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REAL ESTATE

U.S. home owners are expected to hew away at their funded debt this year. Best estimates are that they will trim their mortgages by a staggering $4 billion. This will be 10% more than they paid off last year, and almost four times as much mortgage debt as they retired in 1939. Thus U.S. citizens, long abusively criticized for squandering their fat wartime earnings in nightclubs and swanky shops, actually have been behaving as wisely and thriftily as so many Ben Franklins. In three war years they will have reduced their mortgage debt by $10.9 billion, their annual fixed charges (interest and amortization) by roughly $800,000,000.

This is an economic fact of first importance in understanding the American scene. For one thing it means that the U.S. will not go flabbily unprepared into the possible postwar depression, but on a lean, hard-muscled basis. This debt reduction, when added to the $6 billion of installment credit outstanding at the war's beginning, but since 70% paid off, means that many a U.S. citizen will be much better set to weather any lean years ahead. It also means that many an American family, free of debt, will have more cash out of income to spend for postwar appliances and improvements to property.

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