Steve Fennessy: This is
Georgia Today, I m Steve Fennessy. Like millions of other Americans, you ve probably spent a lot of time at home during the pandemic and chances are good you ve also done a little home improvement over the last year. The remodeling market and housing sales are booming, and all this demand has sent the price of lumber and other wood products to all-time highs, which should be good news for tree growers across the South, right? Wrong.
Georgia tree grower Wanda Barrs: The landowner, us, we haven t benefited from the increase in the price of lumber.
Steve Fennessy: So who on the lumber supply chain is benefiting from the pandemic building boom? How is all this affecting Georgia s critical lumber industry? For this episode of
Arnold Ahlert: Pricing the American Dream Out of Reach — The Patriot Post
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By Ryan Dezember, Joe Wallace and Andrew Barnett Prices for the building blocks of the economy have surged over the past year. Oil, copper, corn and gasoline futures all cost about twice what they did a year ago, when much of the world was locked down to fight the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Lumber has more than tripled. A lot of investors would probably see this chart and say it screams inflation. Soaring commodity prices have stoked fierce debate on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. over inflation and whether the fiscal and monetary policies intended to buffer the economy during the pandemic might now risk hobbling the recovery.
Having trouble buying a home in Texas right now? The flurry of business relocations to the state are not the only reasons the real estate market is tighter.
Some of the blame for this hot market can be traced to investment groups, according to Ryan Dezember, who wrote about this latest trend in the Wall Street Journal. The pandemic has lured more firms away from commercial real estate to residential. With so many office towers sitting empty right now as more people work from home, investment groups are swooping down and scooping up entire subdivisions to turn into rental properties.