A slow rebound in the housing market has sent the price of lumber through the roof. For an industry that is only just starting to emerge from the Great Recession, those prices come on top of costs builders are already absorbing.

James Gano, who works for Mallard Homes of Lawrence, gets ready to blow insulation into a new home at 3911 Bellflower St. With lumber prices up and houses selling slowly, builders are feeling the pinch.

“Fortunately, as times got a little tough for some of the builders, the price of some of the inputs were coming down, which helped us,” said Kelly Drake, who is president of Lawrence-based construction company Mallard Homes and president of the Lawrence Home Builders Association.

But that silver lining in the depressed housing market disappeared when the price for lumber and other building materials started climbing over the past few months. For each of the $200,000 to $250,000 homes that Drake builds, the increase in lumber prices has tacked on an additional $2,000.

“We still haven’t been able to raise the price of our houses, but now we are seeing costs increase to build those very same houses,” he said.

In 2008, lumber mills across the country slowed production or closed up shop. Factoring into the equation were countries such as China, South Korea and India, which were buying up cheap lumber in North America and shipping it overseas.

So when the housing market made minor improvements earlier this year, there wasn’t enough supply to meet the demand.

“If that gets out of whack a little bit, prices can escalate quickly,” said Kevin Sowards, general manager of Schmidt Builders Supply in North Lawrence.

At Schmidt, where rows of 2-by-4s are piled high, the price of wood products has gone up 35 percent or more from last year, Sowards said.

A year ago, the cost of 1,000 board feet of framing lumber was $200 industrywide. As of May 7, it was $358, according to a market report from the lumber trade publication Random Lengths.

But the biggest mark-up has been on wood panels. At the end of March, a sheet of OSB, an engineered wood panel similar to plywood, was selling for just under $7 at Home Depot in Lawrence. Today, it’s almost $14.

“We’ve had a significant increase,” Drake said.

In the past two weeks, the prices have eased somewhat, Sowards said. But that’s mainly because wholesalers, not the mills, are starting to cut back their prices.

Higher lumber prices aren’t good news for Bob Day, owner of Bob’s Custom Cabinets in North Lawrence. In his 31 years of business, Day said times are as slow as they have ever been. More expensive lumber would only add onto the builder’s cost.

“You absorb what you can for a while, but then you have to draw a line,” Day said.

Drake also questions just how much builders can absorb. Even before lumber prices started to climb, Drake said his company decided not to lower the prices on their new homes.

Instead, the homes included extra features, such as upgrading the insulation, more efficient furnaces, granite countertops and high-end cabinets. In all, there were $5,000 to $7,000 in costs that were never passed along to the home buyer.

But at some point, those costs will have to be passed on to consumers, Drake said.

Builders have seen drastic fluctuations in lumber prices before. In 2006, lumber prices soared as building materials dwindled in the reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina. But that was a time when the housing market was booming.

“We may have gotten a little used to cheap lumber prices over the past year and half,” Sowards said. “But a lot of (builders) have been around awhile. And they know the nature of the game.”