By Sue Putnam
Editor
Housing Market Woes Mesh With Prayers For Market Potential
Throughout the Southeastern United States, softwood lumber representatives have differing reports about the marketplace for their products in their areas. For example, one stated that the market, at the time of this writing, is somewhere in the middle while another source complained that their marketplace is less than satisfactory.
Despite these differences in reports, they share worry over what effect the tariffs might have on their businesses and the overall unpredictability that may be causing lulls in demand, which they hope will pick back up once the warmer months hit and everything gets settled.
“It seems pretty slow and pretty stifled to be honest,” reported one lumber source in Georgia. His guess for the slowdown is because the “average home price in Atlanta was just around $400,000 and with rates at six or seven percent. I don’t think there are a lot of new home buyers who are able to swing anything like that.” The market is worse than six months ago.
They mainly work with Southern Yellow Pine and Spruce with Southern Yellow Pine as their best seller. He said they offer those species in “2×4 – 2×12 and No. 2 grade.”
His customers mostly consist of “pro-dealers and then multifamily jobbers after that.” According to him, the “tract builders seem to be the only ones really doing anything. All the custom home buyers and multifamily guys have really dialed things back. It’s just those lower priced tract homes that are the only things going.”
He believes the tariffs are just a “negotiation tactic to get Mexico and Canada to the table and help secure the border.”
In Alabama, according to a lumber spokesperson, the market is “not great but it’s not horrible; it’s right in the middle.” He explained his theory about the market by stating, “people have been getting out of vacation and bad weather mode and they’re just trying to get back into a groove.”
He thinks the “potential is certainly better than six months ago. I think we have a lot of positive vibes out there and it’s just a matter of getting through all the negatives.”
Spruce, Southern Yellow Pine, Cypress and Cedar in “pretty much all the grades and thicknesses,” are what he said they offer. Their best seller is Southern Yellow Pine because “we are in the Southeast,” he added.
They sell to retail lumberyards. “Everybody is in the same boat we’re in. I think everybody is trying to get back to normal,” he said when asked about how the markets are faring for his customers.
As for his opinion on tariffs, they do import some materials and are “kind of in a holding pattern.”
Labor and fuel costs are “always affecting us but right now, they’re not negatively affecting us. The only thing that has negatively affected us is the weather.”
“Below average” due to the “lack of business” because “nobody is digging on anything really hard right now,” is how a lumber representative from Mississippi described the market. It is also “about the same as six months ago,” he said.
They work with “5/4 decking and timbers in 4×4, 4×6 and 6×6” in Southern Yellow Pine, he said. “The bigger timbers are moving better right now but nobody reports on those. We’re like a specialty mill and those 8x8s are moving well right now for us,” he added.
They sell to treaters and he mentioned that his customers have reported that their markets are “about average” because “it’s on par for this time of the year and normally, they’ll gear up for the spring business but they don’t seem to be doing that this time. I don’t know what’s going on there.”
He described the tariffs as a “double-edged sword.” He said they will “help us on the lumber side but it’s going to hurt us on the parts side because a lot of sawmill equipment is Canadian based. I just hope it helps more than it hurts.”
While he listed labor as an issue, transportation is fine. “The trucks are available. The truck companies are actually calling us because they are hunting for something to do, which tells me things are slow overall.”
