Wholesale purchase
fromPok
| Posted in General Questions on
I understand this might be a long shot. Thought would check.
Is there anyway to buy building materials by bulk and save some $s?
Zip material is expensive in the lumber yards and I need quite a few to build a whole house. Anythoughts.. I am near poughkeepsie, NY
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Replies
A whole house is not a lot of material, relatively speaking. Doubt you'd ever find a distributor willing to deal direct.
Perhaps reach out to your local Huber rep and ask them what lumberyard moves the most material. Contact that yard, ask for someone who does outside sales for your area and establish a relationship. Give them an idea of the scale of the project and that you'd like to buy as much from one supplier as possible. They should be able to give you a bit off the "retail" price.
Your best bet would be to try to do a sort of "group buy" with some other small builders in your area, then use the additional volume of your group buy to negotiate a better price. A single project just isn't enough material to get any special deals -- that's why most materials get bought through normal distribution channels. Manufacturers tend to want to sell at least an entire truckload as a minimum order for much of this stuff.
Bill
If you have a relationship with a lumberyard sales rep, there is a chance that you will find a lower price when buying by the unit: a bunk of sheathing or framing. In the past I have found savings by doing that, but things have changed in recent years and with demand through the roof there may no longer be savings available unless you buy in larger quantities.
Years ago, I opened a store charge account at the local lumber yard and have been getting a discount ever since. I get all my building materials discounted and delivered free.
Thank you all
Most areas have a building-supply company that serves most of the builders in the area. They're typically family-owned. They let Home Depot and Lowes deal with the homeowners, they deal with pros. To put things in perspective, the basic unit of their business is the "framing package," which is all of the lumber to frame one house. A small framing contractor -- somebody with just one crew of a half dozen guys or so-- might frame 20-25 houses a year and buy several million dollars worth of framing packages. That's pretty much the smallest customer that a building supply store will feel is worth their time. So they're not going to go out of their way to sell you a few dozen sheets of Zip as a one-off.
I have noticed that Home Depot in particular seems to be courting the market between homeowners and contractors who buy millions of dollars a year -- renovation contractors and self-contractors. My experience with my local Home Depot is if I go to the Pro Desk and talk to them they're happy to tell me what discounts are available and sign me up for them.