Dive Brief:

• The latest federal price information shows that the overall price of construction materials fell 0.2% from September to October and stood 0.3% below where they were a year earlier.
• Within that group, however, softwood lumber was 1.2% higher than in September and cost 16.2% more than in October 2012, and concrete products got bumps of 0.9% and 2.9%, respectively, in those periods.
• The nonresidential materials category was down 0.5% from September, and that put it even with the year before.

Dive Insight:

Chief Economist Anirban Basu said that inflation appears not be a problem for construction materials, despite some people's concern that the Federal Reserve's bond-buying policy would cause inflation. He cautioned against overconfidence, however, saying that prices probably will rise if expected U.S. economic growth happens.