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Show - Present Prices Favorable To Home Building 1939 was the best home building year since 1929 and 1940 promises to be at least 20 better than the past year, according to the estimates of competent authorities on the subject. subj-ect. There were 476,000 homes built in '39 and conservative estimates indicate that the number of dwelling dwell-ing units which will be erected in 1940 will exceed 600,000. This will be nearly 100,000 more than the number built in 1929 and is well on the way to the all time high of 1926. The upturn in home building started start-ed in 1935 and there have been substantial sub-stantial increases each year since then. Department of Labor statistics reveal re-veal that practically every factor is now favorable to the home builder. Lumber, for example, is now selling for less than the 21-year average price. Dimension and boards which cost $100 in 1926 can now be purchased pur-chased for $93. Not only is lumber lower in price but the same thing is true of all building materials. Index In-dex figure average for 21 years for all materials used in home construc- tion is 95.60. Today the index is 90.30. Labor costs are only 12 higher than 1926 and 7 higher than 1929 according to the same source of information. in-formation. However, this has been more than offset by the fact that modern materials now come to the job ready to use and also because there are now many labor saving devices de-vices which make it possible to build houses with fewer man hours of labor. Financing costs have been reduced nearly 85 and building money is plentiful. FHA loans are readily available and the FHA monthly payment pay-ment mortgage actually saves the borrower $2588.80 or a $5000 20-year mortgage as compared with the old first and second mortgage loan. It is now possible to pay for a new home with rent checks. Monthly payments running from $25 to $30 will pay off the mortgage on many attractive small homes, as well as take care of interest, insurance and taxes. Such widespread activity in the home building field has always resulted re-sulted in advancing prices in the past and no doubt will cause ad-I ad-I vances again. It is the consensus of opinion of those in the building industry in-dustry that home builders should take aciwmlaye of the unusually favorable fuofors which exist at the j j present time. j |
