The homebuilding industry is having the most difficult time in decades meeting demand, the sum of many pandemic complications. But this moment reaches peak absurdity with garage doors.
Plywood is used to seal the garage of a new home, right, in Sacramento, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2022.
“It used to take us 20 weeks to build a house,” said Adrian Foley, president and CEO of the Brookfield Properties development group, which develops thousands of single-family homes annually in North America. “And now it takes us 20 weeks to get a set of garage doors.” “If anything, the pandemic has even furthered that” demand, said Jeff Schroeder, a senior vice president for Ponderosa Homes in California. As home prices have soared during the pandemic, families in places like the Bay Area are pushed toward cheaper housing farther into the exurbs. “To do that,” Schroeder said, “they need a car.”
“This is probably the first time I’ve ever been involved with a supply-chain issue,” said Winfred DeLeon, Sacramento’s chief building official. The department came up with a provisional agreement — to be signed by the bank and the homebuyer — allowing a home to be occupied with painted plywood sealing the garage.
That index was developed early in the pandemic. Then Todd Tomalak, who leads the John Burns building products group, put an addition on his Green Bay, Wisconsin, house with a new master suite and a roomier garage for his woodworking tools. It was “100% done, done, done” in early December, save for two things — the bathtub and the garage door.Yes, the guy who tries to forecast supply-chain problems with garage doors can’t get a garage door either.
Garage doors come measured not in one- or two-car sizes, but in three- or six-inch increments. Want windows? How about insulation? The answers affect just how much it weighs. And now you need a different spring to counterbalance it.