Check out your renting profile based on your rent, your housing price increases, and the cost of buying your home! It is quite astounding that based on today’s estimated residential price appreciation rates, it may make more sense to keep on renting and save that extra money per month.

New funding and support for lead paint enforcement in the Burlington area. Areas outside Burlington will get notices and support in the coming months.

Sorrell announces compliance plan for lead paint

November 22, 2008
Free Press Staff Report

Attorney General William Sorrell announced Friday the creation of a Burlington-based project that will focus on enforcement of the state’s laws on lead safety.
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“Far too many children with lead poisoning come from the Burlington area,” Sorrell said. “This is a serious public health problem, and yet, one that can be avoided.”

Lead even in tiny amounts can affect brain development in children.

Lead-based paint is the primary way children become exposed to the toxic substance. Lead-based paint is still found in older homes and apartments even though it hasn’t been sold since 1978. Children may be exposed when paint chips away from window sills or door frames, or during renovations when lead dust is released.

Vermont law requires that certain steps be taken — essential maintenance practices — to protect against the release of lead in rental housing construction before 1978. Annual compliance reports are required.

Beginning in January, the Attorney General’s Office will send letters to Burlington landlords whose maintenance compliance records aren’t up to date. The first round of letters will be sent to the city’s largest landlords.

“The Burlington Lead Program and the Burlington Housing Authority offer resources, both educational and financial, to Burlington area landlords that can assist them as they bring their properties into compliance,” said Brian Pine, assistant director of housing in Burlington. “In many instances these resources have gone unnoticed and unused. Hopefully, as part of this project, more landlords will take advantage of the assistance and support these groups are willing to offer.”

Landlords in communities outside Burlington can expect to receive similar mailings later in the year.

More and more real estate professionals are realizing the importance of offering Broadband internet to their customers.

Renters should be asking their landlord about their broadband options so YOU don’t get caught by surprise.

Areas with better and faster broadband are becoming more desirable than ones with slower access.

Real estate broker Edward Redpath of Hanover, N.H. said he has seen potential deals fall by the wayside once the buyer finds out a home doesn’t have broadband Internet access. Across the river in Norwich, Vt., the center of the village is the only place with cable.

“We have a lot of people that don’t go into the rural neighborhoods or consider the rural neighborhoods because they need the broadband,” Redpath told the AP.

“Our lifestyle demands speed.”

Many factors are at play in driving the trend, including our increasing reliance on broadband. Indeed, roughly 55 percent of Americans have broadband connections in their homes, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. However, more have service available to them and choose not to buy it.

But the growth of broadband is slowing, and providing connections to the remaining 10 percent of unconnected homes will be expensive since these homes are typically in small communities or in remote locations. As time goes on, the lack of universal broadband combined with higher gas prices might draw people from the countryside to cities and suburbs.

Redpath’s local phone service provider, FairPoint Communications Inc., is turning to unconventional means to connect the most remote Vermont homes. The company will begin using wireless broadband links next year to keep its promise of providing high-speed Internet access throughout its entire service area.

The most important factor for the location was the availability of reliable Internet,” Skripka told the AP.

The standard in luxury apartment buildings is to have at least two options for broadband Internet access, said Henry Pye, director of resident services and technology at JPI Partners LLC, which owns buildings throughout the United States. Pye’s job is to ensure the buildings have broadband connectivity, because you can’t rent out apartments without it, he said.

“It might as well be water,” he told the AP.

Andru Edwards, who runs Gearlive.com, moved from Seattle to a suburb last year so he could gain access to a fiber-optic connection from Verizon Communications Inc. While he had a cable modem at his old apartment, it took too long to upload high-definition video for his blog.

“It definitely took our business to the next level. I’ve never looked back,” he told the AP.

Link to original article

from the SmartMoney.com website

By Jack Hough
Sep 26th, 2008

I have something un-American to confess: I rent an apartment, despite having enough money to buy a house. I plan to keep renting for as long as I can. I’m not just holding out for better prices. Renting will make me richer.

I normally write about stocks for SmartMoney.com, but the boss asked me to explain to readers my reason for renting. Here goes: Businesses are great investments while houses are poor ones, so I’d rather rent the latter and own the former.

