More price increases

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I was told the price of getting a shipping container to the UK from China has gone from 3_4£K to 10K.
Cement was about £6 a waterproof bag last year for me to almost twice that now. Nearest B&Q to me is limiting them to two per customer so I'm told. A strainer fence post was about £23 last year to £40 now.
SCM increased prices on some of their Minimax mobile dust extractors by 25% yesterday. Sedgwick have just reprised all their machines … up 10-15% from June. Another one of our suppliers tells us that steel is up 102%, aluminium 70% copper 78% and container costs through the roof. One of our clients in Essex told me mdf has increased 145% since lockdown 1. I think Inflation is going to be more than 2.5% the government reports.
 
Now we have outsourced every thing apart from a service and hospitality sector apart from high end engineering and Motorsport we are now at the mercy of China and the shipping companies all of whom are rubbing thier hands at the monopoly of supply they have over us. Simplistic I know but we made the bed and now we sleep in it.

Cheers James
 
Abutting one side of a path from my house into town are the gardens of about 8 houses. 2 years ago their boundaries were a mixture of hedges and somewhat decrepit fences.

Last night as I wandered down to a meeting I noticed they had all been replaced by new fencing - all of which I would describe as upper-mid range (not top) quality.

I have also had some work done around the house over the last year - UPVC fascias, bathroom, drains, (and a fence). Tradespeople I talk to are booked for months ahead and will not take on new large jobs for up to a year.

Lockdown seems to have massively increased demand for both materials and labour as a lot (not all) folk confined at home have (a) realised the work that needs doing, and (b) saved significant amounts through being unable to spend as normal

It is no surprise that increased demand for home improvements, increased savings through lockdown, and covid disrupted supply chains has lead to major price increases. The real question is whether (and when) prices will soften and return to more "normal" proportions.

Having replaced all those fences, bathrooms, home office conversions etc etc which should last 10+ years, I may expect demand to fall for the next few.
 
With everyone in lockdown the gas/electric use increased dramatically.
People used to the heating provided free at work, thought it ok to have the same at home.
Then the bills come in and many cannot afford it.

Didn't the start of the pan(dem)ic coincide with unseasonably high temperatures? I know my facebook feed was flooded with photos of people taking advantage of the furlough to soak up the sun and drink copious amounts of alcohol as if they were on a club 18-30+ holiday. Any extra drain to electricity would have been from running hot tubs.
 
30k kitchen :oops:

convert to dollars and that's probably typical here. Imagine you have appliances (those will look out of place, must change for new kitchen), countertops (even if they're granite from 20 years ago now, that's out of date -quartz is the thing and it's been the in thing now for a strong fraction of the decade, so it's only got another 5 or 10 years before it's not the in thing. Cabinets, if they're actually wood, figure $8k at wholesale (they'll be marked at a whole lot more than that in the bill, but the contractor does get to deal with them if something isn't right, and they probably have office staff to cover with the markups, or at least one office person who does estimates and orders most of the time).

Add other hardware, lighting, floors, wall (backsplash, etc) electrical upgrades.

$60k to $100k in larger houses isn't uncommon, especially if they level up on the materials and start going for things like viking or thermador appliances (the appliances can hit $30k on their own - and they'll be less reliable than most of the low end consumer stuff, which is something manufacturers can't afford to screw up or they'll go out of business).

I did my own kitchen, no real remodeling, just new cabinets, wall tin, floor, lights (I made the cabinets) and countertops (I fabricated them) and I think it was still close to $8k, just for materials - my cost. It's not that large, either.

That's where the magic of increased equity and rolling it into the loan comes in. "I can't afford $50k, but I can afford $300 a month".
 
Our kitchen cost about a grand, no appliances, we couldn't afford new ones. I did a good bit of the fitting myself but had to pay someone to do various tricky bits like mitre joints on the counters etc.
 
There's a garage guy I listen to from time to time (he's a good proxy for the lumber market, because he's making freestanding garages in a rural area where you can't just charge the moon). Materials can make a job of his unprofitable at once.

He showed a chart a few days ago (I just got the video recommended today - i wonder if google's ad algorithms are keylogging me! probably). white wood was around $400 for a thousand board feet before the run up. It went as high as $1700 (and a $2.75 2x4 for him was as high as $8.25), and is now somewhere around $400 again for futures. So, there's no drive at this point in the US for materials costs to stay high - it's just a matter of how long retailers and wholesalers and try to keep the spot and retail market high without any real support (and they're expert at doing it for a while without answering the question why).

That fellow is what folks here would call an old timer - he stores a large lead value in inventory instead of operating with short leads to "maximize capital productivity".
 
Our kitchen cost about a grand, no appliances, we couldn't afford new ones. I did a good bit of the fitting myself but had to pay someone to do various tricky bits like mitre joints on the counters etc.

I didn't replace appliances, either. Mine were 15 years old with the exception of a dishwasher purchased a year prior to match the others. Even with modest appliances, it would've been another $4-$5k just to have new things. I asked my wife who she wanted to buy appliances for - her, or for her friends to see. that didn't go over well, but I just didn't buy new appliances in the end and got away with it.
 
(separate - if you're someone who doesn't care that much what other people think, when you get into $100k plus kitchens, you're dealing with people who are pretty fragile, or perhaps they're so big on themselves that they think it's a positive thing and they're going to win the contest of whose kitchen looks best if we take pictures.

An example of this - an acquaintance is a partner attorney here. Her husband worked a rank and file job. She became embarrassed about it so they strategized that he would run a small business. The business operates at a loss that she has to supplement so that it can stay open, but it's OK to her because she doesn't have to cavort with other attorneys and then admit that her husband is an unskilled hourly worker. I told her she'd have been better off making it like a dirty fetish thing - liking certain types of guys and not the attorney or white collar type, but she wasn't brave enough to do that. She can now just say that her husband owns and runs a business.
 
I bought some wood today. I may not do it again.

4 metre length of 75mm x150mm pine €35. It was €18 a couple of months ago. I'm off to the forest with a chainsaw, before everyone else catches on.
 

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