I thought plywood prices had come down. WRONG!

Thought I wanted a sheet of 3/4 A/C. $82 a sheet? Don't think so.

Okay, about about 3/4 MDF? $71 a sheet? No, thanks.

Wound up with a sheet of Advantec which is pretty much OSB with a better finish. Even that was $50 after taxes.

I can't imagine building a house given the price of materials and today's labor!

Last year I wanted to cover the inside walls of an out building with plywood and was shocked at the price per sheet of 1/2". I ended up buying 40 sheets of 7/16 OSB for $16 each. I recall that stuff being $6!

Then what really made me mad was after putting that crap up a wind storm came through taking down a *lot* of nice trees that are just going to rot. I could have taken just four or five 10' sections to a small saw mill near by and gotten enough 3/4" oak and cherry to cover the interior for just the sawing cost which is almost nothing.

It's one of the reasons everyone's homeowner's insurance is skyrocketing, the cost to rebuild your house after it burns down has essentially doubled or even tripled.

I wish I dropped homeowner insurance back when I first paid off the house we were in. That'd saved over 20 years of paying insurance. Hell I still might, I just received notice that it'll be $1,705 for a year when it renews next month.

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
I wish I dropped homeowner insurance back when I first paid off the house we were in. That'd saved over 20 years of paying insurance. Hell I still might, I just received notice that it'll be $1,705 for a year when it renews next month.

Mine has gone up $1k, each of the last 3 years. Right now it’s $5,448 per year. House is worth a lot but it’s not some baller crib with 3 car garage, 2 stories, and all that. Nice but not baller or anything. My renewal meeting with my broker is in December, during the holidays. Same as every year. I’m not usually fearful of much but I’ll admit I fear that mother fucker call every year. My heart sinks when I hear “homeowners is going up $1k a year. I already searched all the available companies and you are getting the best deal staying with them. If we move you, it’ll go up even more.” So infuriating. I haven’t made a claim this decade.

And I have to build my permanent home over the next 3 years. Being and staying broke is a way of life now.

Seriously, this is a BIG problem! It is not only that nobody can afford to build anymore, but nobody that doesn't already own a house can afford to buy one! I just shake my head when people dismiss the new 50 Year Mortgages as 'No Big Deal, just don't get one'...It's FIFTY Years! Anyone getting a 50 year mortgage won't pay it off until AFTER they retire, if ever! This IS the reason for the 50 Year Mortgage.

Every time I see something like this I
gotta believe
that there are twenty
times more millionaires out in this country, than
We know about.

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
I wish I dropped homeowner insurance back when I first paid off the house we were in. That'd saved over 20 years of paying insurance. Hell I still might, I just received notice that it'll be $1,705 for a year when it renews next month.

And pay out of pocket to fix or rebuild it if your house is damaged/destroyed?

It'd take a lot more than that $20k-ish you would have saved in insurance premiums for the past 20 years if your roof and wall is torn off by a tornado or the house burns down due to an electrical fire.

And it'll cost more than $1700 per year to rent a place to live going forward.

Every time I read a thread like this, it makes me glad we got our cabin on the property completed before the COVID years.
Why? With lumber/construction pricing being what it is today, this year during deer season I would be inside my Jeep running the engine for warming up, instead of inside the cabin next to the wood stove.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

And pay out of pocket to fix or rebuild it if your house is damaged/destroyed?

It'd take a lot more than that $20k-ish you would have saved in insurance premiums for the past 20 years if your roof and wall is torn off by a tornado or the house burns down due to an electrical fire.

And it'll cost more than $1700 per year to rent a place to live going forward.

Yes if my house is destroyed I would need to pay for a new one.


Obviously it'd take more than $20K to replace my house but the odds my house is destroyed really is a long shot.


Thankfully even in the unlikely event my house was destroyed I have other places to live for no cost.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:

Seriously, this is a BIG problem! It is not only that nobody can afford to build anymore, but nobody that doesn't already own a house can afford to buy one!

This is exactly the boat my BIL and his wife are in. The got married in their mid-20's 3 years ago. She's about to have a baby and they live in a rental, and most likely will for a very long time, maybe for good as they are completely locked out of the housing market with prices the way they are even on piece of shit houses requiring a lot of money to bring up to modern standards.

I tell my wife that we could not afford to buy the very house we are in right now that we bought in November 2017 if we had to buy it today.

I don't know what's going to happen but I DO know this is not sustainable and something is going to give eventually and it's going to be ugly.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I tell my wife that we could not afford to buy the very house we are in right now that we bought in November 2017 if we had to buy it today.