Stocks vs. Houses: Returns
Shares of businesses return 7% a year over long time periods. I’m subtracting for inflation, gradual price increases for everything from a can of beer to an ear exam. (After-inflation or “real” returns are the only ones that matter. The point of increasing wealth is to increase buying power, not numbers on an account statement.) Shares have been remarkably consistent over the past two centuries in their 7% real returns. In Jeremy Siegel’s book, “Stocks for the Long Term,” he finds that real returns averaged 7.0% over nearly seven decades ending 1870, then 6.6% through 1925 and then 6.9% through 2004.

The average real return for houses over long time periods might surprise you. It’s zero.

Shares return 7% a year after inflation because that’s how fast companies tend to increase their profits. Houses have their own version of profits: rents. Tenant-occupied houses generate actual rents while owner-occupied houses generate ones that are implied but no less real: the rents their owners don’t have to pay each year. House prices and rents have been closely linked throughout history, with both increasing at the rate of inflation, or about 3% a year since 1900. A house, after all, is an ordinary good. It can’t think up ways to drive profits like a company’s managers can. Absent artificial boosts to demand, house prices will increase at the rate of inflation over long time periods for a real return of zero.

Robert Shiller, a Yale economist and author of “Irrational Exuberance,” which predicted the stock price collapse in 2000, has recently turned his eye to house prices. Between 1890 and 2004 he finds that real house returns would’ve been zero if not for two brief periods: one immediately following World War II and another since about 2000. (More on them in a moment.) Even if we include these periods houses returned just 0.4% a year, he says.

The average pundit, planner, lender or broker making the case for ownership doesn’t look at returns since 1890. Sometimes they reduce the matter to maxims about “building equity” and “paying yourself” instead of “throwing money down the drain.” If they do look at returns they focus on recent ones. Those tell a different story.

Between World War II and 2000 house prices beat inflation by about two percentage points a year. (Stocks during that time beat inflation by their usual seven percentage points a year.) Since 2000 houses have outpaced inflation by six percentage points a year. (Stocks have merely matched inflation.)

Stocks vs. Houses: Valuations
But while stock returns have come from increased earnings, house returns have come from ballooning valuations, not increased rents. The ratio of share prices to company earnings (the price/earnings ratio) has remained relatively steady. It’s about 16 today, close to both its 1940 value of 17 and to its 130-year average of about 15. Not so, the ratio of house prices to rents. In 1940 the median single-family house price was $2,938, according to the U.S. Census, while the median rent was $27 a month, including utilities. That means the ratio of prices to annual rents was 9. By 2000 the ratio had swelled to 17. In 2005 it hit 20. We can adjust for the size of dwellings, but it doesn’t make much difference. The ratio of single-family house prices to three-bedroom apartments is 19. In SmartMoney.com’s home town of Manhattan, where more detailed data is available, the ratio of condo prices per square foot to apartment rents per square foot is 22.

Two main events have caused house valuations to inflate since World War II. First, the government subsidized housing by relaxing borrowing standards. Prior to the creation of the Federal Housing Authority in 1934 house buyers who borrowed typically put up 40% of the purchase price in cash for a five- to 15-year loan. By insuring mortgages, the FHA permitted terms of up to 20 years and down payments of just 20%. It later expanded the repayment periods to 30 years and reduced down payments to 5%. Today down payments for FHA loans are as low as 3%. Aggressive lenders offer loans with no down payments or even negative ones so that house buyers can borrow the full purchase price plus closing costs. Some require little documentation of income, assets or ability to pay.

That means more Americans can win loans for homes, and they can win them for far more expensive (larger) homes than their incomes previously allowed. Two-thirds of American households own homes today, up from 44% in 1940, even though the percentage of Americans living alone has tripled during that time. The ratio of house values to incomes has risen 260% in just under four decades.

A second event helped boost house demand in recent years. Share prices plunged in 2000. The Federal Reserve, fearing that the decline in stock wealth would cause consumers to stop spending, reduced the federal-funds rate, the core interest rate that determines the cost of everything from credit cards to mortgages, to 1% by the summer of 2003 from 6.5% at the start of 2001. Since most of the cost of financing a house over 30 years is interest, monthly house payments shrank and demand for houses soared. In some markets a string of big yearly increases in house prices led to panic buying.

