Aibu to think builders work must be slowing down?

[Roastpotatoesat3]

Cant help but notice that our Towns facebook page and a few guys in my friends on Facebook have been stating things like “just had a job delayed, free for two months , contact for quotes” type messages. Also seems to be a lot of responses to requests of work saying they are free. Last few years nobody ever responded to the tags on these kind of posts and if they did it would be along the lines of “very busy”

Ive really noticed this in last two weeks and we know that the building trade is often first to show signs of weakness.

I probably notice this more than others as started a huge project just as Covid hit so know first hand how difficult it was to get tradesmen in those years.

We know new building and renovations have slowed down but everyone seemed to think there was such a shortage of builders that this wouldn’t touch them this time.

Anyone else noticed this or have builders in the family?

Just interested from an economic point of view.

I work in insurance and over the last few years we've had a few big storms followed by a massive surge last year of frozen pipes (biggest surge of claims we've had in over 10 years although it weirdly wasn't covered much in the news) so most areas were massively busy with insurance work. Since about march things have been quieter than usual, with the exception of the floods in a few areas so i'd expect that impacts it to some degree because insurance work will form quite a big part of it I'd think.

Think it's area dependant as my DH is booked up into 2025 - he does however have a lot of repeat work from landlords/developers

DP is a builder and plasterer, never short of work. Very experienced, doesn’t over charge, reliable and does a high quality job, so gets lots of repeat custom, often older folk who are doing lots of jobs on their homes - extensions, bathrooms, kitchens etc.

He can do basically anything, so he’s not having to wait for specific types of jobs, eg just bathrooms or just plastering etc. maybe that helps too?

We live in a fairly inexpensive area of the country too, so not like there’s loads of money around or anything.

Interesting