What Do Falling Lumber Prices Tell Us?

On today’s show we are looking to connect the dots between new home construction, demand for lumber, and home sales. We are answering the question, Is this a possible boom for new rental properties? 

So here we are going into the fourth quarter with several headwinds and a couple of tailwinds. If you are looking to start a construction project, this might be an excellent time. Construction labor are looking for work in many markets and will price their labor more aggressively. Labor has become the dominant cost in many projects. Material prices are falling in some segments. Lumber is a great example. We have falling interest rates. I say this irrespective of what the Federal Reserve may announce on Wednesday this week. 

The US 10 year Treasury is hovering around 4% and the Canadian 5 year commercial mortgage bond rate fell below 3%. It’s now around 2.92%. All of this happened with no central bank announcements. 

So if your capital costs are falling and your material prices are falling, and you are going into a seasonal slower time period with lower demand for labor, these are significant tailwinds. The only headwinds that I can see are the tariffs. 

The other headwinds are falling prices for single family homes. But if you’re building rental apartments, and your market has the right supply and demand dynamics for rentals, this might be one of the best times to build, starting in the 4th quarter and into the first quarter of next year. 

You might be thinking that you’re building a commercial building and you don’t use much lumber. What’s happening to steel prices ?

OK, Let’s look at that. Steel prices seem to have mirrored the same dynamic as lumber, but to a smaller degree. Prices peaked at the end of July at $3333 per ton. On Sept 11, they were at $3006 per ton. Today they’ve rebounded a bit to $3070 per ton. 

We saw the same thing in copper. Prices were $5.80 per pound for copper and they fell in a matter of days to $4.36 per pound. Today the prices are hovering closer to what has been an average for the past year at $4.60 per pound. 

So this is not just a softwood lumber phenomenon. 

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