Stocks vs. Houses: Conclusion
For house returns over the next 20 years to match those over the past 20, the government and private lenders would have to “up the ante” by relaxing borrowing standards further. Given the recent attention paid to swelling foreclosures, that seems unlikely. I suspect real returns will turn negative over most of the next two decades, but that house prices won’t necessarily dip. Since 1963 they’ve done so in only two years, vs. 18 for stocks. That’s because homeowners mostly just stick it out rather than sell during soft markets. But if house prices remain flat, they produce negative real returns due to the creep of inflation. According to calculations made by The Economist in the summer of 2005, house prices would have to stay flat for 12 years with annual inflation at 2.5% for the ratio of prices to rents to fall from its 2005 perch to merely its 1975 to 2000 average.

So to sum up why I rent: Shares right now cost 16 times earnings and over long time periods return 7% a year after inflation. Houses right now cost 19 times their “earnings” and over long time periods return zero after inflation. And they look likely to return less than that for a while.

Questions/Objections
“You can’t live in your stocks” or “Renters throw money down the drain.”
Rent is the cost of owning shares with money you would otherwise spend on a house. Houses have ownership costs, too: taxes, insurance and maintenance. Rent costs about 5% of house prices each year if we apply the price/rent ratio of 19. House incidentals often cost around 2%. If you have $300,000 and a choice between spending it on a house or shares, you’ll pay $6,000 a year in incidentals if you buy the house or about $15,000 a year ($1,250 a month) in rent if you buy the shares. But the shares will return $21,000 a year after inflation while the house will return zero. (My numbers work out even better than these. I pay a smidgen less than $1,250 a month for rent, while house prices in my neighborhood are far higher than $300,000.)

Note that houses and shares have transaction costs, too. Home buyers pay around 1% in closing costs when they buy and 6% in broker commissions when they sell. Share buyers pay $10 trading commissions, which are negligible for buy-and-hold investors.

“House buyers get tax breaks.”
So do share buyers, but both are a bad deal. The interest on loans for houses (mortgages) and shares (margin balances) is tax-deductible. But the rates are almost always too high. A big house loan presently costs 6.1% interest while a big stock loan costs about 9%. For the returns, we can forget about inflation because it helps debtors while hurting investors, making it a wash for those who borrow to invest. Still, nominal returns of 3% for houses and 10% for stocks aren’t high enough to justify those rates. The tax breaks aren’t really breaks at all. Moreover, a majority of homeowners don’t claim them. Their incomes are low enough to make the standard deduction a better deal.

“What about the pride of home ownership?”
It’s not for me. I define ownership as no longer having to pay for something and being able to do as I please with it. I own my coffee maker. House owners must pay taxes each year even when their mortgage payments are done. In certain markets they can’t even make changes to the houses they’ve paid for without seeking the approval of others. Personally, I feel the pride of ownership for shares of businesses, and I’m proud to occupy a nice place while leaving the burden of poor returns and maintenance to someone else.

“You seem to knock government housing subsidies, but they’ve helped many Americans afford homes.”
My inner socialist agrees. My other inner socialist worries that the government has effectively raised prices to the point where the middle class can’t afford houses, or buries itself in debt to own them. My inner capitalist is too busy watching shares to care about house prices. My inner conspiracy theorist notes that while politicians tout the social benefits of homeownership none mentions its tax benefits to the government. I pay no taxes on the overall value of my stock portfolio, just on my cashed-in gains and collected dividends. But Americans pay taxes on the full $11 trillion worth of housing they own plus the $10 trillion worth of it they’re still paying off.

“Houses are bigger than apartments.”
True, and both can be rented. A third of renters live in single-family houses. I prefer an apartment for now. I like not having to fill it with stuff. I like using a fifth of the energy of the average American. I like being 20 minutes from work and (this is unique to New Yorkers) not having owned a car in 10 years. I like not stressing over whether to get the marble countertops or the imported tiles or the 52-inch flat screen. I’m not especially frugal; I spend a teacher’s salary each year on restaurants and travel. But I guess I’m too busy or lazy right now to bother with a big house and its innards.

