Lumber Crisis
2021, among other things like toilet paper, boba tea and pickle jars, saw a shortage in limber. Let’s try to understand what led to the shortage and the subsequent high prices.
After the financial crash of 2008, home building took a hit. Causing the lumber prices to fall. In addition to that, a lot of woodlands were lost to bark eating beetles. And this eventually led to the fall of prices in 2008.
Prior to the Covid crisis, in a similar fashion we lost about 6.2m acres of woodlands to wildfires in 2017-18. And when the pandemic came, investors expected history to repeat itself and they were short on the prices (expecting them to go down). Similarly, wood suppliers cut production in anticipation of low demand.
But what happened was that more people wanted to renovate their homes, and complete all the projects they always wanted to do. Now since, they have no other option but to do it. Combine a weening supply and a surging demand led to a 377% increase in the price of wood this year.