia or motivated reasoning though. Maybe a mix of both?

Or doubling the money supply in a year. Not exactly an unrelated event like a hat drop

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#335

Post by tmountain »

pjc50 wrote: post #226
tayo42 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my measly half million dollar worth of stocks "only" grew 30%. There's a significant amount of people do that much better than i did? what am i missing?

Congratulations, you're in the top 1%. There aren't that many people above you, but 1% of the US population is still millions, and they have an outsized influence and visibility. Property also suffers from "pigeonhole" effects; a few foreign millionaires parking their money in empty properties at the top end causes everyone to move along one.

The threshold to be in the top 1% in the US is 11M. A US citizen needs 4.4M to be in the top 1% globally. More than 8% of US families fall into the millionaire category.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#336

Post by trey-jones »

dougmwne wrote: post #169
hellbannedguy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wait. I'm an licensed inactive General Contractor. If 14 months ago, they were building them for $450,000, I'd wait. I'd shop around for another contractor too. A young guy starting out, might save you a lot. (There's no way to verify he knows what he's doing though.) If you are some what handy, it's not that difficult to owner build your own house. That is if you get the blueprints past the town's council. G…

My stepdad was a software engineer and built our house growing up. The house was fabulous. The construction took 15 years of hard labor as a full time second job

I started in 2008, we moved in in 2016, and there's a lot of work left to do. I admit that it's not a full time second job though. Once we moved in it turned into mostly weekends.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#337

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

dannyw wrote: post #243
chromatin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We backed out of working with a builder because price went up about $100k over the course of 3 months earlier in 2021. There is no way that was justified , lumber and supply chains notwithstanding. I respect his right to maximize profits in this market, but I won’t be part of it.

Unfortunately I suspect it'll never be cheaper to build.

Second this. If inflation numbers keep going up 5% per month, the cost of literally everything will keep going up. There are labor shortages in a lot of industries which means employers need to compete on $/hr or workers will go to where they can make more. Not out of spite or greed, it will cost more to feed their family because those costs will have gone up.

This also means the housing prices will probably continue to go up as well.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#338

Post by j2bax »

ryanackley wrote: post #274
hellbannedguy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wait. I'm an licensed inactive General Contractor. If 14 months ago, they were building them for $450,000, I'd wait. I'd shop around for another contractor too. A young guy starting out, might save you a lot. (There's no way to verify he knows what he's doing though.) If you are some what handy, it's not that difficult to owner build your own house. That is if you get the blueprints past the town's council. G…

The biggest problem with being an owner builder is you don't have an ongoing relationship with sub-contractors. Which means that for any subs you hire, you will be their lowest priority and their smallest concern. Also, you don't really know what you're doing so you will think they made a mistake when they didn't and you won't always recognize real mistakes. I did this for my new house that was being built before, du…

My friend had a house built by a company and he had many issues left over even after getting all the issues he noticed taken care of. I just had a full house remodel done by a good friend who is a contractor and am noticing things that aren’t perfect. I guess I’m just wanting to point out that my experience is that getting perfection is hard no matter which route you take.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#339

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

reilly3000 wrote: post #79
wyager wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One commodity out of hundreds has come down a bit. I wouldn’t write off inflation fears yet.

It’s sensible to think that there will be at least inflation commensurate with QE. That in combination with pandemic related supply chain issues make sense for inflation to be very real, but a lasting, runaway inflation lacks the fundamentals- consumer purchasing power remains strong and there is upward pressure on wages.

> consumer purchasing power remains strong and there is upward pressure on wages.

Aren't these inflationary?

I think the main problem is how people use "runaway inflation" and "hyperinflation".

It seems like most people using these words are imagining a world in which prices go up 5-15% (max) every year for years.

That is very abnormal for the US. But not hyperinflation. Even the 15%. Hyperinflation is reserved for situations like Venezuela and Zimbabwe (and, of course, Germany long ago).

I don't think hardly anyone sees inflation in the US to be as bad as it has been in Argentina. One might describe that as "runaway". But it is not hyper. And there is almost nothing in the US that has inflated at that level - let alone any indication that general inflation will get that bad.

Re: Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

#340

Post by grumple »

mrleinad wrote: post #318
legulere wrote: post #214

If you wait for a bit longer you will see prices rise again and then fall again until the market finds back its equilibrium. This is known as the bullwhip effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect

That looks a lot like a stock market pattern (and it makes sense it does) Do you know about any books that might expand on the subject, maybe mentioning other effects?

Not a book, but this was mentioned in some comments section on HN recently: https://www.shmula.com/the-bullwhip-effect/310/
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