Evening star., 1937-02-06
LOAN ASSOCIATION
STRIDE INCREASING.
Half Million Families Given
Home Mortgage Money
During 1886.

Swinging into . lending stride
which they have not shown since
1880, the savings, building and loan
associations furnished more than half
q million families with home mort
gage money totaling $l,200,2l1 900 in
1896, the United States Building and
Loan League reported today. Giving
the Decembet totals at the same time
that it published its years summary
the league pointed to the gathering
momentum of residential property
credit expansion, which even the
erstwhile slack Winter months have
not been able to check. December
loan volume was per cent ahead OF
November and 80 per cent ahead OF
December year ago.
One dollar out of every $3.77 lent in
1886 was to finance the building of
new homes, and there was gradual
rise in the proportion Of construction
loans to total loans as the year went
along. December showed the largest
allotment to construction loans of any
Of the IL months, 304 per cent.
L0rRc snare OF new buyln$.
Morton Bodfish, executive vice presi-
dent of the league, estimates that fully
half of the volume of new one-family
homes contracted for during the year.
and considerably more than half Of
them numerically, were financed by
these thrift and home financing insti-
tutions, which give preference to this
type of business in their lending pro-
grams.
The total volume of new construc-
tion loans made by the associations
is placed at $318,197,0O0 and the
number of houses built with their
credit at 98,500. In 1895, Mr.. Bodfish
points out, the Federal Home Loan
Bank Board estimated that only $780,
100000 was lent for all residential
mortgages by all private lending groups
put together, and thus the 1896 record
of this one type Of private trustee
lending institution shows up all the
more spectacularly.
American homes have undergone
$83,687, 900 worth of repair and mod
ernizations during the year with the
help Of advances by the associations.
Monthly volume of this kind of loans
ranged from 100000 in January and
February to 100000 in May and
thereafter averaged somewhere be-
tween $6.000,000 and $7,500,000
month. Most significant factor in the
modernization credit extended by the
associations is the 5000 average for
these loans, Mr.. Bodfish comments, the
type Of expenditure which calls for
substantial use of materials and
building labor.
Many Loans Taken Over.
The associations spent their largest
sum in helping families buy homes
already built. either from housing de-
velopment companies and small mason
and carpenter builders of new homes,
or from previous owners of older prop
critics. A fraction more than 80 per
cent OF all their 1885 loans line up
here, and about 141,000 homes have
transferred owners with the aid of the
savings and loan institutions, the
league executive points out.
Figures on refinancing show that
the associations were still taking over
many loans which families had pre-
viously carried with other mortgages,
the main result Of this procedure be-
ing to place more and more home
owners on the long-term monthly res
payment loan plan. This type of
lending, however, plainly ceased to be
as important in the associations en-
deavors of 1886 as it had been in the
previous three or four years, and its
decrease in Importance was shown
month by month and altogether, little
more than fourth Of the loans were
for this purpose last year.
Mr.. Bodfish said that the December
loans of the associations were a sur
prise to most of the leaders in the
business, since they had anticipated a
seasonal decline in the loan demand
which would naturally be reflected in
the lending done by the associations
during the same period. December,
however, proved to be the ninth con.
secutive month in which the associa-
tions disbursed more than 100000 900
and brought the record for the fourth
quarter up to second place in the
year.