Don’t procrastinate, do-it-yourselfers. Building materials are still discounted from the price highs witnessed in the mid-2000s, but prices are rising – quickly in some instances.

The cost of most building supplies sunk to 20- to 30-year lows in late 2009 as demand hit a trough and suppliers overproduced, said Reid Ziegler, co-owner of Spokane-based Ziggy’s Building Materials. Manufacturers cut back drastically, and now, demand is exceeding supply in some instances.

“It’s not that demand is so great,” Ziegler said. “It’s that the supply is so restricted.”
Ziegler said one factor affecting supply domestically is that a large portion of the new building materials are going to rehabilitation efforts in earthquake-stricken countries, such as Chile, which was devastated by an 8.8 magnitude catastrophe in late February.

John Case, owner/manager of South Regal Lumber Yard, said the price hikes have been steepest in manufactured wood products, such as plywood. In November, a common four-foot-by-eight-foot sheet of waferboard had a wholesale price of $6.50. As of earlier this week, the same sheet had a wholesale price of $10.24, an increase of nearly 60 percent.

For framing lumber, the prices are rising, but not quite as precipitously, Case said. Last November, an eight-foot two-by-four had a wholesale price of $1.15, he said. Now, the same board is $1.70 wholesale, a 47 percent increase.

Both Ziegler and Case said they expect wood-products prices to climb in the next month or two, but they will level out, or go down some, once mills gear back up.

Don’t expect an oversupply again any time soon, though, Case said.

“As the economy picks up a little, I think these guys are going to be cautious about cranking it back up quickly,” Case said.

Other types of building supplies have trended upward in recent months. Metal roofing, nails, rebar and other metal products are more expensive than they were a year ago, due in part to international demand. However, the increase is nowhere near as dramatic as the run-up in wood-product prices.

Plastic supplies – vinyl fencing, PVC plumbing pipe and sprinkler piping – have a heavy concentration of petroleum products in them, so they typically track with the price of oil. While low now, prices for those products are expected to increase as the price of oil trends upward.

While building-material prices are increasing in general, both Case and Ziegler said those increases have to be kept in perspective. Do-it-yourselfers shouldn’t run into supply shortages like they might have during the same time period. During the housing boom, rebar and cement were in short supply at times, mostly because of international demand.

And prices aren’t nearly as high as building-supply prices about five years ago. Remember that two-by-four that costs wholesales for $1.70 currently? The same board would have cost about $2.10 at times during 2005 and 2006. While supply prices might go up further in coming weeks, they aren’t expected to reach those peak levels.

Even so, prices will continue to fluctuate.

“The pendulum always swings from too cheap to too expensive and back,” Ziegler said. “It never stays in the middle.”