DONGAS and relocatable homes are in short supply on the back of the same shortages of building materials and labour that has wreaked havoc in the construction business.
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Waits on new relocatable homes, which are in strong demand on farms, have pushed out to 18 months, prices of second-hand dongas have tripled and some manufacturers have even shut up shop until supplies come back on line.
Ironically, the supply challenges have coincided with ramped up demand for both farmhouse replacements and additional dwellings on agriculture properties on the back of strong commodity prices.
David Rowe, from Victoria's Bond Homes, which has been building relocatable homes at Ballarat for more than three decades and has strong custom in replacing old farmhouses and installing new dwellings for farm workers, says pandemic material supply issues are now being amplified by the Ukraine war.
"Within the next two weeks, we are expecting that 60 per cent of our imported softwood supply will cease to come Australia due to Russia being one of the world's largest suppliers of beams and housing equipment," said Mr Rowe, who is also a director of the Master Builders Association of Victoria.
At the same time, Australian production of software has slowed on the back of firstly bushfires and now floods.
"Orders for roof trusses and wall frames are already taking three to four months and that is now expected to be even longer," Mr Rowe said.
Bond Homes is now not taking any new orders for homes until the third quarter of next year.
Queensland's Bundaberg-based Dongas Australia has decided not to make dongas until the materials supply situation improves.
Before COVID, the business was shipping dongas to four states but owner Paul Baxter said he had now put that part of the operation on mothballs "awaiting some normality in material and shipping costs."
Mr Rowe said the shortage of materials has seen prices skyrocket - insulation has gone up 70pc in the last six months, structural steel 38pc and pine has doubled in price in 12 months.
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Labour is also a massive issue.
"Ongoing COVID infections and isolation is keeping staff away and delivery drivers in short supply but on top of that we simply get no inquiries on job vacancies, where in years gone by we'd have resumes dropped off to the office weekly," he said.
"What is really cruel is that demand is so strong. So many old farmhouses in Victoria are worn out and at the moment producers have the funds to finally replace them.
"Many see relocatables as the answer because it's their land that is valuable, not the dwelling, so they buy a relocatable, which means they can also buy a new tractor, and then they move their home into town with them when they retire."
Family-owned heavy haulage company McAuley Contracting, Roma in Queensland, specialises in moving relocatables but had also diversified into supplying second-hand dongas in recent years.
Half their clients are in agriculture, the other half in mining.
James McAuley said the price of a four-bedroom second-hand donga had tripled to around $65,000 in the past 18 months.
"And at the moment we are struggling to find anything," he said.
"When COVID blew the building game out, people shifted to dongas to get buildings up quicker. Land prices were lifting and so a lot of farmers bought property without a dwelling.
"At the same time, mining companies were wanting more dongas, or at least hanging onto ones they'd normally sell, because they wanted to keep workers on-site so COVID wouldn't prevent them being able to return - and they were cutting out house sharing too."