HOUSING: King of the Builders

In the great U.S. housing boom, no one has done better than James Robert Price of Lafayette, Ind. As founder and boss of National Homes Corp., Price has succeeded where many another failed: he proved that a prefabricated house can be mass-produced and sold at a profit without looking like a Quonset hut. Last year Price sold 14,127 nonfarm houses; in 1954 he will account for one out of every 48 started. On a gross of $41 million, National netted $1,700,000 in fiscal 1954.

In Lafayette last week, 43-year-old Mass Builder Price announced that he has hardly begun to build. In the next six months, National plans to increase its capacity at Lafayette and build a new plant in Dallas to tap the fast-growing Southwest market. The new program will boost National’s production from 120 houses a day to 275. Next year’s production goal: 30,000, or about one in every 25 nonfarm houses built in the U.S.

“I Said Yes.” The son of an osteopath, Jim Price quit Indiana University’s business school during the Depression, in 1937 went into business drumming up loan prospects for Prudential Life and selling houses on the side. One day, says Price, “somebody asked if I’d could sell him a prefabricated house. I’d never seen a prefab, but I said yes.” He bought a prefab from Gunnison Housing Corp. (now a U.S. Steel subsidiary), and decided that there were big opportunities in the business. (He has long since passed Gunnison as the No. 1 maker of prefabs.)

In 1940, with a stake of $12,500 and 50 firm orders, Price and his younger brother George, now executive vice president, started turning out two-bedroom houses (with basement) for $3,250, made money from the start. Says Price: “Several of the original buyers were offered $11,000 this year for their homes, and they all refused.” World War II brought Government orders for 8,000 units and gave National mass building experience.

24-Hour Service. Since no one had ever built houses on the mass scale Price wanted, he had to pioneer the development of special machines and techniques. For maximum efficiency, Price set up eleven assembly lines and scores of sub-assemblies in his Lafayette plant. Amid the Gatling-gun racket of automatic nailing machines day last week, National’s House No. 66,657 took shape at Lafayette. A wall swung down one assembly line, while ceilings, floors and roof were assembled on others. At one location, a machine cut and shaped a door and drilled all the holes for hardware in ten seconds; machines automatically sprayed a first coat of paint onto small pieces of wood, then other machines sanded them down for a second coat. In exactly one hour, House No. 66,657 was ready to be loaded aboard a waiting trailer, along with bathtub, water heater, cabinets, sinks, etc. By next evening it was erected at an Ohio site 325 miles away. This week it will be ready for occupancy, with landscaping completed.

One secret of Jim Price’s success is that he never starts a house down his assembly line before it is sold, thus keeps inventories of finished units down to zero. Another secret is his fleet of 255 huge trailers to deliver houses to building sites within 400 miles of his plant, thus licking the transportation costs that ruined many other prefabbers. Price sells his houses through some 550 builder-dealers around the country, some of whom gross upwards of $500,000 a year. Biggest cluster of National homes: a development of 2,000 units at Fort Wayne, Ind.

Mass & Class. Price has a price for every pocketbook, ranging from two-bedroom houses for $5,500 to three-and four-bedroom “Custom” houses (see cut) for $8,000 to $30,000 (with Indiana lime stone walls optional). On every house, National nets an average $100—enough to make Jim Price a rich man. One hundred shares of National, purchased for $5,000 in 1940, would now total some 60,000 shares (through splits) and be worth more than $3,000,000.

In his mass operation, Price has not neglected style. The 31 models in his 1955 line, now starting in production, were designed by Architect Charles M. Goodman of Washington, D.C. Says Price: “We can fight it out on a mass or class basis. We can provide a home for somebody who hasn’t any kind of home, or give a rich man a home where he can entertain a Rockefeller.”