Prices

We continue to get buffeted by price increases, seemingly weekly, which puts pressure on our estimates and has a negative effect on feasibility for our clients.  Though prices are being locked in for Fall starts up North, clients have repeatedly asked me what will happen to them for their Spring starts.  It’s certainly understandable.  I’d want to know too.  Normally, I’d have a good sense of this, but I don’t feel that I have a good basis to know now.  This summer, home building continued at a brisk pace, and lumber peaked at over $1,800 per mbf.  Clients kept asking me what they should do at those prices, but this situation was unprecedented.  Most locked in, and then lumber started to come down.  Jeff Korzenic, Chief Investment Strategist of Fifth Third Bank, said earlier this summer that the best cure for high commodity prices is high commodity prices since it...