MEMPHIS, Tennessee — A heads up prospective home buyers.
The international supply chain crisis is impacting local construction projects, with the worst potentially still to come.
The supply crunch - along with shipping and delivery delays for all kinds of building supplies - is driving up costs, delaying construction jobs, and making it more difficult to afford a home.
"It's got to get better. I can't imagine it getting worse," Chris Ybos, the president of Ybos & Sons Construction, said Friday.
For Ybos, it's a relentless grind these days, as it's increasingly difficult to secure even the most basic of building supplies.
"It's pretty difficult. The variables are changing almost daily," Ybos said. "Some days it's paint, some days it's windows, some days it's lumber."
Ybos said the mixture of rising construction costs and delivery delays is setting back completion dates and complicating things for hundreds of workers.
"It's a moving target. You can't get an answer from suppliers, manufacturers. You call and you'll get a delivery date, and you'll get an update and that date has changed two months," Ybos added.
The global supply crisis is also hampering local home construction, which relies on hundreds of different supplies to build a structure from its foundation.
"The challenges with the supply chain that affect every component of what goes into a house - we've never had to face it before and it's really becoming a serious concern," National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard said.
Howard is worried more would-be home buyers will be left on the sidelines, if the construction supply woes and cost challenges linger into 2022.
"That means that the builder who owns the land that it's on and is building the house has to pay more. It means the price of the house is going to go up. That will price many consumers out of the market," Howard added.
The home builders industry is a critical piece of the economy, making up about 15% of the nation's gross domestic product.