The uncertainty about what imports will face with new tariffs and when they will enter into force, it has thrown a cloud on housing builders and other real estate developers that try to pay a new construction through southern California, including the neighbor, including the neighbor, including the neighbor. Forestry firms of January.
Many builders are trying to budget costs, but they are frustrated because Dang does not know what construction materials and appliances, such as stoves and air conditioners, they will cost in the coming months.
The questions surrounding tariffs are already forcing contractors to make quick purchase decisions, especially for windows, doors, plumbing and lighting and other materials manufactured or manufactured in China, which are subject to duties of 145%. The prices of their customers are already going up.
“I think this will be the first to do,” said Cory Singer, co -owner or Dolan Design, while supervising the construction of the first house that is built in the fire zone in 15256 of Pauw St. in Pacific Palisades on April 15, 2026. Dollan’s design is supervising.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“We are padding a contingency from 5% to 10% so we call ‘market volatility’ to the budget,” said Cory Singer, a general contractor who works on 10 reconstruction projects in Pacific Palisades, including the first house under construction there.
He said that a mosaic supplier told him last week that if he did not immediately request, the new price would be 10% higher, and the singer has the house owners to prepare for high costs.
Forest fires, which burned approximately 16,000 homes, businesses and other structures, will ignite a massive construction of the angels.
But the builders were already preparing for the shortage of materials and POWERXY HIGHER COSTS FOR ITEMS AS WOOD and bathtubs.
Singer said that some of their customers are considering putting containers on their properties so that they can buy materials over the coming weeks and store them until they are necessary.
The architects, developers and contractors who work in areas affected by the fire said that part of the tariff debate is not to know what taxes will remain as one of the largest reconstruction projects in the history of Los Angeles.
“He is scaring me,” said Bryan Wong, executive director of the Habitat of the San Gabriel Valley for Humanity. Wong’s non -profit organization recently received the first permit to rebuild in Altadena and is in conversations with two additional boxes of low -income owners looking for assistance.
Frequent changes in Trump’s administration policy and retaliation responses from other countries mean that the effects of tariffs are difficult to predict, he said.
“I don’t think there is a single living person who thinks we have ended with this conversation,” Wong said. “This list will grow and will change.”
The frustration in the real estate industry is widespread, said Anirban Basu, chief economist of associated builders and contractors, a national commercial group.
“Upon arriving this year, the perspective was quite positive,” he said, with lower mortgage rates, an increasing inventory of homes for sale and a market leasing market, since many employers adjusted their work policies. It is likely that it was a strong construction suggested of consumption expenses of more shopping centers.
The construction site in 15256 by Pauw St.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Trump’s choice had also increased the expectations of an ascending economy, he said, adding: “On January 20, the inauguration of January 20, US businesses were in a good mood.”
Since then, some prices have fallen, including the price of oil, but since the global economic image has weakened in recent months, “the perspective of today’s construction is not as optimistic as seven weeks ago,” Basu said.
The tariff impacts are in the hearts of the construction industry groups, but the immigration and deportation policies of the Trump administration are also worried about employers who have fought to find labor in recent years, he said.
“Construction makes the excessive use of workers born abroad,” said Basu, and “sometimes the data” are not clear if workers born abroad are documented or undocumented. “
Two workers on the site.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The construction workforce has already been reduced for several reasons, he said, and now “many of these possible workers are scared by high thesis deportations.”
The impacts of the Trump administration tariffs are still “relatively silenced” in the operations of the developer and industrial real estate operator Dedeaux Properties, but they are helping to put potential tenants and tenants on the edge, said Aica Monica, the main operation of Santa.
“The way in which these tariffs have Bone Rolled has really created a lot of uncertainty and that really makes it a challenge,” he said. “We expect a grill in a great decision -making until at least has the feeling of where things could be headed” in terms of tariff costs and how they will affect their businesses.
Companies that use industrial buildings for shipping, reception and manufacturing will take more time to decide the target to rent more space or expand the size of their operations. Investors will be more cautious with the purchase of buildings if the future of the economy remains uncertain.
Last week, Trump authorized a 90 -day break for more than 75 countries that face rates increases, including Mexico but excluding China.
“It still pushes uncertainty for 90 days,” Kraft said. “What will happen in the back? We do not know that countries will come to the table and that they won.”
He said that there are potential tenants in the market that seek space to rent, but they are taking longer to make decisions about whether to make a movement.
“Real estate do not react to stock market speed,” Kraft said, while investors and owners stop to see how rates will develop. “Cross fingers is not as bad as we fear.”
In accordance with the National Association. Or housing builders, shortage and an acute and sustained increase in the costs of construction materials, for items as different as soft wood and electricity distribution transformers, the cost of building houses and damaging the assertions of the house is increasing. Tariffs can aggravate the situation.
NAHB estimates that products were used worth $ 204 billion in the construction of new multifamily and single -family homes in 2024. About $ 14 billion of those goods were imported, these goods, these goods, The commercial group saidWhich means that approximately 7% of the Ales used in the new residential construction originate in a foreign nation.
Tariffs mean that imports must pay additional costs for importing articles from other countries. Price increases are usually absorbed by the importer or transmitted in the final consumer of the good, usually in some combination.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
For example, if a retailer imports a $ 500 washing machine from a country subject to a 25%tariff, the retailer owes $ 125 in rates to the United States government, said the commercial group.
For most goods, costs are transmitted to consumers, said NAHB: “Therefore, tariffs on construction materials increase the cost of housing, and consumers end up paying tariffs in the form of higher prices in the house.”
The singer, the contractor and others said that current price increases do not threaten the viability of the reconstruction of the housing houses of the angels damaged by forest fires. For different degrees, they said, different issues, such as the local government, Restricted access to sites in Palisades and the Trump administration immigration policies Affecting the availability of labor, qualified as greater concerns than tariffs.
Andrew Slocum, who works in 14 domestic reconstructions in the Fire Eaton area, said the builders were accustomed to the uncertainty of the supply chain problems that arose the duration of the COVID-13 pandemic.
“We are not seeing so much pain at this time,” said Slocum, executive director of Green Development Co. or Pasadena. “We are worried about what could happen.”
