Bluebird Featured in The Urban Developer
Bluebird’s Cofounder Claire O’Rourke provided insight to The Urban Developer on how the surge in building and housing demand has affected the cost of materials.
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Timber Shortage Brings Building Boom Unstuck
“Only a year ago, it was unimaginable a massive surge in building demand would lead it to the brink of crisis, with a critical shortage of building materials causing crippling delays and cost blow-outs.
Timber supplies were the first to be hit as Australia and other nations around the world, grappling with the impact of the pandemic, pushed the button on economic stimulus programs focused on housing construction.
Project management specialist Claire O’Rourke from Bluebird Property said the company was currently working across 10 active construction sites and witnessing the impact of the timber shortage first-hand.
“We first saw the issue mid last year when the bushfires hit tens of thousands of hectares of our domestic reserves,” she said. “Now with the HomeBuilder boom the situation has become even worse.
“In the last six months we’ve seen a 20 to 30 per cent increase in the price of timber and lead times are stretching up to 16 weeks.”
O’Rourke said the situation was frustrating and it was a matter of factoring the issues into its programs and cost plans as well as working with the builders to ensure they are able to place their orders as soon as possible.
“The spike in demand won’t continue forever and we’re already seeing a large dip in building approvals so all the indications are that things will normalise next year,” she said.”
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