Money Migration
Not a perfectly edited or thought out post, but it's been sitting around a bit so I'm publishing, blemish and all -
Pattern for Progress, a mid-Hudson think tank whose focus to some degree is housing, and other related community development, released into my inbox what looked at first glance to be an interesting study on the Covid-related impacts on the Hudson Valley housing and economic front. And, that is what is was, but left me wanting significantly, and searched my inbox for part 2 and 3 that would cover more territory. Maybe I’m missing something.
Called Money Migration, it’s based on 5 years of data published by the IRS which collects data on people (families) moving into and out of areas, and their adjusted gross incomes (AGI) county to county and state to state. (this is being lifted mostly word for word from their white paper).
“Incomes, Migration, and Gentrification in the Hudson Valley during the Covid-19 Pandemic” - so don’t blame me for having high hopes for this document - that’s a great subtitle by any measure, especially for someone right smack dab in the center of the hurricane, both reeling from and benefiting from the era.
Interestingly, lumber prices have dropped significantly, and anyone who experienced the jump - literally a tripling or more in 2020, 2021 and 2022 - will never forget the day in day out anxiety of this lumber creep, or in many situations, this lumber price explosion accompanied by true scarcity. There was a time when you didn’t know what next would next be unavailable. At times it became very close to vital and non-interchangeable components. Some examples of product that just disappeared and became unavailable was wood siding, hence our overnight transition to HardyPlank, once considered a mighty upgrade but with the increase in wood prices actually become on par with wood siding (if available, which it wasn’t).
They seem to use a 2x4 fir as a baseline board foot measurement and in 2022 it was $630 per 1000 board feet, and in June 2024 it was $346 per board foot. So to reduce it to something we’d all understand, in 2022 board foot was $.63 and in 2024 it is $.34. To make it even more meaningful, turn it into a 2x4x8 - a piece of wood many people have familiarity with - and it was $.63 x 8 or $5.04 in 2022 and $2.72 in 2024. Truth be told, I think the $5.04 in 2022 understates the case, due to regional differences or something - I remember it being higher.
More shocking yet was plywood and plywood sheathing (OSB), which you use tons of over the course of framing a house - OSB was so cheap we’d use it for walkways over mud, and then it turned into gold that people were stealing like they used to do with cooper.
Crazy time to live through for sure and our industry was in the center of the storm.
And on the hybrid/remote work front - according to the Office Building Index from location intelligence software company Placer.ai, which found the national average for office attendance was down only 29.4% compared to June 2019. I guess what they are saying is it looks like the reinvented workplace will accomodate a 30% work from home environment. Because it's national, and across all industries, probably - like a lot of statistics - very misleading regionally, and among certain white collar professions. I know a ton of people that still work from home partially and or mostly. I think the workplace has been reinvented into a more flexible situation even among 'full time office people' that the definition of full time in office has changed.