.Progress of Federal Housing Administration

Washington, D. C., Jan. 29.-Recent Federal Housing Administration progress data are as follows:

Total of insured modernizing loans-$35,000,000; total modernizing expenditures contributed to the FHA modernizing campaign$206,000,000. Expe'ctation is that modernizing expenditures in 1935 w,ill be $1,500,0@ daily.

Five thousand individual manufacturers are re'corded as cooperating with FHA; 150,000 others believed to be cooperating to a considerable extent.

Some of the important cooperating manufacturers.report increases in business in November, 1934, over November, 1933, of lrom 25 to 500/o,. Plumbing and roofing make the best showing among structural products; heating equipment shows the largest in,crease of all.

Volume of lumber'consumption was reported at a recent conference of industrial representatives with Administrator Moffett as being 2O/o larger in 1934 than 1933, notwithstanding a decline in total value of residential building and a negligible increase in total construction.

Eighteen hundred finan'ce agencies have procured eligibility under new building finance provision of the National Housing Act.

Cost of modernizing loans is reported by fi/o of the lending institutions as less than the permissible maximum.

These are claimed to be the lowest cost in the world for unsecured installment loans of this sort, namely, abofi 8/o. No national mortgage associations have as yet been formed under Title III. The R.F.C. will, if nece'ssary, help finance mortgage associations, probably taking preferred stock, but FHA hopes that private funds will suffice. The President's declaration for a maximum mortgage interest rate ol 5/o on FHA loans is retarding the formation of mortgage associations.

Public Works Administration's house building program, being still vague, is delaying private construction because it is yet uncertain as to whether the government will build and sell houses on a 3/o loan basis, subsidize private building to a substantial extent, or use other finan'cial stimulants.

Economic Advisor Ezekiel, of the Department of Agriculture, reported to the Conference that home building costs, including all factors, are now about 9O on an index s,cale, whereas rents average 65. Little encouragement is seen in this ,comparison for home building by private capital until building costs decline or rents rise. Implication is that if new housing is necessary and private initiative does not develgp lower housing costs, such building will be up to the government.