Remodeling Industry's $t O Billion Quarter

E) ECORD expenditures for resif r dential property maintenance. repairs and improvements in the second quarter of 1978, and estimates of continued heavy spending for the rest of the year, reflect dramatic growth for the remodeling industry, according to the National Home Improvement Council.

Basing its statement on the latest Bureau of the Census figures, NHIC stated that 1978 Anril-Mav-

Western Lumber Value

Spurred by a pressing demand for building products in 1977 matched against an "artificial" timber shortage, lumber production in 11 Western states topped five billion dollars for the first time in history, according to the Western Wood Products Association.

Leading states were all on the West Coast, led by Oregon's production of lumber valued at $1.760.000.000. Calilornia was sec-

June home improvement expenditures amount to $10.7 billion. which at a seasonally adjusted annual rate were an estimated $38.3 billion. Comparable 1977 figures were $9.4 billion and $35.5 billion respectively.

The Council further reported that owners of one-to-four unit housing properties with one unit owner-occupied accounted for $7.6 billion during the period, with resident owners ol single housing units spending the major proportion of that sum.

Outlays by owners of rental properties amounted to $3.1 billion.

Tops $5 Billion

ond with $1,655,000,000, followed by Washington producing $889,000,000.

Together these three states accounted for 8201, of the dollar value of the total Western production.

The estimated wholesale value of the lumber produced was $5.239.200.000. In l9'7 6 the wholesale value was $4,286,300,000. The jump in prices is partly due to an increase in production from 20.621,000.000 bd. ft. in 1976 to 21.558.000.000 bd. ft. in 1977.

But the big reasons for higher prices were intensive demand for lumber and threat of what lumber producers believe to be an artificial timber shortage that drove up the bidding on stumpage in National Forest lands to new all-time highs during the year.

Lumbermen were pleased about the 1.99 million housing starts in 1977 but remain threatened by RARE II, a study of roadless lands in National Forests. There are over 62 million acres in the study that could become Federal Wilderness and be withdrawn from timber harvesting if special interest groups composed of wilderness activists are successful in their lobbying activities.

Estimated wholesale values for lumber produced in 1l Western states were Arizona, $104,000,000: California/Nevada, $ 1,655,000,0001 Colorado, $5 2,000,0001 Idaho, $459.000,000: Montana, $262.000.000; New Mexico, $59,000,000; Oregon, $1,760,000,000; South Dakota, $32,000,000: Utah, $l 3,000,000; Washington, $889,000,000; and Wyoming, $44.000.000.

The author. Frank Butrick. at a recent convention presenlation of the family-owned business. The round sketch on the blackboard svmbolizes the three fields in which every -president (and president-tobe) must become c0mpetent: technology (everything which makes a timber dealer dilferent from a butcher shop), people man- agement, and money management. Mr. Butrick is pointinq 0ut one 0f the best ways t0 learn "presidenting-by doing it; how a separate department or small subsidiary, run completely by the successor, is the ideal training ground for the next president of the oarent lirm