Word: builders
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...meeting was short and sharp. Washington's Mon C. Wallgren declared that such cuts, which hit irrigation and power projects, reminded him of a home-builder leaving a dwelling half-finished. California's Earl Warren chimed: "These are not appropriations . . . but investments...
...trouble was building costs. They had soared so high that they had scared away prospective builders. Even speculative builders were getting jittery. In the suburbs of many cities stood rows of tidy new overpriced houses, from $9,000 up, empty: 2,000 were waiting for buyers in Chicago; 150 were vacant along the Worcester turnpike outside Boston. One Boston builder has 50 bright new houses which no veteran, or anyone else, turned up to buy in the 60-day period following completion. In Denver, real-estate salesmen are quitting to sell washing machines and autos...
Trouble No. 1. Detroit Builder George Miller knows why houses aren't selling: a house he could build in 1940 for $5,090 costs $9,990 today. The NHA index of building costs for a standard house stood at 137.4 (1935-39 average = 100) on V-J day (see chart). In the next 18 months it jumped as much as it had in the previous six years. But the real shocker was the way costs had skyrocketed in the last six months...
Trouble No. 2. The second half of the trouble was labor productivity-and labor costs. Complained a Dallas builder: "Sometimes we think it takes two men now to do as much as one did in 1939." Masons who used to lay 700 to 800 bricks daily are down to 300 to 500. Because they get time-and-a-half or double-time for Saturday and Sunday work, some Chicago building-trades workers like to knock off for two days in midweek and work on weekends. And wages, at an alltime high, are still going up. In Detroit, for example, where...
...containing 26 house designs, chiefly moderately priced one-story, ranch-type; for another $5 it sold complete blueprints. But Robinson's bright idea was to sell also, for $1.50, a colored cut-out cardboard model of the house in scale. Easily put together, the model showed the prospective builder just how the whole house would look before he started building. It even contained cardboard pieces scaled to the size of furniture...