How to Live like a Star

When John Long got out of the Army Air Corps in 1945, he and his wife Mary moved into a rented, one-bedroom house in a suburb of Phoenix, Ariz, while he built his own house. He worked on the new house for six months with Mary's help (she did the painting and finishing touches). When it was finished, Long got an offer for the house, sold it at a $4,300 profit. He and his wife set to work building another house, but they sold that one too--and the next, and the next. By last week, John Long, 38, had built nearly 10,000 houses worth more than $100 million, had risen to the top of the U.S. home-building industry with a flair for showmanship and a knack of building the most house for the least money.

At Long's 7,500-house Maryvale development, seven miles northwest of Phoenix, he sells a house with three bedrooms, two baths, an all-electric kitchen, a garage and a 28-ft. swimming pool--all for $11,750. Long's houses, ranging from $8,975 to $25,950, offer extra space, glamour and luxury touches (gables, palm trees, sliding glass doors), yet sell for about $1,500 less than those of most of his competitors. Last week Long added yet another attraction: with each purchase, he will give a free acre of mountain retreat land near the Kaibab National Forest, 178 miles north of Phoenix, provide a modern cabin on it for $1,695.

New Models. With such imaginative merchandising, John Long last year built and sold 2,500 houses worth more than $30 million, shared the home-building record of the year with Miami's Mackle brothers, who build their houses for General Development Corp. (TIME, March 30). Unlike the Mackles and most other big builders, Long is building all his houses in a single location, plans to put up at least 8,000 more houses before Maryvale is completed. He offers new models every six months to attract customers. Says Long: "It's like retooling and offering new models in the automobile industry."

A native Phoenician who stopped his formal training in high school, Long learned an invaluable lesson soon after he began building: "It's easier and cheaper to do it yourself than to subcontract. And volume is the key to continued growth." Long hired his own crew, used every known labor-saving device, estimated his costs to the penny. In his first development, he built 134 houses for $7,400 each, cleared only about $350 on each. Then, in 1953, to take advantage of the 10% down payment introduced by Congress for $7,000-or-under houses during the Korean War, he lowered his sights to a $7,000 house, contented himself with a $250 profit on each.

New Kitchen. Long bought up 600 acres of irrigated lettuce fields, called the site Maryvale after his wife. He built 1,000 low-cost quality houses (range: $7,300 to $8,500) by continuing to take slim profits. But another factor helped him to cut costs: Phoenix' sunny, dry climate. Long's crew of 750 men can work year-round, can turn out as many as 20 houses a day. He uses cheaper exposed-block constructions, shallow foundations and small heating plants. He has also set up cooperatives among buyers to get the long-term mortgage insurance provided by the Federal Housing Administration, forged ahead of other builders who sniffed at the paper work involved. His slogan became: "Live like a movie star for less than $10,000." He also began to upgrade Maryvale by building more expensive houses, added quality as he added price.

John Long has been so busy building that he still lives in the unpretentious $15,000 house of his early days. It was only after his wife complained that thousands of his houses had built-in appliances but not his own that he got around to upgrading his kitchen to the level of his customers'.

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