HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) – Imagine this! You are desperate to move, find a great house under construction in a perfect location and sign a contract. Then you find out, you can’t move in until the builders get their hands on one key piece that is nowhere to be found: Garage doors.
“Really no one has ever seen this worldwide shortage of products in the supply chain,” said Barry Oxley.
Oxley is executive officer of the Huntsville Madison County Builders Association. He’s seen the supply chain crisis play out since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said it’s a domino effect: High demand for various products, little supply.
“There is not just demand here in Huntsville, Alabama,” Oxley said. “It’s across the country. So every state and city that is growing is trying to pull that supply and there is just not enough.”
Oxley said the garage door shortage, along with other missing elements like windows and doors, complicates the homebuilding process.
“There have been shortages of interior doors…we’ve even had to put up doors that weren’t going to be part of the house, just so they could have a certificate of occupancy,” Oxley said. “So all of those things have lengthened the time of building a house.”
A couple years ago, you could build a 2,000 square foot house in six months. Now it takes about 10 or 12 months, double the time. Oxley said some builders are choosing different style garage doors or materials to get the job done but still, the supply chain crisis is making everybody’s job harder.
“When you are building a house, it’s like building a five-course dinner. Everything has to be staged at the right times for it to come out right,” Oxley said. “So if you are starting the house and you’ve got the foundation but then the framers are behind three weeks…Everything just sits there for three weeks but then everything else that is supposed to be coming in time gets delayed too.”
Barry believes shipping delays and labor shortages need to be addressed before anything else gets better.
“It’s going to take time and patience on everybody’s part whether it’s the consumer, the builder or the contractor,” he said.
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