Apartment Building Replacement Costs Rising: lumber back to housing boom highs, growing labor shortages.

The NAHB has a piece out called Producer Prices in March – Building Materials Prices Approaching Housing Boom Highs talking about how far gypsum (main ingredient in drywall +18%), softwood lumber (2x4s, 2x6s, etc. +30%) and chipboard (oriented strand board and waferboard which have replaced plywood, joists and beams in many applications +68%) prices have risen in the last year, the chart tells the story:

Apartment Building Material Prices 2012 to Mar 2013
Click on chart for full size image.

Bill McBride over at Calculated Risk has a piece showing the longer term price history for Random Length Lumber (2x4s only, both cash and futures) and a link to a pretty depressing Vancouver Sun article on pine beetle devastation in BC (Spoiler alert: the Continue reading Apartment Building Replacement Costs Rising: lumber back to housing boom highs, growing labor shortages.