Madison's Lumber Reporter - Softwood Lumber Prices & US Housing Starts: 1Q 2020
VANCOUVER, April 17, 2020 /CNW/ - Despite drops from last month, housing starts and building permitting activity in the US for March 2020 are still occurring at a faster pace than one year ago.
In week ending April 10, 2020, benchmark Western Spruce-Pine-Fir 2x4 prices were US$310 mfbm (net FOB sawmill), unchanged from the previous week said North American weekly lumber price newsletter Madison's Lumber Reporter . Last week's price was down -$136, or -31%, compared to one month ago and is down -$66, or -18%, relative to the 1-year rolling average price of US$376 mfbm. The WSPF 2x4 price is down -$109, or -26% relative to the 2-year rolling average price of US$419 mfbm.
Meanwhile, the US Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly announced Thursday new U.S. residential starts tumbled -22.3% in March to a 1.22 million annualized rate, but were +1.4% above the March 2019 rate of 1,199,000.
Cumulative single-family starts for the first three months of 2020 are running +12.4% ahead of the pace for the same period last year, at an average pace of 962,000 units per month over the past three months.
Inventories of completed single-family homes remain exceptionally lean but prospective buyer traffic has dried up, which will likely keep builders cautious.
April 17, 2020 "The recent changes, disruption if you will, to the supply-demand balance of North American construction framing softwood lumber and panel products have worked their way through the market. Last week customers came back to suppliers with higher-volume orders than in recent weeks. This provided sawmills the ability to hold steady on prices for benchmark Western Spruce-Pine-Fir 2x4 #2&Btr KD (RL), at US$310 mfbm.
Producers in other regions like the US south or Quebec dropped prices slightly but refused to go any lower. — Madison's Lumber Reporter www.madisonsreport.com
While single-family permits plunged by -12% to a rate of 884,000 in March, multi-family permits jumped by +4.9% to a rate of 469,000.
STAY AHEAD of US housing price data by getting access to softwood lumber prices. Released every Friday for that week, since 1952 Madison's Lumber Prices is used by the forest products industry as a price guide for North American construction framing dimension softwood lumber. These are, of course, the inputs into US and Canadian home building materials.
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SOURCE Madison's Lumber Reporter
Keta Kosman, Publisher, Madison's Lumber Reporter, est. 1952, Vancouver, BC, Canada, www.madisonsreport.com, 604 319-2266
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