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Show Ten Year Euilding Peak Reached in U. S. Cities New home construction in 310 leading American cities in 1939 totaled to-taled the highest in value and volume vol-ume In 10 years, according to the annual an-nual national home building survey of Investors Syndicate recently made public. "Volume of new homes last year was more than 10 times (10.4) the 1934 total, the low for the decade," explained C. J. Ryan of the company. com-pany. "Value of these new residences was almost 10 times (9.8) the low total hit in 1934." Contributing substantially to these record breaking figures was the smallness of the advance, only four-fifths four-fifths of 1 per cent, in average cost per person provided with new housing hous-ing over the preceding year. "Rapidity of residential construction construc-tion last year, the fifth successive year to record gains, is emphasized," empha-sized," said Ryan, "by the fact that both value and volume increase were the largest year to year rise 'during the decade. The cities included in the survey, located in 41 states and the District of Columbia, have a population, according ac-cording to the 1940 preliminary estimate esti-mate of the United States bureau of census, of 49,134,705, or 37.4 per cent of the population of the United States. This group includes the 92 cities with a population of 100,000 or more. New home building in these 310 American cities in 1939 provided housing for 867,664 people. This was a gain of 202,032 people, or 30.4 per cent, over the 665,632 newly housed in these same cities in 1938. New residential construction last year in these same cities provided for 67.1 per cent more people than in 1930, when only 519,192 were newly new-ly sheltered. |