How Does the Lumber Shortage Impact You?

Here’s how the lumber shortage has affected the real estate market in our area.

The COVID-19 shutdowns and recent hurricanes have caused a lumber shortage in our area.

How did this happen? For a while, nobody showed up to the lumber mills and roofing companies because they expected a big shortage, but the opposite happened after the storms came through. Starting with Hurricane Laura, all the supplies that were left were moved to Lake Charles. The other hurricane scares then drove up the price of lumber drastically.

The lumber market will revert to normal eventually, so if you have your costs lined up when it does, you’ll be ready to pull the trigger.

For example, the price of a sheet of plywood has increased year over year from $8 to somewhere between $23 to $25. This means if you own a 3,000-square-foot house, it would cost you about $9,000 more to build a deck now than it would’ve last year. With so much labor heading to Lake Charles to chase insurance money, there’s a shortage in the workforce here in Lafayette. There are still plenty of roofs that need to be rebuilt, and if you count your roof as one of them, be patient. The contractors we’ve been dealing with have been working diligently to keep everything on schedule.

If you plan on building a new home, the best way to save money is to be extremely detailed when choosing your home-building materials on the front end. Making decisions on the fly will end up costing you thousands of dollars. The lumber market will revert to normal eventually, so if you have your costs lined up when it does, you’ll be ready to pull the trigger.

As always, if you have questions about this or any real estate topic, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to speak with you.