Logging company Weyerhaeuser is betting on a strong housing market, CEO says

Weyerhaeuser CEO Devin Stockfish told CNBC Jim Kramer on Friday that the logging company believes the US housing market will remain strong for years, even after the pandemic helped spark a spike in home purchases.

“First of all, this all goes back to the level of construction in progress that we did in the US, actually going back to the last Great Recession,” Stockfish said, referring to the industry’s historically low housing volume.

Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser, which owns or controls 11 million acres of woodland in America, produces the lumber needed to build homes, giving Stockfish an insight into market conditions both now and in the future.

“When you think of normalizing the housing stock in any historical period that really goes beyond ’08, ’09, 2010, we did build well below that level for a significant amount of time. … We think there is a lot of pending demand, ”the executive said in an interview with Mad Money magazine.

The housing market has warmed up sharply during the Covid pandemic, and the soaring house prices have sparked some fears that another bubble is forming, or at least a noticeable slowdown is on the other side.

While there have been some signs of a cooling lately, Stockfish said demographic trends will help support the market over the next decade. In particular, he pointed to a wave of millennials who are reaching stages in their lives where home buying becomes a priority.

Stockfish said this, combined with the adjustments, “gives us a lot of confidence that we will have to build a lot of homes here over the next five or 10 years to meet the level of demand we have here in the US. “