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finance plan that A.B.C. announced came out, we thought that was the only thing that was holding up the secondhouse market in our area, and we iumped in with your plan. We sold 18 cabins and, strangely enough, after wait' ing all these years for a financing plan, two-thirds of the particular carrins we sold were for cash.

The real-estate agents in Albuquerque have bqen very active in the past year in selling vacation-area sites, and they wanted an eye-catching plan on their developments that would helD sell lots. A third of the cabins we ini , tially sold. particularly these of yours, were sold to real' estate agents. They couldn't qualify on this mortgage thing that A.B.C. has as firms, so they paid cash for them.

As a ,result of ou{ experience with your cabins, a second problem presented itself. The cabin didn't lend itself to panelization, and since we quickly came to the realiza' tion that without some sort of panelization our crews were going to be spending their summers in the moun' tains putting together what they should have been putting together in our lumber yard, we came up with a panelization system.

Our opening is next week, and we have tentatively sold 14 of th€ newer small cabins. we are able to sell about the same square footage as in your Cabin Number 6 tor about half the price with this panelization, and as a result the cost to the customer is about $29 a month, and we feel we can reach a real mass market with a $2o-a-month shell.iln. STRAWBnIDGE3 one point Mr. Gibson brought out, which -ls apropos, I believe, is that 60% of our business until recently has been cash, and we have had adequate financing right from virtually the beginning of our secondhome oDeration.

We have built between five and six thousand second homes aggregating around 7y2 miles.

We staited out rvith the small-tract program 5y2 or 6 years ago. our first cottages were $595, and 12 by 16. Now, this really doesn't qualify as much, and it was intended only to get the people their land. we are now going back over a goodly percentage of this and puttinc on additlonal rooms. ihe program has gradually changed from the $595, until now we are building a considerable number of 600 and 8oo square foot units. So this month, {or example, we will build 77. of which 12 will be completed, and I venture to say that about 75o/o ot out business is second' home, and about 25% is resident homes.

I am going to make the same comment that some of the othei gentlemen made about your plans. They are eye-catchinS, they create a lot of interest, but in our area, as Dungan Gibson has run into, we have a peculiarat best, you could call it peculiar, brilding and safety code. which precludes in some instances using these plans. Customers come in there all hot about that beau' tiful little cottage, and you have to say you are sorry but they won't le-t you build on these wooden-type things, that you have to build on concrete. lt is hard to change thelr mind without losing them. So, in our particular area, we have problems, and I think these are apropos to many other areas.

mn. DAYID GIBSoN: one point that came up with us, Ma. Miner, in erecting this panelized cabin we have: we are going to haye instances where people are going t0 want to build their own, and we have worked out an arrangement with A.B.C. where they will, in eff€ct, give the customer sir months in order to get that thing up, and we. as part of our contract with the customer, require ' that he get it up within that perlod or we are committed to go in and finish the construction for him. I notic€d you mentioned there that you preterred to have the dealer put it up. ' lttl. ltllllEi: I might say that in the 37 offices these programs are basic, but tbe discretion of the operation is up to the manager. tn. SYI{OI|S: Sir, do you have any required arels that you go into; in other words, certain terrain l{ke F.H.A., or sonethlng like that? lln. SIAS: Mike Symons apparently has been carrying the matetlal costs for hls do-lt-yourself customers until they complete the cabin. liR. siiloils3 what we have been doing in that situation: the people come in to us and buy their cabins. First. I was noticing one of the other comments made' that the cabins that we are discussing iere are little things. oul average cabin up there runs about between twelve and fifteen hundred square feet. tR. t{lllER: I might add that, In our program, if lanc is under lease for l5 years, we will finance a secono home on that particular piece of ground. At one of the Indian reservations we have one that is under constructlon at the present time. You can't purchase the land up there, but you can have a lease on it. tln. SYI{0NS: You were talking about a sewer system, and I assume a septic tank is acceptable. l{R. MlllER: Yes. l{R. SIAS: Stan, you are lust the opposite of Mike Symons to some extent. You are dealing sometimes with hlsband-and-wife teams in perfectly ordinary jobs that have paid $50 down on a lakeside place here. l{R.' EEATTY: All our customers are worklng people, where both parties are working, and all of our deals have been cash. We have never financed anything, once in a while we have carried $100 or $300 for 90 days for them. Wherc they pay $600 down and they have $200 ' to go. we will carry it ourselves. liR. SIAS: I might mention that the kind of unit that stan Beatty here has concentrated on so far has been a very lot/r cost, simple structutal shell, low priced. t{R. BEATTY: The lowest one is 9495 and the average one, I would say, is a.ound $700. ttn. DAVID GlBSol& The biggest problem we find In selling a low-cost cabin ls that the people that cabln appeals to in many cases have gone out in these various real-estate developments and bought a $1,000 lot and paid maybe four or five-hundred dollars down on it, plus their monthly pryments.one of the basic tequirements lrln. SIAS: ls that an existing lake, or did he set out and mak€ a lake,.too? tlR. WAtl(ER: He actuallv dammed uo a creek and made the lake. He ls selllng these lots out; ln fact, he now has them all, I believe with the exception of some l0 or 15, sold. Peoole, as they get their lots paid for, are beglnning to build. l{R. SIAS: Dave Gibson, when he erect€d a to6"; 66hin in his yard, had a real estaie salesman. along with his own DebDle. In that cabln. Could you tell us, Dave, a llttle'blt'about how that worked, whether it was effectlve? tlR. DAVID GlBS0ll: Yes, it was a nlce double-barreled oDeration. both for ourselves and the real'estate people. ltlR. SIAS: I wo(ld like to ask Dave.Gihson from AIbu' oubrque now to give us some moae detail on what klnd .if cihi0 he is selling. Incidentally, Dave has told us that he ofiers a kit.

