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M1 M2 M3 M4 V1 V2 V3 V4


KLMNO DO IT YOURSELF Extra sump pump on reserve


by Gene Austin My sump pump is six years


old, and I worry about it failing in an emergency. I was thinking of buying a backup pump and keeping it on a shelf in case the basement floods and the exist- ing pump fails. What is your opinion? — D. Andrews If your existing pump is prop- erly maintained, it should have years of useful life ahead of it. Also, the best backup you could have would not sit on a shelf but would be a battery-powered backup pump to operate in case of a power failure, which often accompanies storms that flood basements. For starters, make it a habit to check the existing pump every few months. Keep the sump clean and free of debris and make sure the inlet screen to the pump is clean. To make sure the pump


lubrication, are recommended. Backup pumps that work dur- ing power failures operate with a battery or water power (via a hookup to a municipal water sys- tem). I prefer the battery type, and if you have a well, it is your only choice. A 12-volt marine bat- tery is generally used, and it must be kept well charged. You can get more information on battery- backup pumps online.


ANN CAMERON SIEGAL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Many contractors recommend testing the pump after a long dry spell or period of inactivity.


is operating well, pour some wa- ter into the sump until it causes the switch to kick in and start the pump.


When there is a forecast of


heavy rain, repeat the mainte- nance steps. Also check the pump owner’s manual to see whether other maintenance steps, such as


If owning a second regular pump would make you feel bet- ter, there is no reason not to buy one. But keep in mind that war- ranties usually start from the date of sale. But a pump stored indoors in a dry place should be ready to use when needed.


Questions and comments should be e-mailed to Gene Austin at gaus17@ aol.com. Send regular mail for Gene Austin to 1730 Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, Pa. 19422.


SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 2010


BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST


Sisters Meghan, center, and Moira, right, Esson move in to their dorm rooms at American University with help from their big sister Kaitlin, left.


HOUSEWATCH Thinking green? It’s not just black and white. by Katherine Salant


Can a big house be green? Yes, but a smaller house will al-


ways be greener because fewer resources were used in its con- struction and less energy is need- ed to heat and cool it. This critical distinction is little understood by the general public, but in the world of green build- ing, prudent use of resources, also called “sustainability,” is a cornerstone. It means using re- sources to meet our needs with- out compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. From a green perspective, the fewer resources and energy used the better. The number of different re- sources tapped for homebuilding is relatively small, but their quan- tity is staggering, even for a mod- est-size house, said Dan Chiras, author, educator and director of the Evergreen Institute in Gerald, Mo. To build a 2,200-square-foot house, an acre of forest will be clear-cut somewhere on the globe and a huge hole in the earth, roughly equal in size to the vol- ume of the house, will be excavat- ed to provide the raw materials that go into copper, aluminum, steel and concrete. A house that’s twice as big (4,400 square feet) will require about two acres of clear-cut forest, and a much big- ger hole. Homeowners could more readily connect the dots be- tween greenness and house size if this information were more wide- ly available, but most green build- ing programs do not provide a way to make comparisons be- tween houses of differing sizes, said Michael Horowitz, a green


building expert based in Marsh- field, Vt. When size is addressed, it’s usually done obliquely; to qualify as green and earn a high- er rating, you have to do more things as the house size increases. In programs that focus solely on energy consumption, such as the government’s Energy Star Homes program, energy efficien- cy is calculated by comparing houses of the same size. A house gets the Energy Star rating if it is 15 percent more efficient than the same sized house built to the model energy code standard. A better way to rate houses — and one that would illuminate the gross differences in material and energy consumption be- tween large and small houses — would include occupancy in the formula, Horowitz said. He pro- poses a scoring system that rates the greenness of a house by the amount of material and energy used per occupant, which is as- sumed to be the number of bed- rooms plus one. Graphically describing what this might look like, Horowitz compared his own modestly sized, 1,800-square-foot, three- bedroom house with four occu- pants with another home that is three times as big, carrying a higher green rating and housing the same number of occupants. “First,” he said, “divide all the ma- terials used to build my house into four piles in my driveway and then added a visual to each pile that would show how much energy each of us used per year. The size of the piles would be im- pressive. But when you do the same thing for the bigger house, the size of its four piles would dwarf mine.”


