How Much Will Your Steel Building Cost?

The cost to erect a metal building can vary between $5 to $125 a square foot. Now you are probably thinking about how huge of a margin that is. This is a valid concern. But the reality is that there are many factors that go into determining the cost of your steel building.

Some factors include the region that you are building in and the size of the building. Typically, the larger the building the lower the price per square foot. There current price of steel is also a huge determining factor for steel building costs. Just like pretty much everything else in the world, the price of steel is dynamic and affected by many different things. The 2019 steel tariffs were one of the biggest factors we’ve seen in recent years.

The microchip shortage and the current state of the automotive industry is the big factor this year. As you can imagine, a large portion of all steel manufactured goes into the automotive industry. Millions of cars are not being produced because of this microchip shortage. Check out our forecast on steel prices for the rest of 2022 here.

A semiconductor chip is also known as a microchip, and it can be compared to the “brain” for electronics today. They are essentially a type of electric circuit that function as tiny switches to control the flow of electrons.

Microchips vary in complexity from credit card security, to cars, they have many functions. All of these products cannot function without these microchips, including your own car. Car manufacturing is obviously the big factor when it comes to steel. Pre-pandemic, 12% of all steel produced in the United States went to the automotive industry.

Issues arise when millions of cars are being produced, but there are no microchips to go with them. That is exactly what we have seen happen as of late. Auto companies are dialing it back on purchasing steel because they can’t sell a car without a microchip. This has resulted in a surplus of steel which lowers the price of it as well making the time to buy a steel garage, warehouse, or barn now!

Buying steel is very comparable to buying stock. You want to try and look ahead before investing your hard-earned cash into it. Unfortunately, we don’t all have a crystal ball and I just dropped and broke mine last week. The best we can do is make an educated guess based off the information we have and the direction the trends are headed. Make sure you check you our 2022 Forecast page for more information!