IS BUILDING TOO EXPENSIVE?

Progress, Volume XVIII, Issue 7, 1 March 1923, Page 151

IS BUILDING TOO EXPENSIVE?

QUEENSLAND BUILDER CRITICISES NEW ZEALAND PRICES.

Some Builders' Replies—Where the Trouble Lies.

That there is a “vicious circle’’ in the building trade m New Zealand, which is extorting undue profits from those building their own homes, was the opinion expressed to a newspaper interviewer by Mr. A. E. Ingoid, Vice-President of the Queensland Suburban Master Builders’ Association, "who is at present making a tour of the Dominion. When he was discussing the matter Mr. Ingoid plunged into estimates of the cost of building, and gave illustrations of the comparison between cost of material and labour charges in the two countries.

“I was looking at a plan last night of a building that was being erected in Wellington at a cost of he said. “In the meantime, while I have been here, I had already found out the prices of material and the wage rate, and I find, by the dimensions of the building, as I measured it, that it would only cost in Queensland £BOO, at a contract price, but, allowing for extra work, such as plastermg, drainage and chimneys, which would make another Al5O in this country, it would bring the total price of that particular building to £950, and give a fair margin of profit. You are paying £2OO too much. I will quote you an example of a building I have in hand in Queensland, when I get home. It measures 36ft. by 36ft., and is to be completed with electric light, gas stove, metal ceilings, B grade timber throughout, painted inside and out, water laid on, and 1000-gallon tank, with usual enamel bath and sinks, on a block 42ft. frontage—price on completion £jj s, which allows me a margin of profit.

“I notice that timber here is up to 70s. and 80s. per 100; there are other lines, mostly used in your building here, ranging from 225. upwards, and I claim that there is little difference in timber prices, comparing the two countries. Take the working conditions. Here the basic wage is 2s. 2id, per hour many cases 2s. 6d. per hour is paid fer good men. In Queensland, we are endeavouring to secure an award for 2s. /id. per hour; we pay 3s. to good men. As a builder, I say that you could make a fair margin of profit here, and save at least £2OO on the cost of the building. There must be some method, being worked amongst the builders, whether

CHEAPER DWELLINGS.

T. he assertion is made by Mr. A. E. Ingoid, Vice-President of the Queensland Suburban Master Builders’ Association, that New Zealanders are paying too much for their wooden dwellings.’ A house to cost ,£1,150 in New Zealand he could undertake to erect in Queensland for £BOO. This criticism has naturally drawn replies from those in the industry in New Zealand, and one result has been to secure from the ex-President of the New Zealand Master Builders’ Federation (Mr. H. F. Mainland) some practical suggestions for cutting the cost of small wooden houses.

it is in the selling, the commission, or the agency, that is actually costing the extra price you have to pay for building a house.

“Last year I turned over 31 houses in the suburbs of Brisbane, and the number of men, over all, including myself, was 16. I have been around Wellington and other New Zealand towns. I have seen mere shells of buildings that fetched £900; some of the piles I could throw about with my hands. I have seen them up to £ 1500, and can assure you that we could turn these two classes out from £,450 to £BSO in Queensland. I have also seen four to fiveroomed houses, for which the rent charged was from £2 to £3 per week, which would never bring more than 355. at the outside in Queensland. I don’t understand why the prices of building or the rents are so high in New Zealand ; I am certain that there is a very big profit in both of them.

! ‘I will anticipate the argument—l should have mentioned it before—that there is a difference in cartage costs here. There is not. You deliver at from is. to 2s. 6d. per 100, according to districts, and you carry big loads, up to 4000 feet, or three loads to a building. In Queensland we charge 7s. 6d. a load, and, worked out, the cost of cartage there is even more than in New Zealand. It has no bearing, therefore, on the excess profits charged in New Zealand.”

MASTER BUILDER’S SUGGESTIONS. WHERE MONEY COULD BE SAVED. When a representative of Progress brought the Queensland builder’s criticisms of local builders under the notice of Mr. H. Mainland (ex-President of the New Zealand Builders’ Federation), some very useful suggestions were made on the point of cheapening the cost of dwellings. Mr. Mainland was not disposed to take very seriously the visitor’s very rough and ready survey of New Zealand conditions, although he incidentally disposed of several of the critic’s points. What Mr. Mainland was

more concerned about was to show in what way something practical can be done to improve the situation.

“Are we making too much profit?” asked Mr. Mainland, having Mr. Ingoid’s remarks in' mind. “I think builders can clear themselves of any charge of exploitation of the public. We are all competing against one another, and we find that in our painters’, plumbers’, electricians’, and blacklayers’ work they are always within a few pounds of each other. And we have to include their prices in our quotations. So far as timber is concerned, we buy at list prices, and they govern this aspect of building costs. Hardware can be bought at the store, and everybody knows the prices. There is nobody at a disadvantage in buying these lines, and none of us could do much better than the other.

“As for labour, you can estimate this cost very closely. It is practically in the vicinity of 30 per cent, of the total cost of the house. You add this to the cost of the timber and hardware, both of which are out of our hands, and you can see for yourself if builders make any exorbitant profit. In a five-roomed house there are practically 10,000 feet of timber, costing, on the average—taking first-class and 0.8. —£2 per 100 feet, which brings the cost of timber to £2OO. Excavation is usually a very important cost factor in a hilly city such as Wellington, and this may have been completely overlooked in our visitor’s general comparison with Queensland conditions.

