Luke Fry: "With the lumber costs going up and the cost of labor going up, home prices will continue to rise."
Housing prices continue to rise around here and home builder Luke Fry of Sun Collective Design Group says it's going to get worse and not only because of demand. Fry says the rising cost of lumber is one reason for the financial hike. "Sawmills haven't picked up the slack. There's plenty of wood. There are plenty of trees. There's plenty lumber. With so much demand sawmills can't keep up. That's where the bottleneck is." There's an obvious remedy - more saw mills. "It only makes sense that if we had more sawmill capacity it would ease the strain."
Social Distancing Causing an Increase in Lumber Demand
Fry also says the high cost of labor and the common occurrence of theft isn't helping. "We just finished a project where we lost about $20,000 in theft. Most of that was lumber and also exterior trim. We got hit multiple times." He says the goods are sold to second hand lumber yards of which Houston has many.
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