By Amy Ramsay

up 119 per cent year-over-year

Skyrocketing lumber prices challenging for contractors, builders

Apr 23, 2021 | 4:38 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – In the last year there’s been a huge uptake in home renovations and construction during the pandemic as Hatters go ahead with projects despite the rising cost of lumber.

Whether you’re building a house or just a fence, you can expect to pay a lot. Last year when Julie Davies did some renovations she was left in shock with how much prices have increased.

“I mean if you were looking back a few years ago it would have been $6-8 a sheet and I paid $65 a sheet for OSB (oriented strand board) and I was priced $85 a sheet for plywood a sheet and I’ve seen now it is $95 a sheet. I don’t know how people are building homes right now to be honest,” said Davies.

According to Statistics Canada, softwood lumber prices have increased by 12 per cent for the fourth consecutive month and year-over-year prices are up 119 per cent.

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Lyle Woodward, owner of Strongwood Construction, says the prices, along with shortages in supply are creating some challenges for them.

“It’s definitely been difficult, not only with the pricing, but with also just finding materials, getting supply, lead times have jumped, you know two to three weeks really at the minimum for what we’re looking at if we can get enough of it, so it’s been difficult,” said Woodward.

He added demand is being driven up significantly in part by the pandemic and with travel plans cancelled many people have decided to spend that money on home renovations instead.

“We obviously had COVID that shut down plants and that you know they weren’t able to produce as much as they would have, we also had you know three bad years of fires, you know along the coast where it really did deplete what they were stockpiling,” said Woodward.

The rising cost of lumber is causing a lot of uncertainty and Aaron Brost of Brost Developments encourages anyone considering building a new home to act quickly.

“Prices are always moving forward, we’ve kind of compared it to the tree analogy that you know the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, you know maybe in our industry it was before last year before things started going up but the second-best time is to start now because we don’t see it necessarily you know moving backwards.”

Forestry industry analysts are also not expecting the price to drop significantly this year and despite the cost, demand is also expected to remain high.