“Are you saying I should sell my big house and rent an apartment instead?”
No, unless you have more space than you need and moving wouldn’t be disruptive to your family, and you want to cash in on recent housing gains, make more money over the next couple of decades, use less energy while simplifying your life, and you don’t mind seeming odd to friends. In which case, yes. But really, I’m not trying to win anyone over. Strong demand for houses keeps my rent cheap.

“Renting is for poor people.”
True. But it’s for rich people, too. The average renter makes about $34,000 a year, but while the percentage of renters declines after incomes exceed $20,000 and rents exceed $600 a month, it jumps again once incomes top $150,000 and rents top $1,200 a month. In other words, poor people rent modest apartments for lack of choice. Middle-income people buy houses. High-income people, presumably with a dose of financial savvy, often rent nice apartments instead of buying.

“You say houses return zero. But I’ve made a fortune on my house in recent years.”
I’m referring to inflation-adjusted returns over long time periods, absent external boosts to demand. You’re referring to gross returns over a short time period that combined lax borrowing standards and ultra-low interest rates. Over the next 20 years I believe houses will return zero or slightly less after inflation and that stocks will return 7%.

“So you’re never going to buy a house? What about raising a family?”
I might buy one eventually, but the longer I can put it off the more I’ll get out of the shares I’ll have to sell to afford it. I’m 34 now with a fiancée and a fish. I’m going to try to rent for at least 10 more years. If I have kids I’ll probably move into a big apartment or a house once they reach running-around age. I’ll rent, most likely.

Copyrighted, SmartMoney.com. All Rights Reserved.

BURLINGTON, Vt. — The drizzle didn’t do much to build a crowd, but when Burlington firefighter Tom Middleton got his barbecue cranking outside the University of Vermont student center Friday, the curious took notice.

Middleton, in full fire protection gear, joked the flames shooting up from his specially modified BBQ reminded him of his own culinary abilities at home. But his approach in putting out the flames was intended to make a point.

“Turn off the gas underneath, and let it go out on its own,” he said, watching the tall flames die down. “And don’t try to reach over and put the lid down or you’ll burn yourself.”

The annual demonstration outside the Davis Center coincided with campus events nationwide, designed to educate a population of young people often living on their own for the first time.

Around the U.S. “we’re seeing 15 to 20 college students dying in fires,” said John Marcus, the university fire marshal. “And it’s primarily an off-campus problem,” referring to the majority of students who rent apartments, often in older wood-frame buildings who do not live in a supervised setting.

In 1994, two students died in an apartment on North Willard Street in Burlington, and their deaths were attributed to late-night partying and careless smoking.

Disabled smoke detectors are also a constant threat.

Marcus was happy to show passers-by the right way to put out small household fires with a fire extinguisher, several of which he had set up for students and staff to try.

“It was a little easier than I thought,” said Jennifer Larsen, who works in the Geology Department, who said she’d never used one. “I always worry about that pin, and will it come out readily.”

It did.

Marcus showed her how to keep the spray low to the base of the flame spewing out of an gas appliance nearby, mimicking a modest home kitchen fire. “It’s a good exercise,” agreed Gabriela Mora, who was looking on, “in both a personal and professional way.”

Post from WPTZ

Students migrate back to Burlington
By Tim Johnson • Free Press Staff Writer • August 30, 2008

As Marcus Johnson sat on a stoop on Hickock Place on Friday, he swept his hand toward the surrounding apartments and offered a taut description of Burlington:

“Just a bunch of empty houses waiting for college students,” said Johnson, a University of Vermont senior.

Those houses were filling up Friday, and so were the dorms at UVM and Champlain College. This back-to-school weekend is right up there with marathon weekend for the number of visitors, said Tim Shea of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce. The difference is that many of these visitors stay on for another eight months.
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UVM and Champlain undergraduates total more than 11,000 students, a substantial share of Burlington’s population. When they flood back at the end of August, they bring a vitality and a set of lifestyles that their older, more-settled neighbors can find jarring, even objectionable. Late-night noise and drunken misbehavior are the key flashpoints for discord in neighborhoods where the two groups live intermingled, especially in the Hill section.

