Supply pressure for Bathurst builders

Builder and owner of Avason Homes, Stuart Gallwey, based in NSW's Central West, said current long waiting periods for materials are a consequence of government grants, including the HomeBuilder program, which provided grants for new homes or renovations.

And COVID hasn't helped, he said.

"That's [the grants] a big part because everyone's jumped on that. It's the combination of both grants [First Home Buyer and HomeBuilder] and the flow-on effect," Mr Gallwey said.

"Supply meets demand, so something's got to give.

"At the moment, just with COVID too, it just makes it difficult because there's so much demand out there [but] the supply's not there."

Between imported supplies being quarantined, local manufacturers under a lot of pressure to send out materials and recurring lockdowns, the waiting period for materials has increased significantly.

Although the main problem is timber, Mr Gallwey said there are a lot of other materials with lengthy waiting periods.

"The timber's a big issue, it's going to delay a lot of jobs, [but] it's not just timber, it's aluminum, it's glass, it's reinforcing mesh as well, so it's difficult to plan jobs when you're facing these delays," he said.

"The supplier not being able to tell us exactly when we can get material makes it hard as well.

"There's so much work on at the moment. I don't think they predicted the outcome that there is now, especially with timber."

The other element in the supply and demand puzzle is market price.

IN OTHER RACE TO REGIONS NEWS:

With sources a little more scarce and demand so high, prices are going up - and quite significantly in some cases.

"With COVID, we've had contracts out there, and because of the delays, they're just increasing the price of timber, concrete, reinforcing mesh, things like that," Mr Gallwey said.

"And it's a bit rude to put that back on the client.

"In our instances, the timber frames and trusses have gone up at least by 20 per cent and, moving forward, we're experiencing maybe another 10pc by December.

"Steel mesh has had four price rises since February this year, the bricks have gone up in price and with that you can pretty much expect a price rise from labour as well."

Mr Gallwey is hopeful that things will start to look up and manufacturers will catch up, decreasing the waiting periods.

But he said it's still "a bit of an unknown what this second round of COVID might do".