Author: kkosman

The fact that US home sales are outpacing construction starts to this degree indicates additional home building lies ahead. US home building has staged a dramatic rebound, said the US National Association of Home Builders today. In fact, supported by low mortgage rates, an evolving geography of housing preferences, and favorable demographic tailwinds, housing demand has improved so…

Actual (not seasonally adjusted) Canadian home sales activity posted a +46% y-o-y gain in September 2020. It was a new record for the month of September by a margin of some 20,000 transactions. Canada’s national home sales rose +1% on a month-over-month basis in September 2020.  Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was up +46% year-over-year. …

Finally a date from the US Commerce Department, VIA Madison’s long-time connection, customs broker working the Canada/US border: A written response has arrived from the U.S. DOC’s Office of AD/CVD Enforcement and Compliance. It is their “understanding” that the effective date for the new adjusted softwood lumber AD/CVD cash deposit rates, is now November 23rd.…

The Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend brought a not-surprising further drop in prices of most benchmark construction framing dimension softwood lumber commodities, as the days got increasingly shorter and the weather turned ever more winter-like. Demand across North America was almost entirely for small fill-in orders, while sawmills were preoccupied with locating shipments long-ago sent to…

US softwood lumber production and sawmill capacity utilization rates continued to improve in July 2020 but those in Canada experienced drops compared to the previous month. Compared to one-year-ago, for January – July 2020 softwood lumber production in the US increased previous improvements, up by +3.2%, says the latest issue of the Western Wood Products…