Spring Tonic

The nation's dispirited home builders, whose forecasts for 1957 have slipped steadily lower, last week heard the first good news to come out of Washington in a long, hard winter. With predictions for as few as 800,000 home starts this year, v. 1,100,000 in 1956, the Administration moved to pep up the industry in an area where it needs help. The Administration:

P: Reduced down-payment requirements for FHA-insured loans on houses appraised at $9,000 or more. Instead of pegging downpayments at 7% on the first $9,000 of the home's cost, 27% on the rest, FHA will now ask only 5% on the first $9,000, 25% on the balance, hopes to spur home buying by .low-and middle-income families, despite tightness of mortgage funds.

P: Relaxed Federal Home Loan Bank Board regulations to permit insured sav-ings-and-loan associations to spread more of their loanable funds over a larger geographical area. Formerly, the associations were limited mostly to mortgages on homes within 50 miles from their main office; new rules will allow them to put 20% of their funds into conventional loans made by other insured associations anywhere in the U.S., provided the original lender keeps half interest.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.