What’s the Construction Inflation rate?
From Sept to Oct construction materials input price changes were normal, but Final Demand prices for October increased in one month by what could be considered an entire year’s increase. We’ve been watching the price pass thru catch up slowly, until now.
This is the single largest monthly increase in Final Demand pricing since final demand records began in 2006. Prior to this, based on changes in recent months, I expected future cost increases to add on slowly. So I wasn’t expecting the huge jump all at once. This may be some increases that were occurring over a few months that finally got captured in the index.
In October, the Final demand cost for Buildings and Trades averaged +12% year-to-date. In July, August and September it was between 5% and 6%. A change like this in one month has never occurred before. In fact, this one-month change is greater than any annual change on record. So, it resets the baseline for all forecasts.
For Oct, Nonresidential Buildings 2021 inflation is estimated at 6.8% and Residential at 15%. The forecast for 2022 is estimated at 4.5% for nonresidential buildings inflation and 7% for residential. See inflation and PPI data on my blog for more.
It must be noted that huge jump in nonresidential buildings inflation may not yet be picked up in many of the industry indices that we reference. Construction Analytics BCI is now updated to include the 11-10-21 PPI final demand inflation. Some sources update only quarterly, some semi-annually. After this event, I would expect to see a change in most other sources, which may update sometime over the next quarter.
One important thing, when inflation turns out to be higher than you thought, that means productivity is lower than you thought.
Construction Analytics 
I wouldn’t expect a decrease in demand for homes anytime soon.
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Increase in Construction Inflation pushes the market of Raw Materials to rise and, thus, making construction process more expensive. But, having in mind that worldwide inflation rate is expected to achieve point of +- 4%, building price increasing may decrease the demand for new houses or whatever build. That’s why constructors must cut costs on all other stages of construction such as sales, project management, safety etc., at the same time saving the appropriate level of quality.
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