Lumber use off

By H. A. Roberts President Western Wood Products Association

ETAILERS who look to Western lumber as a prof- It itable portion of their business should find those products continuing to contribute their share. But the complexities of modern society - economic, political, environmental and socialcan be expected to distort those patterns of demand and supply with which we have become comfortable. This will pose challenges both to lumber producers and those in the distribution trades.

But each negative seems to have its positive counterpart. Take housing as an example. Our forecasts register 1.4 million starts for 1989. down from 1.45 million starts pro-

Story at a Glance

Industry production capacity will easily supply a slightly less robust demand in '89... despite 1.4 mlllion housing starts, homes are using more wood per unit . . . repair markets will be strong.

pared to all lumber consumption actually will climb from 33.90lo this year to 34.20/o in 1989.

A similar lumber use picture is developing in the repair/remodeling market.- In 1987. the natioi's consumer d-i-yers and professional contractors used a record 15.38 billion board feet of lumber in expanding, modify- ing and improving residences and othei structlures. This is projected to decline to 14.86 billion board feet in 1988. and drop again in 1989 to 14.4 billion board feet jected for 1988.

The positives, however, are that new residential construction is using more board feet per square foot (more new home designs than ever include wood-based outdoor decks) and we appear to be in a trend where new single family homes are being built bigger.

For these reasons, WWPA statistics show that on the average each single family U.S. home now consumes 12,700 board feet per house. Just a decade ago the average was 10,500 board feet.

The WWPA expects home building to consume 15.5 billion board feet in 1989 as compared with 16.1 billion feet this year and 17.8 billion feet in 1987. But on the plus side, we project the ratio of housing's needs as com-