The Trump administration’s Section 338 duties on Canadian plywood and laminated wood panels went live on August 22, 2026. A 50 percent ad valorem tariff now sits on top of dozens of HTS codes covering plywood, veneered panels, particleboard, and medium-density fiberboard. Softwood lumber itself dodged the hit, already carrying its own Section 232 duty, but the panel products that fill a field tech’s truck did not.
Read that list again. Plywood. MDF. Particleboard. These are not abstract line items on a trade proclamation. They are the sheathing that goes over a broken window during a board-up. They are the subfloor patch after a burst pipe. They are the cabinet box that gets torn out and replaced on every REO rehab in this country. Kitchen cabinets and vanities already carry a 25 percent Section 232 tariff, scheduled to climb to 50 percent by January 2027. Add the new panel duties on top, and the materials list for a standard preservation work order just got dramatically more expensive.
Canada supplies roughly $500 million in plywood and $400 million in fibreboard to the U.S. market every year. That supply does not vanish. It gets more expensive, and every contractor standing at a Home Depot counter with a work order in hand is going to feel it before the ink on any HUD conveyance memo is dry.
Who Pays. Who Doesn’t.
Here is where Foreclosurepedia stops summarizing a trade story and starts telling you the one that matters. Material costs on plywood, panel goods, and cabinetry are about to spike. Appliances tied to the same tariff regime are not far behind. Every field service technician who buys materials out of pocket and gets reimbursed on a fixed allowance is staring down a squeeze that has nothing to do with their labor and everything to do with a proclamation signed in Washington.
Now ask the obvious question. Are MCS, Five Brothers, and ServiceLink adjusting their pricing schedules to reflect it? They are not. Stewart-owned MCS runs its conveyance pipeline and touts a 99 percent on-time conveyance rate to investors and to HUD. FNF-owned ServiceLink runs a national platform built on volume and margin. Five Brothers has spent years positioning itself as the “quality” player in this space. None of the three has moved a per-order material allowance to reflect a 50 percent duty on the plywood their own contractors are required to install.
That is not an oversight. It is a business model. These firms sit between the asset owner and the boots on the ground, and every dollar of tariff cost that does not get passed down the chain gets absorbed by the technician standing in a foreclosed kitchen with a torn-out cabinet and a fixed-fee work order that was priced before the tariff existed. The homeowner-turned-investor pays more. HUD pays more. The firms in the middle keep their conveyance percentages intact. Labor eats the difference, same as it always has.
And Some of You Aren’t Getting Paid At All
While the industry argues over allowance tables, a more basic betrayal is playing out at 24 Asset Management. Foreclosurepedia has continued to hear from Field Service Technicians and Inspectors who have completed work orders for 24 Asset Management and have not been paid. Not underpaid. Not paid late with an apology attached. Not paid.
This publication has covered this pattern before. National Field Network went into bankruptcy and, more than eight years later, Labor still has not seen a distribution. A2Z Field Services left a trail of unpaid contractors before its sale. The pattern is not new, and it is not accidental. It is what happens in an industry with no real enforcement mechanism protecting the people doing the actual work, and it is what will keep happening as long as firms know that a work order can be issued, completed, and never compensated without meaningful consequence.
If you are owed money by 24 Asset Management, document everything. Dates, work order numbers, correspondence, photos of completed conditions. Contact IAFST. This industry has spent years treating Field Service Technicians and Inspectors as disposable line items on a spreadsheet, and Foreclosurepedia is not going to let a tariff story distract from that fact. Email Fast Eddie San Roman and his staff. Reach out to Craig Karnes and Sharon Washington at HUD. And contact your local media and congressional representatives.
The Bottom Line
Tariffs on Canadian plywood and panel goods are going to raise the cost of doing this work. That much is out of anyone’s hands on the servicer side. What is entirely in their hands is whether MCS, Five Brothers, ServiceLink, and firms like 24 Asset Management choose to pass that pressure down to the people who cannot absorb it, or whether they finally adjust pricing and payment practices to reflect the reality their own contractors are living in.
History says they won’t move until someone makes them. Foreclosurepedia intends to keep making them.
Foreclosurepedia will continue tracking material pricing impacts and payment disputes across the field services industry. If your firm is squeezing allowances or withholding payment, we want to hear from you.
