Word: costly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...immediate problems caused by inflation and tight money, there are other, longer-term reasons for the trouble in housing. The home-building industry is like a sprawling Gulliver, pinned down by gremlins. The industry is snarled in a tangle of little, mostly local restraints that make houses and apartments cost more than they should. A modern Mr. Blandings who tries to build or buy his dream house often finds the experience turning into a bad trip. Among the difficulties that he faces...
...yesterday's materials and methods. U.S. communities operate under at least 8,300 different building codes; the provisions often conflict, making it impossible to standardize such items as the type of wiring, piping and plumbing. This not only inhibits architects and engineers from developing cost-cutting innovations (for lack of a big enough market), but often prevents builders from reaping the economies of standardized plans and production. Few other big industrial countries permit such a senseless riot of diversity. Code uniformity has helped Western Europe to pass the U.S. in making use of new technology, including precast concrete panels...
...high cost of conventional housing has spurred the development of a new kind of dwelling: the inexpensive, mass-produced "modular homes." This year scores of companies are bringing them out. Such instant housing consists of room-sized sections-generally 12 ft. wide and up to 60 ft. long-that are built, wired, piped and often decorated on cost-cutting factory assembly lines, then trucked up to 400 miles to a site, swung onto foundations by a crane, and fastened together. Builders claim that the modules are 10% to 25% less expensive than conventional houses...
Mobile homes have become the nation's main source of low-priced shelter. The mobiles come with wheels and a steel chassis, but once they are placed on foundations, few are moved again. Because they are factory built and beyond the reach of cost-boosting local regulations, mobile homes are cheap (average price: $6,000), if generally small (about 700 sq. ft.) and boxy. This year some 220 companies will produce 400,000 mobile homes, double the output of the industry only two years...
...cost of construction varies sharply in the U.S. For a one-story, 1,400-sq.-ft. wood-frame ranch house with a basement, it ranges from $16,125 to $26,300, not counting land. The following comparative figures for the same house were compiled by Milwaukee's American Appraisal Co. In most of the high-cost cities, builders use union labor; in nearly all the low-cost cities, they use nonunion labor...