The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-11-24

There are none for rent and present tenants show no disposition to change residences now or in the near future.
 During recent months number Of private homes have been converted into two and three apartment houses. and at scores of others boarders have been taken in for the first time. Notwith- standing this fact there Is present demand for several hundred residences or apartments, according to statements made by real estate agencies during the past week.
 Local conditions have reversed them selves within the past two years, On September l, 1916, rear estate agents say. there were 2500 vacant houses in Birlningham. Today there is de- mand for almost that number and none to be had
 CONSTRUCTION WORK
 Although the ban on new construc- tion work was lifted only during the past week, plans are already under way, it is stated, for a number of new buildings in the residence section of the city. It is not believed that there will be a great amount of new buildings undertaken until labor and market con- ditions are somewhat stabilized, but owners of unimproved property in de- sirable districts are casting about with the view to improving their property just as soon as they feel Justified in do- ing so.
 Lumber manufacturers. whose prod ucts have been curtailed and controlled by the government the last several months, are making survey of the sit- uation and sa1esmen are ready to take to the road the minute they detect signs of building activity. Contrac- tors and architects are being sounded with reference to work in their lines, some of them reporting that they have been asked to make estimates ans plans for proposed buildings owners of vacant property who ex- pect to build. it lis stated, are holding off for the present to see what the re- adjustment will bring in the way of cost of materials and workmen's wages. They say they cannot build under pres- ent high costs and let their property at reasonable reptals. They prefer to await a few weeks, or perhaps until spsing, when they hope expenses, both in materials and labor, will be much less than now.
 FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT Labor agencies and representatives of federal employment service are au- thority for the statement that hundreds I of brickmasons, carpenters and other skilled laborers who went from Bir- mingham during the present year to Muscle Shoals, Nashville and other places where the government was erect ling large plants. and paid high wages and that the great majority of these will be coming back home now tha' 1 the government is abandoning its huge 1 projects necessitated by the war. 1 State Director George B. Tarrant O
 the federal employment service statei that 10000 laborers Ncan be placed fl
 Jefferson county at once, but the places
 available are in great part for common labor at the coal and ore mines ant
 at the furnaces and plants where hun dreds of unskilled workers are em ployed.
 Despite the present inactivity in nev
 construction work there will be no SC lrious dislocation of the labor situation is the opinion expressed by numbers 0 business men who have interested them
 selves in the matter since German signed the armistice two weeks az
 and thus practically ended the war.