The Garage Door Dilemma—How Supply Chain Disruptions Are Leaving Homes Unfinished

Single-family homes under construction are being delayed by everything from labor and product shortages to inflated materials costs, but according to The New York Times, garage doors are the unlikely perpetrators causing the biggest headache for builders. In just the past year, prices for sets of garage doors have doubled or even tripled, and lead times have stretched from just a few weeks to several months. 

Worst of all, a builder can’t pass final inspection on a new home without garage doors in most parts of the country, meaning that buyers are postponing their move-in dates while builders wait for delayed payments. Supply chain disruptions for products like garage doors are slowing the pace of home building nationwide, pushing an average seven-month construction timeline to upwards of a year despite rising demand. 

“It used to take us 20 weeks to build a house,” said Adrian Foley, the president and C.E.O. of the Brookfield Properties development group, which develops thousands of single-family homes annually in North America. “And now it takes us 20 weeks to get a set of garage doors.”

Nine in 10 new single-family homes in America were built with a garage in 2020, and they’re nearly universal in the Midwest and on the West Coast. So just about every new house needs a garage door.

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