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Inflation? What Inflation?

We are visual people these days and I found this post and the accompanying graphic pretty stunning.


What they found was that $50k in lumber in 2015 could build 14.74 new single-family homes. By April 2020, the same price of lumber could build around 10.5 homes. And in May, after a meteoric rise in lumber prices, $50k in lumber could only build 2.11 homes. 

Nah, things are fine.

6 Comments

  1. Mike Guenther

    That must be talking about bare bones framing, not including wood siding or interior wood paneling. And what size house viz a vis square footage?

    I've been in the trades for 40 years. Retired now, but back when I was building semi custom homes, 50K of lumber might frame up two 2500 sq foot homes. That was ten years ago.

  2. Arthur Sido

    I assume so, I know that the Amish pallet shops and construction crews are having a tough time pricing. This was the formula they used, no idea how accurate:

    To calculate each home, Visual Capitalist used the following parameters:

    Lumber requirements: 6.3 board feet (bd ft) per square foot (sq ft)

    Median single-family house size: 2,301 sq ft

    Total lumber required per single-family house: 14,496 bd ft

  3. Mike Guenther

    I've seen a couple of articles and watched a short video of a 3D house being printed out with some kind of light weight concrete. With slab on grade and extruded walls, that would save on quite a bit of lumber.

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