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are construction costs rising or falling?

snigletsniglet
edited October 2007 in Housing Bubble
I feel like I have whiplash from reading different articles that seemingly contradict each other about construction costs. On the one had I read articles about developers claiming that one of their reasons for cancelling projects is due to rising construction costs. On the other hand, I read articles about how developers are arbitrarily forcing tradesmen to accept lower wages and that the prices for many building materials have fallen substantially (e.g. lumber prices have come down massively from a couple years ago).

So what's really going on? Are construction prices really going up, or is this just an excuse that developers use to distract attention from a bad market?

Comments

  • AlanAlan
    The CA fires are going to drive construction material prices back up.
  • redmondjpredmondjp
    Alan wrote:
    The CA fires are going to drive construction material prices back up.

    Disagree. Not enough houses burnt to even make a difference. They'll be rebuilding those 1000 houses instead of building 1000 new ones which would have happened anyways if the market hadn't tanked.

    Now if another Katrina-type event happened, then different story.
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