Morning journal and courier., 1882-04-10
Building and the Real Estate Market.
From the Hartford Courant1

| Building and the Real Estate Market
From the Hartford CourAnt.I
| Certain peculiar circumstances of the
present business situation give to the rea
| estate market more cheerful outlook thar
! it has had for a long time; and, though il
| may appear contradictory, one of these cir
| eumstances is what is called the 'fcheck to
building operations. A good deal is heard
nowadays especially among the most con
sentative and timid observers, about the linn.
itation of building. They say labor has
risen, materials have risen, all the elements
of construction have gone up, and already 6
perceptible check has been given TO building
operations On this they found unhappy
predictions for the near future.
This stopping of new work may be true IN
cities, though of course it has nothing to do
with the vast work eff constructing homes
for the hundreds of thousands of new corners
who move at once to the west and put up new
houses there, even if they are very cheap
ones But taking it as applicable to cities, it
has as we said its cheerful side for the real
estate market. Each new era of prosperity
or depression has its peculiar and novel tea-
ture.. The singular fact about our present
recovery of financial prosperity has been that
shared in the general Improvement Popu-
Iation has increased, the volume of general
business has grown the rate of interest has
fallen-all the conditions have favored, and
yet real estate has hung terribly heavy on the
hands of its owners.
A large explanation of this phenomenon,
we believe, has been the new building opera
tons that were going on. By putting up so
many new houses the supply has been kept
ahead of the demand; new houses are natur-
ally preferred to old, and thus the real estate
already built upon, and which should be
saleable, has been neglected for the newer
houses The esthetic element, too, has en-
tered Four square walls have come to be
considered only shabby apology for hu-
man habitation House building has pro-
crossed from the simple problems of the
square and the rectangle up into the high or
orders of geometrical form. The Zigzag has
become the line of beauty. The man who
buys the most angles for the money gets the
best bargain. House buying has become
form of angling.
This is free country, and its houses have
not been marked by the beauty which Mr..
Ruskin says it is each mans duty and priv
ilege 10 know how to impress upon the ap-
pearance of the buildings of this world. We
have nothing to say against the novel and at
tractive devices of these later days to make
houses sell. But it is only fair to recognize
that one effect of them has been to depress
and depreciate the thousands of homes al
ready built. Millions of dollars worth OF
property has been passed over by buyers be-
cause it wasn't newly put up and lacked the
fashionable twists and corners. Now the
fact is that the houses ten or twenty years
DID, or twice that, may make exactly as COM
Portable and happy homes as the very
new. For all purposes, except for being
looked at and photographed, they may suit
their owners as we'll as the later works.
If the putting up of new buildings is
checked, people will begin to think little
more about those already standing. This is
logic. There is no way to get around it.
In any healthy, growing city, il new house
building is checked because of an increase of
cost, then the old houses will begin to appre.
ciate. Their competitors have retired. De-
mand for homes may continue, and may even
grow, long after speculation has ceased to
build new houses in the face of old ones al
ready seeking occupants
That, as we take it, is about the situation
today. The advance in labor and material
does not bring any more of threat than of
encouragement to the real estate market, and
many other elements add to the encouraging
aspect Sooner or later, before the boom"
breaks, real estate is bound to take a great
move upward and to prove as rich thing for
its owners as have the railroad and manufac-
turing properties whose recovery has been SO
great