OSB price check

[Ron Wenrich]

Do you really think they're ready to put up houses yet?  Seems to me that you have to clean up a lot of debris and burn a bunch of houses before you can even get ready for a house. 

I know some of the stuff will go for repairs, but house building is still a couple of weeks away.  I guess they're just getting ready.

High lumber prices, high fuel prices, higher interest rates...how will the rest of the housing market make out? 

I still haven't seen the hardwood market so much as hiccup.  Grade lumber is still flat.

[Sprucegum]

My bro-in-law is a purchaser for a large plumbing outfit. They are anticipating a 30-40% increase in the price of all their supplies, way up here in northern Canada!

[bitternut]

Funny.............I have aspen in my woods that is not worth hauling out. Guess maybe instead of buying sheet stock I will have to use solid boards and save some money.

[Carl_B]

I pickup 1/2 cdx plywood om sale at menards on friday nite for$ 11.92 a sheet  went back on monday  to get the rest before the sale went off It was $17.69 per sheet . I pickup 10 more sheets but am not a happey customer . Carl

[hawby]

Ron,

I would imagine that the "Modular" builders are stocking up. I would think that they are going to be the big benefactors of this disaster.

One of the local RV dealers got a boost from the feds. They came in and paid list price for every large motor home and trailer that he had on the lot. Then they hired locals to drive them down to the Gulf area.

[TexasTimbers]

I came to this board to make this exact post. Thanks Scott.
Anyway, it's scarce here between the Sherman to Plano area. I just got back from McKinney with 4 units (80 sheets per) and paid $11.98 per sheet and after tax came to $4149.87. I feel like I got a good deal because Home Depot and Lowes are on hold as far as price quotes from distributors like Viking, Huber, etc. and the 60ish OSB manufacturers in this country are not giving quotes at least from what i was told by a sales rep at Viking. They are sitting on it for a week or so .... a different form of price gouging.
Call your local Lowes or Depot and ask them how many units they will sell you today, and if they don't have any ask them when will they get it?
I'm picking up another 2 units tomorrow at HD in Plano/Frisco store that I bought over the phone.
If anyone wants 12' or 16' sheets of it I can hook you up, but you'll pay 35.67 per sheet already on the 16'.... and he only has 2 trucks left at that price :
The local Indy has 38 sheets of 4 X 8 left ... $18.74 per sheet Foxworth Galbraith here in Bonham can't quote a price for at least a week....

[Tom]

Sounds to me that folks in the Storm area should start salvaging the wood and straightening the nails instead of trying to buy all of their supplies from the Box Stores.

[Ron Wenrich]

There still hasn't been a surge in the lumber futures market.  Prices are still below July levels.  The osb futures market isn't much of a market, so its hard to find info. 

As I check alot of those markets that are supposed to be affected, I'm not seeing any price rise.  Coffee remains the same, corn is really low, as are hogs.  The big boys aren't expecting any change in wholesale prices on nearly anything.

Must be something between the mfg and the distributor. 

[TexasTimbers]

The osb futures market isn't much of a market, so its hard to find info....Coffee remains the same

Coffee and copper both soared, right after the storm, and both have now "corrected".
A full 1/3 (Almost 1.6 million 60-kg bags) of unroasted coffee are stored in New Orleans warehouses, and most distributors are reporting good news - most of it was untouched.
Niether coffee nor copper have "stayed the same".
Copper had nearly hit $1.70 as it not only reacted to Katrina but was in fact already riding Zinc's meteoric climb (due to plethora of related AND unrelated factors), but tuesday when employees of Metro International Trade Services actually put their eyes on the Zinc (nearly half of the entire world's supply of LME-listed Zinc is in registered warehouse in N.O.!) and saw that it too was untouched by water, prices fell when long traders jumped ship.
N.O. is home to only 1.3 percent of LME listed Copper - Decemeber closed down 1.25 Fri. (COMEX).
OSB is another story altogether. Don't look to the futures market to determine what it will do. It's going to go up, yes, but it's going to be hard to get if you can get it at all. Could be a week could be a month. No one has a crystal ball but there are some of us who can't be without it, and don't want to take a chance of being without it.

