Considering Hartford? Here’s what you need to know:
1 Population: 124,683 (town); 881,552 (county)
2 Occupancy: 95% (as of June 1, 2006)
3 Median Age: 31 years
4 Median Household Income: $26,502 (town); $55,606 (county)
5 Unemployment: 9.9%
Notable: Humphrey Bogart got married in a Hartford apartment building in 1928. Home to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the nation’s oldest public art museum. Also home to the nation’s oldest insurance company and often referred to as the Insurance Capital of the World.
High Wire
Copper pricing soars. Just as rebuilding efforts across the country have hit full stride, builders are facing new pricing and availability challenges that could affect not only their schedules but their bottom lines, too.
In particular, copper pricing has more than doubled since January, marking a massive run-up that’s left economists scratching their heads and builders scratching their plans. In February, the price of copper sailed past the previous pinnacle of about $3,400 per metric ton, a record set in the ’80s, and didn’t stop until it reached $8,700 per metric ton in mid-May.
“It’s being driven largely by speculation, in my opinion,” says John Mothersole, senior economist at Lexington, Mass.-based Global Insights. “There’s no underlying reason for that kind of increase … and it’s a magnitude beyond what the fundamentals in the market could support.”
On average, there are 278 pounds of copper in a 1,000-square-foot multifamily unit, according to the Copper Development Association.
With mid-June prices around $6,200 per metric ton, Mothersole predicts that copper pricing has peaked and will continue to drop in coming months.
But Michael Carliner, an economist at the National Association of Home Builders, isn’t so sure. “Copper prices are likely to remain high, and prices for many copper-using materials and products will become more expensive,” he says. “Air conditioning equipment, for example, uses a lot of copper, but the prices haven’t adjusted.” Carliner adds that manufacturing capacity is not expected to increase this year.
Still, says Mothersole, the high point likely has already passed. “We’re setting up for a serious correction now,” he says. “Production is higher than consumption … which will make it very difficult to sustain this kind of pricing.”
–Kate Herman