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industry estimates. Edward J. DeMarco, acting di-


rector of the FHFA, said the pro- posed ban — pending a 60-day public comment period — is nec- essary because the fees “may im- pede the marketability and the valuation of properties,” may raise homeownership costs and “contribute to reduced transpar- ency for consumers because the fees are not disclosed by sellers and are difficult to discover through customary title search- es.”


The wording of the ban, how-


ever, appears to reach well be- yond Freehold-type fees to in- clude mortgages where cov- enants require payments to homeowners associations, afford- able housing groups, or other community or nonprofit organi- zations upon each resale of the property. Many new housing develop- ment projects come with not-for- profit homeowners associations that collect assessments from owners to fund community im- provements and property man- agement. Some also receive cov-


By this method of accounting,


however, the bigger house would receive the same rating as Horo- witz’s if 12 people lived in it in- stead of four.


If the inherent greenness of smaller houses were well under- stood, would the American public opt for them? “Bigger is better is a sacred cow in the U.S.,” Chiras said, and in our culture, nothing telegraphs personal success like a really big house. Preaching the virtues of a smaller house is not impossible, however. Although the culture at large may be caught up in the “bigger is better” syndrome, indi- viduals can be persuaded to downsize “if you catch them early on, before they have purchased land or become fixed on size,” said architect and green building advocate Peter Pfeiffer. But, he added the winning argument is not greenness, it’s lifestyle. Many people who aspire to the simple life want to build a big house in the country, without re- alizing that it will actually make their life more complicated, Pfei- ffer said. They don’t factor in how much of their day will be spent in the car. A bigger house has other baggage as well. It will be more costly to furnish and maintain and more time-consuming to clean. In contrast, Pfeiffer said, a smaller house within city limits offers independence for the kids at an early age — they can walk or bike to school. It’s a 10-minute commute to work, and weekends and evenings can be spent social- izing with family and friends, not housecleaning and looking after those four acres of rolling coun- tryside. salanthousewatch@gmail.com


College housing as an investment jacobs continued from E1


by the capitalization and amorti- zation of capital improvements made to the residence. A pure financial comparison would have to account for the fact that, with dorms, parents could have to find and pay for other shelter for three or four months of the year if Junior opts not to move home each summer, and perhaps during extended winter and spring breaks, when many dorms are closed. If students can keep their belongings in the in- vestment property year-round, parents stand to save the hassle and expense of hauling all their children’s possessions between home and college twice a year. Of course, when making a deci- sion, parents should factor in the cost of furnishings, vacancies, re- pairs, wear and tear, replace- ments and utilities. Transactional cost of buying and eventually sell- ing (including sales commissions, transfer and recordation taxes and lender’s fees) must also be counted in total cost of owner- ship.


Condo units in Foggy Bottom


or Georgetown, of course, carry significant monthly maintenance fees. And parents should always confirm before buying a condo that there is no restriction on renting to students.


But condos are not the only op- tion. Single-family homes near the University of Maryland in Col- lege Park or row houses near Catholic University of America or Howard University would prob- ably not involve condo fees and association rules. Parents also stand to benefit if


the investment appreciates in price. Although the opposite has occurred in recent years, prices will eventually rise, and well-lo- cated properties near campus —


with a never-ending source of new tenants — will benefit. Depending on the number of bedrooms in the apartment and the entrepreneurial nature of the student, it might be possible for Junior’s roommates to pay all of the costs of principal, interest, taxes, insurance and utilities, al- lowing Junior to live rent-free for four or more years. During this time, the tenants are helping to pay off the mortgage. Parents might also have peace of mind knowing that their children are, hopefully, not living in squalor and that they can visit their col- lege-age kids under the guise of inspecting their real estate in- vestment. However, a decision to pur- chase a dorm-room equivalent in- volves more than just dollars and cents.


