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.
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.
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
All concrete here accept the trusses and sheeting. The houses are going up by the hundreds here. It doesn't seem sustainable.
That sounds awful but at least around here concrete prices have been going way up for the last year or more. You are right, it isn't sustainable.
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.
That seems like an interesting solution, I wonder how it would hold up.