The Wilmington morning star., 1947-03-19

thew remember those wartime auVeT'
|tisements which pictured the dream
home" of the future - a miracle OF
convenience, beauty and functional de.
sign. in which all you have to do was to
touch a few buttons and silent machines
would press your clothes, mix your
drinks and do practically everything
else. These advertisements were often
tied in with pleas to buy more bonds
SO you'd have the wherewithal to pur-
chase the dream house once peace re-
turned.
Peace has been around quite a while
now, but the dream house hasn't put
in an appearance. The grim truth is
that obtaining any kind of a house at
all is the toughest problem faced by
millions of Americans. Most commodity
shortages are being rapidly made up
but the housing shortage grows worse
than ever.
Business Week recently ran an
article on housing with the cynical, and
highly accurate, title: "Home Sweet
Home - At a price," It touches on
some of the most immediate prob
lens facing the homebuilder and home
buyer. First of those problems of
course, is cost. Existing homes that
were worth five or six thousand a few
years ago now command ten or twelve.
And when you enter the never-never
land of new construction, anything can
happen - and usually does. Few con-
tractors will now build on a firm con-
tract - they insist on a fee or cost
plus basis of work. Business journals
carry gruesome accounts of homes
which were designed to be built for ten
thousand If under-and wound up in
twenty thousand dollar bracket.
builders, who used to de-
velop subdivisions, have drawn in their
and some of them have stepped
but of the picture entirely for the pres
ent. A number of building and loan COM
the backbone of whose business
to be homes, auto courts and apart
nents, have announced they will not
more loans for these purposes
the situation stabilizes.
The veteran home program. with it's
emphasis on understood houses, is
50 far in the do]drums as to be prac-
invisible. Many veterans, who
put only a few dollars of their own
money into projected homes. have
found payments beyond their means
and have let them go.
The reasons for high costs are OBJ
vlous enough. Labor costs about twice
as much as it used to, and complaints
are heard that labor productivity is
low. Material costs run to as high as
three times the prewar level. Land
values have followed the trend. and
IN many regions you must pay as much
tor a lot as you used to for an acre or
But, logical as high costs may be.
doesn't help solve the basic prob
lem - which is that homes cost a
great deal more than the average FAM
lily can possibly afford to pay. AS Bus
mess Week says, costs must come
down sharply, many in the industry
are certain, if home building in 1947
is to come anywhere near the level pre-
djcted by the Department of CON-
- $4,000, 000, 900 in private
residential building and a million pri-
vate dwellings started"
High hopes have been held by some
for prefabricated houses. These repre-
sent an attempt to apply mass-produc.
ton principles to the building problem.
. number of concerns are producing
prefabs. However, so far at least. thew
have certainly not proven a revolution.
airy Influence. They, too, cost more than
prospective buyers think they should
. and they must be erected on a piece
land, and plumbed, heated and wired,
of which run into money. Again,
sameness in design which is an IN
escapable feature of prefabs, is distaste-