*f,. l{illlER: No, sir, we do not. We go in the mountains, streams. or on the waterfront, lakes, any place.

MR. STRAWBRIDeE: lt misht be of interest that the loans are not predicated on land value, but they are only predicated on the ability to pay of the person bor' rowlng the money, at least that is the way we operate.

When we sell the materials, we give them 90 days of . free intefest and then we start charging them 6% a year, iust like a regular low bank loan, and we have never had to go to a financing company yet, because they pay rlght now, bingo. our terms are net 30 days. and, by golly, we get it.

A.B.C. has is thtt the lot be free and clear, and we are having a problem with people whose credit is actua!ly sood and whose intentions are to build a cabin, who don't have the five or six-hundred dollars down to free the lot. I don,t Ino.{ if there is any interim financing that any of you gentlemen have come up with. or have had the sam6 prd-blem or not, but it has postponed an aw'ul lot or our cabin sales.

MR. SIAS: We might talk to George Strawbridge, who faces this questlon of land from a totally different standpoi nt. 'iln.

STRAWBnIDGE: some people came into the comDanv about 6V2 veArs ago who had acquired a qovernment lmdll-tract lease. There were a couple of outfits bullding. Well, they were absolute shacks of 12 by 16 and they were getting something like $1,100 for them: cement slab. four walls. a roof. two windows and a door, and that ls it. Well. Mr. Robinson acts kind of {ast most of the tlme, and ."o he told these people, "whv, we will build that for $595. where do vou want it?" So, that was our introduction to buildins on the smalFtract lands that were made available through the Bureau of Land Management of the Departm-ent of lnterlor of the Unlted States rovernment. Now.-actuallv. our selling and so on has been more a knowledce of how to help the people with their government tract than anything else. At one time there wefe 35.OOo of these five-acie tracts in open lease In the San Bernardino-Riverside area. lt grew so fast that the lovernment lost comDlete control of it, and now it has iome to a screeching standstill. But lt showed what could he done if cheao |tnd is made available to the public. Thev iust take it llke a fish takes a lure.

Mn. SlAs: weldon Walker, from Houston. is working closely with a resort development outside of town, and I susDeit that he would concur with Mr. Hoelting In terms of 'selling buildlng materials or erecting units; is that right, Weldon?

I{R. WAtl(ER; We would' In a metropolitan area whcre the land is bousht up and where it ls so expensive. This outfit we do business with is also a builder of primarv homes. and on a poor-bov basis started thls proiect. which he called Lakevlei,v Club, last year, which Is 75 lots bullt around a lake, swimmlng pool.

