ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Greater Orlando homebuilders say potential tariffs affecting lumber could add to already rising housing costs, with Canada\u2019s proposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods scheduled to take effect Sept. 8.<\/p>\n
Builders say higher material costs would likely be passed on to buyers in a housing market already facing pressure from inflation, interest rates, supply costs and impact fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuilders are very good planners; you know we look ahead a lot and all of my guys work on a four-week look-ahead schedule, just on the job site itself,\u201d said John Riddle, vice president of Turning Leaf Custom Homes.<\/p>\n
Riddle said one difficult thing to plan for is rising costs, especially if tariffs significantly increase material prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost builders aren\u2019t able to absorb a 25% or 50% new cost on materials; a tariff,\u201d Riddle said. \u201cSo, it has to be passed on directly to the consumer \u2014 the home buyer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riddle said Turning Leaf Custom Homes may be able to limit the impact because of the materials it uses.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, we\u2019re a little bit unique,\u201d Riddle said. \u201cWe don\u2019t use as much lumber as some of my builder colleagues use, because of our wall system; the insulated concrete form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chassity Vega, CEO of the Greater Orlando Builders Association, said the housing market is already seeing cost increases tied to supplies.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeven percent to 15% increase just on supplies,\u201d Vega said. \u201cThat gets added to the cost of a home. So, it just, it keeps going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vega said affordability challenges are not new, but tariffs would add another hurdle for builders and buyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know we\u2019re fighting the inflation, we\u2019re fighting the interest rates, we\u2019re fighting the supply costs, we\u2019re fighting the governments on the impact fees, and you know everything that it takes to bring a home into a community,\u201d Vega said.<\/p>\n
Builders say that means their bottom lines are being reduced while costs to consumers continue to rise.<\/p>\n
At this time, there have been no additional conversations around negotiations between the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Greater Orlando homebuilders say potential tariffs affecting lumber could add to already rising housing costs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2031,558,3316,115,1335,139,141,140,835],"class_list":["post-388647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-local-business","tag-business","tag-jaclyn-harold","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}