Yep. I bought my new house in 2020 for $229k @ 2%. The mortgage is easily affordable on just my income.

If I had to buy it now, 5 years later, it'd be $360k @ 6+%.

That would basically double my mortgage payment, which I couldn't easily afford, and I doubt I could qualify for that much on just my income anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
<<snip>>
I tell my wife that we could not afford to buy the very house we are in right now that we bought in November 2017 if we had to buy it today.

I don't know what's going to happen but I DO know this is not sustainable and something is going to give eventually and it's going to be ugly.

We bought our house a shade over 10 years ago for around $90,000, and then put another almost $40,000 into renovations before moving in, so about $139,000 if I remember correctly. We just went through foreclosure but have it stalled until February. Estimated resale value is currently around $240,000. If we could afford someplace else I'd be more than happy to let the damned thing go as the location sucks for me due to high traffic volume and associated noise, but everybody else wants it due to the schools it is zoned for! At this point in time, the minimum RENT for another place would be $1500-$1800 per month, and if we have trouble handling a $900/month mortgage, how the hell could we afford to move???

Between this situation and my current medical costs skyrocketing is why I started the fundraiser a few weeks back. https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...935/m/4910055715/p/1 This mess has depleted almost all of it with no more coming in lately, so I'm not sure where it's gonna go from here. We have no place else to move, and nobody to live with, so we're just hanging on as long as possible as it's the cheapest option!

Bill if you have $139,000 invested and it's worth $240,000 you should have a lot of equity after the down payment and 10 years payments.

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
Bill if you have $139,000 invested and it's worth $240,000 you should have a lot of equity after the down payment and 10 years payments.

Maybe, but with our credit wrecked, we cannot qualify for another loan... especially what houses are now going for around here. Everything has doubled (or more) in the past 10 years in this area. We cannot leave the area like I would prefer because my wife is caring for her parents on an almost daily basis, and there's nobody else to do it.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Seriously, this is a BIG problem! It is not only that nobody can afford to build anymore, but nobody that doesn't already own a house can afford to buy one!

Or pay taxes and insurance on the one you've already got. We bought our place in 2007, and taxes have quadrupled since then. Insurance keeps going up massively, too. I recently went in and had them substantially increase the deductible, which helped a little but it's still over $1000/year.

Heating and cooling is killing me, too. Utilities are more than double what they used to be a month, and when the time comes to replace our furnace/AC it's going to cost over $10k instead of the $2k it cost to put it in. We put in a wood stove last year and we've all been breaking our backs all summer stockpiling wood. I've got a pretty good pile going, hoping not to have to run the furnace this winter.

We're in the same boat. My wife and I would love to move, but we can't. We couldn't afford our current house if we had to buy it today. With today's rates and values, our payment would jump by a little more than 150% to buy exactly what we already have. The increase in value has given us a lot of equity, but we can't use it as stepping up would once again result in a payment that is multiples of our current payment.

Yep, we moved to our current home in late ‘98. And even then, we were worried about the monthly payment, it ended up around $875 at the highest, and our incomes were not great. We managed, and slowly paid it off, after a couple re fi’s too to lower interest. There is no way we could afford to move anywhere else with the prices the way they are, even with our home value probably going up. Thankfully, it’s paid off, and we like it here other than dealing with winter, lol. Plus getting close to retirement, and definitely don’t want a mortgage at our age now. I feel for people that can’t buy a home cause of the income not meeting home pricing.

My boys and I built a platform for weightlifting and folks here said plywood would have been better than OSB, but not for me at $75 a sheet for plywood and $25 a sheet for OSB or $450 vs $150 for 6 sheets.

When I lived back east in the mid 90’s I had a custom log home built to my exact specs, very professionally done. It was 2600 SF plus full basement and 3 car garage. Total cost was 170K which seemed astronomical at the time.
When we moved west, not knowing if we were going to stay long term we rented. Fair price, good responsiveness from landlord when needed. Right at the peak of the Covid market hotness he tells us at the end of our lease he is selling ( did give us 3 months notice. )
Narrowed my search to a couple of neighborhoods based on commuting to work proximity to other things important to our lifestyle. Houses were selling in usually less than 24 hours of being listed often for tens of thousands over asking. ( relocating Californians with deep pockets caused a lot of the frenzy) luckily found a house, offered 5K under asking and got it. Luckily with the rock bottom interest rates at the time. But now I am in a 1900SF no basement house on a tiny lot. Happy with it, but updates from my real estate agents say if you want to sell you will get close to 600K - crazy money for a house this size nice as it is. But then could probably not afford to get another, especially with the high interest