As December dawned winter weather came on across North America, causing the usual drop in construction activity thus lumber sales. Price levels dropped accordingly, but only for benchmark items. Sellers were able to keep prices level on many dimension lumber and panel items. However, the obvious slowing demand into the end of the year suggested…

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As is historically usual for this season, demand — and therefore prices — of most softwood lumber items dropped during the US Thanksgiving holiday week. This time of year is normally marked by slowing construction activity thus lower demand for dimension lumber. Of course, the past two years have not been normal. As forest industry…

Bumping up and down in recent months, sales of new US single-family homes actually increased in October. There were 632,000 new single-family homes sold last month, which is up +7.5% from the downwardly revised September rate of 588,000 and is a -5.8% drop compared to October 2021 when it was 671,000. Only 15,000 new homes…

Sales of new homes in the US have bumped up and down for the second half of this year and recovered upward once again in October. While it is true that a slow-down is apparent in both construction and home buying activity, it is important to note that new building activity year-to-date remains almost even…

Even while actual prices remained flat, there was a general sense of the usual seasonal slowdown coming for sawmills and the lumber industry. This is because the order files at producers have shrunk from a month to barely two weeks. Expectations are, that as construction activity drops off during the winter months, lumber demand will…

The latest North American construction framing dimension softwood lumber prices and market commentary, by Madison’s Lumber Reporter for the end of November 2022 Check back with the Madison’s Lumber Reporter website madisonsreport.com often for the latest updates for the latest developments and updates. In the week ending November 25, 2022, the price of WSPF 2×4…

In mid-November the annual North American Wholesale Lumbermen’s Association gathering took many traders away from their desks to hob-nob with their colleagues, often determining between themselves the condition for lumber sales to the end of the year. As such, sales were slow but somewhat consistent, and prices remained steady. True winter weather came on in…

After a pop the previous month, sales of new US single-family homes dropped again in September. There were 603,000 new single-family homes sold last month, which is down -10.9% from the downwardly revised August rate of 677,000 and is a -17.6% drop compared to September 2021 when it was 732,000. Only 6,000 new homes sold…

As the forest products industry matures into this post-Covid landscape, and the new realities of macroeconomic conditions become more clear, a better picture of cyclical lumber price trends is forming. In the past, solid wood manufacturers were able to rely on a relatively stable seasonal cycle; the beginning of slowdown after Labour Day, with lumber…

The beginning of November brought a slight firming up for lumber prices, due to recent sawmill curtailments — especially in British Columbia — and ongoing reasonable sales volumes. Customers found inventories in the field quite scarce thus had to come back to producers for their purchases. As the usual seasonal slowdown ihttps://madisonsreport.com/s upon us, and…

Go to the websitehttps://madisonsreport.com/subscribe/to get a sample of the full 500 individual lumber and panel commodity prices for that week, as well as the market commentary explaining why the prices are changing. Total housing starts in the US for September 2022 fell -8.1% to 1.439 million units compared to the 1.566 million units reported for…

Staying even from the previous week, in the week ending October 28, 2022, the price of benchmark softwood lumber item Western Spruce-Pine-Fir 2×4 #2&Btr KD (RL) was again US$480 mfbm, said weekly forest products industry price guide newsletter Madison’s Lumber Reporter. This is down by -$44, or -8%, from one month ago when it was US$524 mfbm.…