Business: Building

• Share

Comptroller Walter Stabler of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. pointed at a bookkeeper's entry sheet—his company had loaned $5,745,075 on real estate first mortgages last week, and of this had allotted but $25,000 to Manhattan. He still meant what he had said a year ago: "Lofts, office buildings and high-grade apartment construction was overdone. These types are overbuilt and we will not finance any more buildings of this character. However, we are lending money for small apartments or flat houses and one and two-family houses." When he had first said this, President Simon William Straus of S. W. Straus & Co. had not agreed with him entirely. Mr. Straus' house, beyond cavil, underwrites more mortgage bonds than any other concern in the country. His estimate of the nation's building situation is considered, by most men, to be authoritative, and, last week he stated: "Current conditions lead me to the conclusion that there should be a temporary breathing spell in construction [of office buildings, hotels, apartment houses] throughout the U. S. . . that accommodations may not become abnormally in excess of demand. I wish to make it plain that I do not look for any radical drop in the volume of building. . . ." Owners of properties already constructed cried acclaim; owners of undeveloped real estate were dismayed. Said Metropolitan President Haley Fiske, knowing Mr. Straus' wide influence: "I am glad to see that the attitude we have maintained for a year is at last being recognized."