I expect that the price of building materials will increase again, as happened after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The Gulf Coast recovery work is still ongoing and California fire recovery will increase demand. However, in the everything is good news for somebody category, builders that have been hard hit by declining new home sales might move out west and some sub-prime mortgage holders in the area may benefit from insurance payouts and disaster recovery programs.

I've been trying to make sense of what's going on with the market because of how my 403B has been affected (it's like a 401K, but for non-profit orgs); it's interesting, but probably futile -- I don't think anyone really knows what will happen day-to-day. I guess that, so long as you're alive, you just gotta be happy when you can avoid taking a hit, and pick up the pieces when you can't. Glad to hear that your mom was able to avoid this one.