[JimBuis]

I don't buy any OSB here in Tokyo.  However, I did buy some MDF [medium density fiberboard] on Monday.  The price wasn't too bad, about normal, about $30 US for a sheet 3 feet by 6 feet by about 3/4 of an inch. ;D

Jim

[TexasTimbers]

Jim,
I wouldn't recognize Japan I bet. Live there when I was a kid ... 68, 69, 70.
Went to Sagamihara 4th and 5th grade and Atsugi 6th. Atsugi didn't get an American school til 70 on the base. Is the base still there or did they close it? My sister went to Camp Zama.
We lived out in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies on sort of an island the first two years, about 10 miles from the base.
It was still "old" Japan then. Still lots of WWII vets left, and nearly ALL the old mamasans were "hunched" from a lifetime bent over in the paddies and using their backs as human fork lifts, and hauling babies around on.
Our Landlord would take me and my sister to the genza regularly and taught me and my sister to trade the Japanese way, and after we learned enough language (kids pick it up alot quicker than adults) what we were doing, my parents would take us to do all the buying and trading.
My hair was bleach blond so it got rubbed (it would bring good luck to the "rubber") so much I didn't even notice after a while.
We had a grand view of Mt Fuji out of our back door most mornings, when she wasn't vieled in mist.
Too many memories to even get started.  I used to wander all over about a ten square mile cluster of paddies and hills by myself and my parents had no fear that anything would happen to me. I'll bet it's different now. People who've never been can't imagine how much stuff the Japanese can squeeze into a square mile :D.

[Jeff]

As of yesterday, September 11th, price for the 7/16 OSB has gone to $12.95 a sheet. 3 bucks more in a week.

[dewwood]

While at the Logging Congress I had the opportunity to tour the Potlatch stud mill located on the old Air Force base at Gwinn.  They said they would not feel the effect of the hurricane for about six months as far as their pricing is concerned.  I asked how many bundles I could get on my one ton flatbed but they apparantly don't sell that way.  It was a very interesting tour however.

[pappy]

Just called the local hardware store ... 7/16 osb $20.19 plus Me sales tax of %5    :(


time to hit thoes jags of cedar and pine fer some more sheeting  ;D



glad Jen and I got 50 acres of mixed growth of hard and soft wood   

[Jeff]

September 16th  7/16 OSB now at 14.95 a sheet.  Up from the start of 8.10

[bigblockyeti]

Yeah, OK so I know this is necroposting but it's the most relevant to what I was looking for based on recent observations.

I've been tracking OSB as it's the only lumber I can't make myself and it's gone from $9.99/sheet (before the 68+ discount quantity) to now $17.38/sheet all at the same Lowe's in ~3 months.  I'm not waiting for things to normalize with construction and realestate costs so I'm building my next house myself.  I have about 1/2 the structural lumber bought or milled already and I want to start stockpiling OSB.  The price jump is disappointing but not unexpected.  Is there anything beyond a gutted dollar value driving up OSB price in the timber world?

[Southside]

Supply and demand. You are still buying it, so why lower the price?

[bigblockyeti]

Supply and demand. You are still buying it, so why lower the price?

I'm intimately aware of how supply and demand works.  My question was specific to what might be happening "in the timber world" that could be driving the price.

[rusticretreater]

You read in other threads of mills shutting down, certain species not being available, etc.  Economic pressures, Canadian wildfires, over regulation, revised NAFTA trade agreements all mess with the price.

Fuel costs, labor costs, availability, price increase on products that are selling to offset revenue declines in other areas.  Current prices reflect past costs to produce the item, not current costs.  

We also had a huge construction slow down because of that Covid crap.  When housing companies start building again, they can suck the market dry.  How much OSB would a million housing starts require? 

Suppliers and construction companies with contracts get the product first, we get it last.  On top of all that is the markup and price gouge.

[doc henderson]

I remember the 70s and 7/16th was 3 bucks, and it was a low cost alternative to plywood.  now the price is about the same.  might as well get plywood.

[SwampDonkey]

Some mills had to close for the fires, some were only temporary closures. A lot of the fires in Ontario and Quebec are remote and not feeding the supply at all, no roads or rail up there. But north of the prairie land is timber supply and fires are affecting supply there and also BC supply.

No house building going on where I'm at, been a bunch of flip flop on old houses going on. One newer house has sat a year with no takers. I'm seeing a newer house once in awhile selling, ones that are barely 5 years old. Some have really long driveways and open field to fill them up with snow. :D :D Best be prepared with snow equipment if you're going a half a mile back from the paved road.

Seeing some barns going up, cattle and potato storage. Government handout for those, not for houses. ;D

[Southside]

So supply and demand. Supply is negativity impacted and demand is high. Folks still paying the higher prices, why reduce your margin and lower the price? 

[21incher]

So supply and demand. Supply is negativity impacted and demand is high. Folks still paying the higher prices, why reduce your margin and lower the price?

Record inflation and  record corporate profits now make me wonder about the supply and demand explanation we used to get.

[Ianab]

You actually are seeing it in action. Supply and Demand doesn't guarantee consistent low prices, never has. Corporate profits is the incentive to increase production, which eventually settles the prices back, to some degree. 


But it hurts us in the pocket while this is happening.  >:( 

[Erik A]

We had no covid slow down, never missed a day building around sacramento during covid!

Also, im guessing 10s of thousands of homes per year going up in the area right now!

This area is probably sucking up alot of the supply.