My great uncle Ed and my grandfather were very successful home builders after WWII. My great uncle was a multimillionaire back when that meant something. He made his fortune mostly by building thousands of small homes making a small profit on each.
The way my great uncle and grandfather built houses was similar to “prefab” houses today. They had several models that they made; each phase of construction was planned with efficiency in mind. They were nationally recognized for the efficiency of their operation. The houses turned out very nice also, and my dad is able to point them out to our family still standing all over our community, now worth many times the $5000 to $10,000 they sold for after the war and in the 1950s.
It seemed like the wave of the future, but these days such an operation probably would not be possible with the massive amount of government regulation and interference at every level. From the time the foundation was poured one of these houses would often be mostly completed approximately a week later. In less than a month a house would often have been sold and have a family living in it. After WWII and in the 1950s the local government actually tried to be a help not a hindrance.
The way it worked was: First crews laid multiple foundations. The walls of each home were partially built offsite at a central location by crews who became very good at putting them together. Then the walls were taken to the foundations where a small crew used jacks to raise them and connect them together. Another crew put on the roofs and then other crews did the finishing work with wiring, plumbing and then sheet rocking. Then the place was painted and flooring put down. The steps were all planned for maximum efficiency. It was almost an assembly line type of production.
In the 1950s the state department asked my great uncle to go to Argentina to help the Argentineans build small homes more efficiently. Unfortunately, he did not feel that he was successful. There were many challenges some which are similar to what we have these days... Local officials who cared more about preserving their jobs or getting a piece of the action than helping with quality construction... Workers who were resistant to doing anything differently than what they were used to... But mostly it was a cultural problem, he didn't want to say it was because they were lazy, but it had the same end result. It was a combination of socialism where no one really got rewarded for working hard and a culture where no one really felt like working hard was important to begin with. After two years of beating his head against the wall, he gave up and came back home. Unfortunately the business here suffered during his absence. My grandfather was a great production man, but my great uncle was the one with the flare.
