According to Marcus Lu's great analysis of the recent explosion in lumber prices on the website Visual Capitalist, over the last year the price of lumber has increased a whopping 377%. He uses a fascinating, easy to understand metric: How many homes could be built with $50,000 in lumber, then and now?
The answer is astonishing; as shown in the above graphic, that same amount of lumber could build eight more homes only one year ago than it can build now. There aren't a lot of industries that are simultaneously this volatile and yet so essential to our economic health and growth. But does it have to be this way?
Once the devastating threat of wildfires become an unfortunate new normal, the inability of our dysfunctional design and construction industry to respond to the immediate need exposed the waste, inefficiencies, and random ambiguities of the entire process. Not only was the industry unable to deliver a new home in less than three years, it was also impossible to provide a predictable budget. Labor and material shortages, severe market volatility and simple greed created a climate of ever rising costs. The ridiculously long design and permit approval timelines also meant that no matter how accurate an initial budget was, by the time construction was ready to start, that budget was obsolete.
In 2019, the PHNX team set out to change that. Confident that there were numerous opportunities to streamline design and construction methodology, we were determined not only to improve the process, but to deliver a better home. We discovered that the same materials and methods affected the most by market volatility also happened to be the least efficient. Take wood for example; we have been building wood framed structures for hundreds of years. They rot, they burn, they get eaten by bugs. Why on earth are we still building this way? Our society has moved from the enlightenment, through the industrial revolution to the tech boom and beyond in the same period, but we can't figure out a better way to make buildings?
The PHNX Method is based on two principles: Component Based Design and Coordinated Design/Build. Our entire team communicates with one another from start to finish. Materials and methods are determined by architect and builder together, always with cost in mind.
Building costs will always increase; that is an unfortunate reality, and PHNX is certainly no exception. However, what we offer is predictability. You know how much your home will cost during the concept design phase - when revisions to stay on budget are easy to do and still possible. And, regardless of market volatility, a PHNX Home can cost about 20%-30% less than a traditional build - it will never cost more.
A better home, a smarter home, a beautiful home, built faster and for less. Contact PHNX to begin the journey towards your new Forever Home today!