As I misht have mentioned earlier, we have six goorl real-estati firms in Albuquerque who were Interested In ihe cabin sltes in the Albuquerque area. They dldn't iave the financing to provide for the cabins, and we diqn't have the land to Drovlde for them, so we 8ot toBether with the six oeople. And also, as I mav havc mentioned, we sold model cablns to each of the firms. That was one of the conditions of our particlDation with them. Thev. in turn. helDed us and are helping us to sell cabins. They recelve t sales commlssion, a regular real-estate commlssion. that way, and that way we find a good deal of Interest evldenced bv the people worling for the rpal' estate tirms. They have a chance to male a lot and also helo us sell our cablns, and In efrect we have some 25 or '30 real-estate agents who are trving to sell Glhson Lumher Company cabins in these varioos sites. We have orovided them wlth several sales meetings. and given their bovs various alternates that we have. we have provided them with brochrtre< and ouestionnaires, and we find that they are very effectlve salesmen.

MR. DAVID GIBSoN! Thank vou. This, we sive to every DrosDect that comes in (indicating). lt iust shows a simple flooi olan and. with the alternates on it, a .ross-section. Thls is the one that we are reaiurins now. We also have this DFPA plan thing (indicating), which we ran and are running every once in a while in the Sundav supplement.

1{R. SIAS: This readsr "The Sportsman. Your prefabricated, budget oriced cabin for family fun. $1,995. No down pavment. Up to seven years to pay."

Un. DAVID GIBS0N: Thls is the new hrochure. which isn't printed yet, whlch we will use with this set of Dlans. We have reDresentation from six real estat€ agencies at the model cabins. We have two or them acro<s the street comoletelv turnished. The men will he {amiliar wlth the stori. and we have this brochure. which we feel is verv extensive. The back page is devoted to oue'tions and answers. We will be able to tell them our story and give them the price wiihout being technicallv in the construction business; that is, the reoresentatives don't neeessarily have to have any technical !nowledge, an.l lf thev gat a good lead, our peoDle will be on the nremices durini the four Sundavs we are going to show this. our credif manager. who has all the answers. and the contrrctor. who will actually put this up, will answer specific qitestlons. We have; and will have along with this. a little give-awav. we were at the NAHB this year, and I thlnk it was the Simoson people that gave awav a little pine tree. we thought that was a good gimmick, particularlv for a lumberman.

Conclrrently we are building model cabins at two central real-estate locations.

This is an ad we ran several months ago (indicating). The new cabin will be very similar to that; 22 miles trom Albuquerque. ttlR. SIAS: That particular cabin is one of those far'out things that we developed?

MR. DAVID Gl8Sol{: Yes, that's tight. We are going to have two of these built. We will have people from our vard at each of these places, and one from each of the ieal-estate places. So we will have, over a period of four weeks, approximately forty odd people that will be tied up during the four Sundays in a row, either at our yard, niodel cCbins. or out on the sites with the real'estate p"ifl?bnn..tion with that, the A.B.c. people have volunteered to have several of their men out there, so we feel we have the whole package ready to present to people. .l may look awfully silly on this, but we are hoping to sell 40 of these in the first month.

Now, the basic cabin that you have the plans on there, sells financed, and that is including A.B.C.'s pack, as thev call it. for $1.995. lf the customer wants to pay cas'h for it,'we will give him a 10% discount. We will erect that kit for another $300, approximately, and that is the finance price on that. lt amounts to about $210, so that the conibination of the cabin, etc., plus the erection. would run around $31 a month. we think we are probably going to have to erect 70 to 75% of them. As a matter of fact, we have priced it, you will note, in an effort to have them let us erect them. We feel it is more satisfactory from our standpoint, and we don't have the exposure that we might have in the event people don't out uD the cabins and don't actually fill their part ol the-obliiation. The A.B.C. people, of course, would be lookins down our neck to set them completed. we have developed. however. a rather extensive instruction kit, we think, for the ieople in the event they do want to erect them themselves.

