Al Schuler and Craig Adair (Article listed with Al Schuler's permission)

Introduction by Al
The article discusses some of the more important relationships between demographics, the housing market, and the demand for building materials.  Not to burden you with extra reading material, but I felt that you may be interested in the article.  As you know, the housing market has done more to prop up our economy the past several years than any other sector.  It has contributed about 40% of growth in the GDP the past few years - maybe more if we include the extra money it puts in consumers' pockets via refinancing and tapping into rising home equity values.  Consumer spending, two-thirds of the economy, has certainly been supported by the booming housing market.  If it were not for the strong housing market, I'm not sure where the economy would be today.

There are some interesting things going on with the forest product industries' number one customer - the homebuilder.  As the homebuilder grapples with labor shortages, globalization (e.g. price/cost squeeze), jobsite waste, and other nagging issues, they are making changes that are/will impact the building material suppliers - primary mills, component manufacturers, distribution - the whole supply chain.  In this article, we present our version of what is happening now and may happen in the future.  If you have any comments, please contact Craig (253-565-6600; craig.adair@apawood.org) or Al (304-431-2727; aschuler@fs.fed.us).  We probably left out some important considerations/issues, so let us know.

The article is a "PDF" file which requires Adobe Acrobat software in order to open.  Adobe Acrobat is available free at www.adobe.com.

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