Ahead of the Labour Day long weekend, which traditionally marks a beginning of slow-down to construction activity thus lumber sales, customers caught short of inventory needed for existing projects found some prices were on the rise. Sawmills were — at least — able to resist counter-offers, if not actually able to push prices up on…

A burst of increased demand in the last two weeks of August pushed up many lumber prices somewhat. The practice of customers to stick to just-in-time buying, held for the better part of the past year, created a situation of low field inventories. As construction activity continued across the continent, customers found themselves purchasing more…

Those looking for a trend line of where lumber prices are going, after these three years of severe volatility, might soon be able to glean some answers. Currently the weekly price of benchmark lumber commodity item WSPF 2×4 is close to matching that of two years ago. Looking at the top graph here on this…

Prices of many standard construction framing dimension softwood lumber commodities dropped somewhat as the mid-August holiday season came on. At this time of year it is normal for construction activity to slow down as folks take off for the last vacations before Labour Day long weekend and back-to-full-time-work for September. As well, the province of…

As August dawned it became clear that there would be no big increase in new housing construction activity this season. While demand remained reasonably stable, producers chose to increase production volumes and sell more wood rather than keeping supply tight and get prices to rise. Thus the small blip in higher lumber prices seen during…

After the remarkable volatility in 2020 and 2021, the price trendline for framing softwood lumber commodities this past year is beginning to look like something understandable. In mid-2022 when the long-announced interest rate increases actually started to happen, the recent surge in new home building and construction activity started to slow. As such, lumber prices…

With the annual home building season well under way, most construction framing softwood lumber prices flattened out toward the end of July. Prices have crested at what could well become the “new normal”, which those interested in the forestry and sawmilling industries have been asking about for the past couple of years. Certainly those incredible…

True housing construction activity finally got going across the North American continent as the month of June closed. Many builders found themselves short of the lumber supply they would need for existing projects. While no one was yet building inventory, the availability of wood remained quite tight due to ongoing sawmill curtailments and lessened production…