My job is a very accurate indicator of the economy. When I started in 2016, every winter before I was there was excruciatingly slow. This proved true for my first winter of 2016/2017. No phone calls, no well permits, no septic permits. Just silence and time to work on training and improvements. 2017/2018 was a little busier. 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 winters were absolute hell for me. It was just like the summer so I had not time to play catch-up on paperwork or attend many trainings or meetings. Constant floods of phone calls and people coming into my office wanting to build a house or upgrade their existing home. This stayed true even up to Inauguration Day. Then, the last week has been slowing down to the point that so far Monday and Tuesday, I’ve had zero phone calls, no emails, nothing. Like a fucking light switch the building stopped. And the economy didn’t even tank, interest rates didn’t go up. It just happened like someone turned off the lights. The crash is happening, remember this post when the effects are finally big enough to be seen.
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Can any of this be related to how insanely expensive wood and other materials have become?
I want to build like a mofo, but stopped all plans due to high lumber costs.
Back in august when prices jumped 2-3x, I was talking with the building department employees about this. They said since interest rates were still low, people were just taking out bigger loans to compensate for the higher price materials without going over what they could afford as a monthly payment. I thought for sure they were wrong and the market would crash, but consumer confidence was extremely high and to my disbelief, it stayed busy as fuck right up until last week. I thought the only thing that would stop the boom was a major interest rate spike. Nope, just a communist president was all it took.