“The hilly nature of the district also adds to the cost of cartage. To take a load up to the hilly residential suburbs of Wellington costs at least 15s. for a three-horse dray. The most this load would comprise, if the timber is green, would be 600 feet. If dry, it might run to 1,000 feet. But our critic talks of carrying big loads up to 4,000 feet‘not in Wellington’ is all I have to say.’’

SUGGESTED SAVINGS.

If the high cost is not in the profit, where is it to be found? was the natural query of the interviewer.

This drew some important suggestions from Mr. Mainland. “A lot of timber could be cut down,” was Mr. Mainland’s reply. You might be able to leave off the sarkmg from the roof where iron is used, and thus you save the cost of about 2,000 feet of timber, plus the labour employed to cut it and put it into place; The cost of labour for sarking is 7s. 6d to 10s. per square, and the cost of the sarking is 30s. per 100 feet. In a roof of twenty squares, it would be possible, by a relaxation of the building by-laws, to save at least fifteen squares by putting the iron on the purlines. It would thus be possible to save up to £4O on the roof alone. You could use 3x2 purlines, and stretch your rafters to three feet apart, with complete safety.

“Coming to the framing, in certain cases I think we could do with two or three more inches on the centres, making 2oin. instead of I Sin. centres as now required by the by-laws. In ceiling joists, they could be spaced to suit the materials. If plaster boards are used, the joists could be spaced and battened to suit. You could hardly go past the bylaws with flooring, but the few suggestions I have made would lead to an appreciable cheapening of the cost of a moderate-sized dwelling in wood, if the by-laws were made easier. As for the stringent sanitary requirements, I do not know that we could relax, because the requirements have so direct a bearing on the health of the community’, though the result is that all our plumbers’ work is expensive. We are paying Z 5 per thousand for bricks, although our Queensland critic gets his for £3, and we must build chimneys of brick. So far as I can see, there is not much chance of saving on the plumbing, electricity, painting or brick-laying. It seems from recent tenders that painting is being done at a pretty low rate, and the competition is keen. People can rule out any idea that builders act in collusion, because anyone who handles tenders knows that competition is keen. Now and then, a builder submits a fairly high price in comparison with others, but this is usually due to the fact that he is very busy. If we could use red gum in New Zealand, as they can in Queensland, we could get heart timber for 17s. per 100, whereas the cost of heart timber in New Zealand is £3 tos,

“Our by-laws were framed when timber was cheap and plentiful. But to-day, while the same standards of size and strength are insisted upon, timber costs three to four times the price; therefore it is reasonable to suggest that we might make timber go a little further, especially as there reed be no danger in revising the Dv-laws on these lines. It would be a wise plan if the architects co-operated with the builders in approaching the Wellington City Council with a request for reasonable revision of the building by-laws, with the object of cutting down the cost of dwellings. There need be no approach to jerry-building if the framing of new bylaws is done by competent persons. And I might add that New Zealand builders are quite enterprising enough to efficiently carry on the building industry without outside assistance.”

BY-LAW REQUIREMENTS AN OBSTACLE TO ECONOMY.

Mr. Alec. Campbell, another well-known Wellington builder, strongly corroborated Mr. Mainland’s view that over-stringent building by-laws are partly responsible for high building costs. “If builders .'here are making £2OO profit on a house as Mr A;-In go id suggests,” commented Mr. Campbell, “it is a wonder that Mr Ingoid does not start business in Wellington, where, on his own figures, he would soon amass a fortune. If, as he says he built 31 houses last’ year, and could do the same

here, he would be making over £6,000 a year, and I venture to say no builder in New Zealand is making anything like that at the present time. 1 happened to travel back to Sydney recently with Mr. J. Lindsay, a well-known Brisbane builder, and gathered from him that our by-laws, which M. Ingoid does not mention, are very different from those in force in Brisbane. Let him try building here, and he will see the difference. “BY-LAWS THE HARDEST IN THE WORLD.” ‘‘Our building by-laws are the hardest 1 have struck in the world, and that means that building here is more expensive to the owner than elsewhere. “Then there are climatic conditions to be taken into consideration. I venture to say that the buildings in Brisbane do not have to stand the hard weather which had to be provided against here. Mr. Ingoid talks of metal ceilings. In Brisbane they use metal, tacked on to joists 4ft. apart. Why—it’s just like building a shed. That would not pass the City Council here. The Government, through the Labour Department, and the City Council have experimented in building houses, under the best of conditions, and without looking to make a profit. What those houses cost everyone knows. “I had occasion some years ago to appear in a building case in Court in Wellington, when a union secretary stated that if a man could not make a reasonable profit building cottages by working eight hours a day, he should not be in the business. That union secretary later went into business as a builder, and in the course of another Court case in which I was a witness, stated that he and his partner could not make a decent profit at the game by working less than twelve hours a day. That man is still in Wellington, and will endorse what I say. That shows what builders are up against in the cost of building.”