One kind of situation a roofer never likes to be in is an unstable one. Unfortunately, that’s how it is with material costs sky-high.

According to reports, roofers have watched the prices of items that are cornerstones of their business like siding, shingles and wood rise 25 to 30 percent. 

Demand is high because people are doing more home-improvement projects as a side effect of the pandemic, and also it’s storm season where roofs are likely to get damaged by hail, rain and wind which is bound to increase demand.

“Lead times that we used to have of three to four weeks, they’re out to 12-18 weeks now,” Kirk Scott, owner of Scott Exteriors, told another media outlet..

“By the time the material gets here, we could have probably  three to four price increases from that distributor before we even get the product,” one roofing company owner, Terry Neeman, told Nebraska’s KLKN.

In general, production is low because of coronavirus shutdowns and decreased capacity. In Texas, for example, lumberjacks were not considered essential workers. But the winter storms in Texas last month that caused mass electrical outages have also thrown a wrench in manufacturing. “Down south like in Texas, a lot of the plants are down there so they had to shut down because of some of the power loss issues,” Jeremy McKinnis, vice president of McKinnis Roofing in Nebraska, told local media.

Roofers in Texas are facing the same problem of high costs for materials and increased demand because of the weather. “The weather is just super brutal. Lots of hail storms, tornadoes and things like that,” Tyler Morris of Morris Roofing and Construction told KLTV. “Some of the shingle suppliers will email us and say ‘hey due to inflation, shingle prices or gutter prices are going to be going up 7 to 15 percent as a whole.’”

Homeowners are struggling to get the supplies they desire. Morris said that “If you look around at all of the new roofs coming up you’re going to see a lot of black and gray roofs. That’s because that’s the shingles they’re really producing right now as a whole, and there’s no wait time for those.”

High demand for roofers is, in general, a good thing. But the compounding issues of weather, shutdowns, and increased demand are giving roofers new challenges.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.