Now. we think this is a rather novel method. My dau[hter makes doll houses bv takins these things and is a daushter makes by taking past-ing them together (indicating).. In an effort t0 .let pasfing (indicating). e Deorle visualize the sections, we have worx blari, which bv cuttinc alonE these lines is beorle the worked out this btari, wnlcn by cutting along is folded- up, bnd it gives them, I think, an excellent_idea. ot each of the pan6ls, which bre numbered, and we find it do it simDle. 0ur credit manager is a fine example. it simple. example. He put one of these up with his 14 year-old son in a day and i half across fiom the lumbei yard and, believe me, he doesn't know a two-by-four doesn't two-by-four from a two'by-six. l{R. SIAS: lf you can't see this, ha! has got his floor plan in the center.and wa Dlan center wall s€ ail four sides. lf this out D to form a shell. facing away 0n ll cur our, rney would iust fold up kit for them. and we those people who insist on building their own we also have a semi-erected Drice where we wil excellent idea of we find it does make s put what he has done, he and the wall sections his was cut out, they in. lt makes a nice little makes it very simple for we will charge uD to the wall

MR.'DAvlD Gtgsotl! Then the roof section fits right over it. and the floor section goes in. lt kii for them- and we think it make rir own cabins. we have a semi-erected Pl them $125.00 to go out and 8et Danels in olace. We feel that is them go get everything up Danels place. is probably the most dlfficult bart of the erection, particularly on a hillside site. irart th'e ' iln. DAVID Cl8sot{: we use the old Lu'Re-co panel. At least it is based on that. lt is a four-by'eight panel with the continuous two-by-six header around it, and -double two-by-sixes to tie in. The floor panels are also four'by' eicht. and we are thinking seriously of making them twe bv:eiiht because of the extra weicht. ltn. SIAS: when you say "sales," do you mean a situa' tion where you go out and build the cabin on somebody's site? tR. STnAWBRIoCE: Right; in other words, complete four walls. roof and floor, Gradually it has evolved, with comoetitioh and so on. to an extremely competitive busi' nesi. We stlll have our banking office, and we now have an operation at Yucca Valley, where we prefabricate these units: seven rnodels on display at all times seven days a webk. The model is of the completed home, that desert cabin which we were selling mostly as a completed house. Then. as time went on, it became necessary to set up facilitles in Los Angeles, because 80 to 9096 of our cus' tomers come from the metropolitan district. We have a list of Dersons who have acquired government tracts over the veirs and we contact them perlodically and advise them- they have so much time left in which to get theit imDrovements on the land or they will lose it' trtR. SIASr What was this Fair where you displayed?

MR. BEATTY: How much do you have to pay the real estate guys?

MR. oAvlD GtSSOtl: Six per cent of the price of the materia s. They don't get anything on the erection labor. They get the o;ice of [he basic Lit. In other words, in this case our kit is S1.560 some odd dollars. Thev get 6% of that, or about $90 for the basic matter.

MR, BEATTY: How bi8 are the Panels?

-MR-. SIAS: George Strawbridge, yours is probably pretty close to the largest, if not the largest, operation in terms of number of units sold in the past several years; would you give us a rundown on what lt is you are selling and how you go about it?

Md. SiRAWBRIDGE: our sales organization originally was set uD and we wotked strictly out of Banning. We cot sDoiled rotten because the people came and took lhem bway from us for about a year and a halfi we would rvrite coniracts for as far as we could go on without looking up, and maybe eight or 10 sales.waiting at^a.tlme, and wi tiive writtan as hany as 55 sales on a Saturday and Sunday.

Vou have to call the people in order to get them out to look at the models, and then many times you go bacf and close them in their homes.

Our advertising has been sadly unsatisfactory in the newspapers. So we keep uslng the models, using direct contact.

We had a model at the Pomona Fair this last year' which we had a drawing on, and {rom that I hope to develoo some sood solid leads a little later on. All of the dita is being compiled by Remington Rand now on key-punch cards.

MR, STnAWBRIDGE: There was a County Fair at Pomona, California. we ended up with about 10,000 slips from that. We didn't sell a single unit from the Fair proper, but we have had several people that took our brochures that have come in since, or that have contacted others and have bought cottages.

I think it was worthwhile even if we iust broke even. Anything that gets your name in tront of the public comes (Continued on Page 44)