评论
打印
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Home builders and new home buyers probably don't care. They just wish the animal would chuck more of it. There's a national shortage of lumber in the U.S. and it's selling at its highest rate since 2006. Why?
The American business magazine Fortune says it's supply and demand. Last year, lumber producers were temporarily shut down because of coronavirus concerns. At the same time, people working from home decided to buy more wood for projects around the house. So lumber started disappearing from stores like Home Depot.
Another factor, interest rates for home loans started hitting record lows last year, so people flooded the housing market because their dollar went further. All of this resulted in very short supplies of wood while there was tremendous demand for it. So lumber prices went through the roof hitting record highs.
That drove up the cost of building houses. It drove up the cost of buying new houses. So when will this end? Nobody knows. Some experts say prices will start to settle this summer, others say we'll be in 2022 before lumber prices come back down.
