CHEAPER HOUSES.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 June 1922, Page 7

CHEAPER HOUSES.

FALLING COSTS IN BRITAIN. SOME CHEAP HOMES. House-building has been rapidly getting cheaper in Great Britain, as the following article from the Daily Telegraph shows. New Zealand readers will be specially interested by the low prices compared with costs in this country. In the building trade, as in so many other departments of the national life, reduced costs have already considerably brightened the prospects for the mid-dle-class man who seeks to erect a house of his own, while local authorities, anxious to provide adequate accommodation for their “working-class” populations, can take advantage of very much lower tenders than those of a year ago. These tenders, forwarded to the Ministry of Health, in keen competition, naturally provide a much closer index of prices than is possible in the case of privately-constructed and more ambitious houses. But the same process is at work in each instance — falling cost of labor materials. Taking first the Government building scheme, under which some 90,000 ■houses have yet to be completed—though the demand for this class of dwelling will then have been by no means satisfied —the figures of the Ministry of Health show that whereas in March, 1921, a house of the “A” class cost on the average £7OO, last month only some £440 was required to build it; and in the case of the “B” class the average price had fallen from £B4O to about £525. It should be explained that the “A” type comprises, in general, a living-room, scullery, bathroom, and three bedrooms. Drains and fences are included, but not land, which works out at from £lB to £2O a house. The “B” type contains, in addition, a parlor. In view of the steady decline in the cost of labor and materials, the view expressed by Sir Kingsley Wood, Parliamentary Secretary to thfe Minister of Health, that houses should soon be built for £350 apiece is scarcely surprising. In some districts the “A” houses are already being built for as little as £BB3, and a number of tenders at £4OO have recently jjeen received. Apart from bricks, which varied considerably in cost in different localities, such things as gates, water-pipes, etc., had fallen 27J per cent, in the last five or six* months. Land has not gone up much in price, and about £2,500,000 had been saved by the assistance of the local valuers*. A considerable number of people of moderate means are delaying the building of homes in view of the prospect of lower prices in the near future. In one quarter the opinion was expressed that high railway freights were largely to blame by preventing free competition in building materials. Some places, for instance, such as Peterborough, had special facilities for the manufacture of bricks, which they turned out for less than half the price which obtained elsewhere. As it cost 12s 6d to send 1000 bricks a distance of ten miles, the area in which such cheap bricks could compete with the more expensive was very restricted. The same thing applied to other heavy materials. It was also remarked that, apart from the tendency to divide large houses in London into flats and maisonettes for middle-class people, the demand is still very keen for small, easily-run houses.