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U.S: Despite supply shortages, local lumber prices all over the board

In some markets, decreasing lumber prices haven’t found a bottom.

In others, though, they’re through the roof — literally.

Citing a shortage of supply, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year lumber prices across the board had reached the highest they’d been since 2006. The housing market’s slump led mills in the U.S. and Canada to slash production, dropping output by nearly 50 percent between 2005 and 2009.

As the housing market began to recover, it led to increased demand, allowing mills to raise their prices. That remains the status in at least one market, according to Andrew Nuffer, inventory manager for Clendenin Lumber Company, of Donalds, which exports about 90 percent of its manufactured lumber to foreign countries.

“The supply has tightened up considerably,” Nuffer said. “With the recession, a lot of mills went out of business or slowed down to a point where the total supply in the market was reduced.

“Because of that, it took a while for the existing inventory to get off the market to be sold; now that it’s been sold, the prices have started to rise because the demand has increased and the supply is lagging.”

The majority of Clendenin’s stock comes from the sawmill attached to its facility, Nuffer said, with other lumber coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia to be processed in Donalds for export.

“It’s really a seller’s market right now in the lumber business because there’s only so much product and there are so many people who want it, and the supply is very limited,” he said, adding he’s seen prices rise by 60 to 70 percent. “I feel like it’s going to drop off soon, but there are probably a lot of people who disagree.

“I feel like it will continue to rise at least in the next few months.”

That’s not the case for those who deal mostly spruce and pine, woods typical for home construction.

“They’re not just dropping, they are really dropping — hard,” Mark McCoy of McCoy Lumber and Building Supply, Honea Path. “It’s $4 a sheet cheaper than it was just two weeks ago.”

McCoy said February and March was the time when the housing market looked like it was on its way up. But as Nuffer said, there was little supply to meet the demand.

“It went up so fast that people who had bid jobs in January were saying, ‘I just can’t do them,’” he said. “So now, all of a sudden, everybody’s backed off again and just the opposite is happening.”

McCoy attributed the fluctuation to lumber suppliers’ drive to make the most money possible, instead of simply keeping their prices at reasonable levels. Even wood for roofing is starting to go down, McCoy said.

“Roofing has never gone down,” he said Wednesday. “It just has kept on going and going and going, and yesterday I bought several truckloads of roofing and actually paid $3 per square less than I did two weeks earlier.

“That looks to be in a free fall mode, too.”

It has affected what and when customers buy. Touting his business’ reputation, he said it’s not uncommon for him encourage people to wait, if need be, for prices to come down. At their peak, prices have also led contractors to opt for the cheapest materials available — then coming back for “the good stuff” once they see the lack of quality, McCoy said.

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