Cutting the Corners

Some 6,000 members of the National Association of Home Builders, representing about four-fifths of the industry, trooped into Chicago's huge Hotel Stevens last week for their biggest convention.

Many of them made no bones about the fact that they were back in a competitive market. The market for the high-priced ($18,000 to $40,000) house was "very slow" in most areas; in many places, building of high-priced houses had stopped.

But the builders were far from downhearted. There was still a tremendous demand from low-income families ($1,800 to $5,000 a year) for cheap houses. Builders hoped to put up 350,000 to 450,000 "economy homes" in 1949, priced from $4,300 to $8,500. Material costs were falling and, better yet, labor productivity was rising.

The most studied estimate of the future came from Roy Wenzlick, the house-building industry's top economist. Said he: "You will build between 7 and 10% fewer dwellings than in 1948. I expect the total . . . will be 850,000." Wenzlick also predicted that construction costs will drop slightly in a few months, a little more later in the year, and then level off.

While other builders pondered their problems in Chicago, Hugh Kern in Bakersfield, Calif, had some solutions. His Mobilhome Corp. was rolling houses off an open-air assembly line at the rate of one a day. He had no trouble finding buyers.

Kern's houses, ranging from four rooms ($4,700) to six ($8,550) take ten days to build. They move on rollers out of a shed and along an assembly line. When completed, they are loaded onto a house mover's dolly and hauled to the building site (within a ten-mile radius). There the house is worked onto a concrete block foundation. The final plumbing and electrical connections can be made the same day.

Mobilhome Corp. has turned out 361 houses from its Bakersfield and San Jose "factories," has unfilled orders for 113 more and is still expanding. Kern plans to license additional factories in Sacramento, Stockton, Palo Alto, Reno, Milwaukee, Detroit and probably Chicago.

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