Home depot gold (i mean lumber prices)

The Craigslist “free” section has become a hard to use place due to these scams. The photo of the 2x6 lumber is a copy of a posting in Materials. The only tip-off is that the postings want texts or calls only. I think they are harvesting phone numbers for the folks offering car warranties. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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Police stop ‘exorcism’ in Home Depot lumber aisle

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My favorite comment: "“THE POWER DRILL OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!”

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Could this be an option?

https://dallas.craigslist.org/ndf/mat/d/allen-lumber/7340687519.html

Some markets are just running out of supply completely. Try looking into Fireworks shortages. This is a market that had it’s largest sales year in USA in 2019 hitting 1 billion in consumer sales. During COVID in 2020, that new record didn’t just go up, it literally doubled to 1.9 billion. This has not only drained the stands, it has also drained the distributors and manufacturers to near dry. Distributors that would carry inventories into the 4 to 5 million dollar range between years are under 1 million in inventory and in many cases have presold their future resupply. While the smaller distributors are 100% and are starting to be cut from the system. Then the shipping issues and chinese overhaul of the manufacturing system are also hitting. Add the 100th anniversary of the current chinese party adding first serve orders to all manufacturers and your dealing with some very serious shortages.

I’ve been in discussions at all levels of this industry and this is looking like a 3 to 5 year cycle to build back up to where we were. While also losing large swaths of product to new questionable regulations. Fireworks are not the only industries seeing time frames like this or worse. Add a weakening dollar, wage hikes being forced due to competing against government payouts making $50k or less workers more to not work, and the growing shortages. This is going to be a bumpy one.

Purchasing is a headache now, but we currently have the money to pay for the items we can’t buy. The response is way scarier when you can’t even afford the items you have to buy. Lumber got high enough that many that didn’t need their new project now stopped and are waiting for the price to come down. But, the people who have to get their houses repaired now or replace their crashed cars now may soon be or already are looking to come out of pocket even more as they hit limits of insurance.

The big tornado that hit Garland a few years back opened my eyes to these kinds of issues. As I watched friends, that had jobs and insurance, hit insurance payout limits because the demo costs were higher than the plan allotted for and they had to come up with $15,000+ in additional payments after meeting a large deductible already. This left my parent’s neighborhood in mixed shambles for about 2 years. These are the people that will feel this the worst. The ones already being stretched. How big does that get before it really the nation. About the 56% of us agree we are living check to check. A normal catastrophic event wipes this group back to the start. The same group maybe wiped out totally some insult to that injury. Is this part of some of the unrest we are seeing?

I’m personally hopeful, as I’m watching many markets that looked dead during COVID rebounding now. I’m just watching the price of common items going up. Wondering who are being lifted by the tide and who are drowning.

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