If the student is responsible enough to manage the property, he or she will be learning valuable lessons about advertising, mar- keting, business management, psychology and, perhaps, even physics and engineering, assum- ing there are toilets to unclog from time to time.


But there is also the very real possibility that the student will not like his or her first school choice and leave the college — voluntarily or otherwise — leav- ing parents as absentee landlords with a nonliquid property invest- ment full of someone else’s kids. Another argument against buy- ing a college home is that the stu- dent would miss out on part of the typical college experience: liv- ing in the dorms, eating in the dorms, studying in the dorms and partying in the dorms.


And the student might not be


mature enough to become a prop- erty manager. The investment property could become “party central.” The feeling of ownership


could connote an attitude of “it’s my house so anything goes” in- stead of “it’s my house so I had better take care of it.” Only a par- ent will know a child well enough to know which of these scenarios is likely. There are financial risks, as


well. In addition to the ups and downs of the overall housing market, construction of addition- al on-campus dorm space can cause the value of off-campus housing to plummet. Finally, the decision on such a real estate investment might be affected by other factors. Is the home near a large sports univer- sity where a parent would like to have a place to use during home- coming or football, basketball or lacrosse seasons, even after Jun- ior graduates? Are there other cultural or sporting events near- by that would make a college property more attractive? Say, for example, it is located near Uni- versity of Nevada at Las Vegas or in Indianapolis and is available each year during the Memorial Day Indy 500 race or can be rent- ed out for that event at a signifi- cant premium.


At the end of the day, the deci- sion must include the matriculat- ing student. No matter how good the financial deal is, if a student has his or her heart set on living in the most popular fraternity or sorority house on campus, a par- ent will not have a good real es- tate experience by forcing the stu- dent to live elsewhere.


hjacobs@jgllaw.com


Harvey S. Jacobs is a real estate lawyer in the Rockville office of Joseph, Greenwald & Laake. He is an active real estate investor, developer, landlord, settlement attorney and lender. This column is not legal advice and should not be acted upon without obtaining your own legal counsel.


Private transfer-fee ban could cost homeowners harney continued from E1


enanted transfer-fee payments to fund part of their work. Still oth- ers impose long-term transfer fees designed to benefit specific charities. For example, Lennar, a builder based in Miami, has imposed mandatory transfer fees on thou- sands of homes constructed in its California developments. The fees, which amount to one-20th of a percent of the price of the home each time it resells, support the efforts of the Lennar Charita- ble Housing Foundation’s anti- homeless and affordable shelter activities, according to a spokes- man for the firm, Marshall Ames. But the FHFA’s proposal explic- itly includes a broad spectrum of such programs in the ban. It says “even where such fees are payable to a homeowners association,” they are “likely to be unrelated to the value rendered and at times may apply even if the property’s value has significantly dimin- ished since the time the covenant was imposed.” Andrew Fortin, vice president


of government affairs for the 30,000-member Community As- sociations Institute, which repre- sents homeowners and associa-


tion managers nationwide, said that banning investments in mortgages on properties with transfer fees payable to associa- tions “is potentially a big prob- lem.” Among other negatives, it could force associations to in- crease annual assessments on in- dividual homeowners. Fortin said his group “shares the concerns of FHFA about pro- grams that create neo-feudal ar- rangements” with outside inves- tors, but believes the agency needs to better distinguish be- tween profit-motivated transfer fees and those that benefit public interest and nonprofit organiza- tions. Meanwhile, a spokesman for


Freehold Capital Partners de- plored the FHFA’s proposal. Argu- ing that private transfer fees pro- vide crucial financial support for developers and their customers, Bryan J. Cohen, the company’s ex- ecutive vice president and gener- al counsel, said “this is precisely the wrong time to eliminate a program that halts foreclosures, helps restart failed projects, cre- ates jobs and reduces upfront costs to American homebuyers.” kenharney@earthlink.net


NF407 1x2


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