Any doubt that the annual student influx will catch the community unprepared was allayed this week by a two-page “Quality of Life Initiative” news release issued jointly by Burlington Police Chief Mike Schirling and UVM Dean of Students David Nestor. They cite some of the “educational” materials distributed among students, including UVM’s 31-page “Off Campus Living Survival Guide,” and such institutional/neighborhood campaigns as “Have a Heart,” which puts groups of volunteers at intersections prepared to engage students about late-night noise.

Then there are the stepped-up UVM/police patrols on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights: roving foot patrols, bike patrols, extra cruiser patrols.

The overall goal, Schirling said, is to convey to incoming students: “You’re a member of the community now.” That membership comes with responsibilities that are enumerated, in detail, in more than 500 “welcome bags” that will be distributed in September to students living in Burlington neighborhoods.

Incoming students at Champlain College — which houses roughly half its students in campus dorms close by residential neighborhoods — get an earful about how they have to respect their neighbors. The message is repeated by resident assistants, head residents, and in group orientations by Rich Long, director of public safety. Long took that job after a career with the Burlington police, part of which he spent patrolling the Hill and responding to neighbors’ complaints.

“I know exactly what the neighbors’ pain is,” he said, and that helps in his new role as educator.
September special

Neighborhood tensions are inevitable in any community that’s home to large numbers of college students living off campus. UVM expects first-time students to live on campus their first two years, and 39 residence halls accommodate about 5,000 students. That leaves more than 4,000 upper-class undergraduates who rent quarters in or near the city, often in neighborhoods where student apartments are commingled with other residences.

The most problematic times for noise and intoxication? Spring and fall when the weather is nice. The month that draws the most citations citywide? September.

“Fall is always worse than spring,” said Lt. Jennifer Morrison, who covers Wards 1 and 2.

According to the Burlington Police Department’s monthly breakdown of tickets issued for municipal violations in 2007, September was the No. 1 month for these infractions: noise from parties and social events (74), general noise (25), minors in possession of alcohol (113), open containers in public or in vehicles (45) and public urination (10).

Efforts to avert these sorts of problems have been under way for a long time, but by some accounts, the campaign to smooth student-neighbor relations has ratcheted up over the past few years. UVM’s Office of Student & Community Relations promotes an array of campaigns and initiatives that encourage responsible and respectful behavior.

City councilors Ed Adrian, D-Ward 1, and Andy Montroll, D-Ward 6, commended the preemptive efforts of UVM and Champlain College. Montroll said that he’d seen “a steady level of improvement” over the past few years and that complaint calls to him from his constituents “have gone down quite a bit.”

Longtime residents’ accounts vary. A resident on University Terrace — a mix of professionals and student renters — said that some of her student neighbors have been considerate, that others don’t care, and that problems have worsened over the past two years.

By contrast, Ed Bemis, who has lived on South Union Street for about 40 years, said the past two years had been “much better.” He attributes this in part to neighbors’ having complained as a group to City Council, which apparently prompted a landlord to get the word to tenants.

“The students that landlord has have gotten much nicer,” Bemis said.

From some students’ point of view, the city’s “quality of life” patrols are hard to ignore in spring and fall.

“They hand out noise violations like it’s candy,” said Sam Davidson, a UVM junior. “I could not count how many of my friends have gotten noise violations.”

A noisy party can draw a fine of $400 for a first offense, up to $500 for a second.

The Burlington Police Department has no statistics on complaints about students per se. Deputy Chief Walt Decker does, however, keep track of the city’s total number of complaints about noise and about intoxication logged on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights — the peak times. Noise complaints totaled 343 in 2005, then dropped to 272 in 2006 and 239 last year. Decker said when UVM began sending e-mails to off-campus residents each spring and fall, reminding them to respect their neighbors, that appeared to have had an impact.

On the other hand, intoxication complaints went up after 2005 (216), to 295 in 2006 and 274 in 2007. UVM’s dry-campus policy, banning alcohol from residence halls, dates from 2006, so some student drinking might have been shifted off campus.
Getting started

Ted Trautman, a UVM junior, has been living in the Buell Street neighborhood since July. There have been a few parties, he said, but mostly it’s been pretty quiet. He’s heard that police get stricter once the school year starts. He hasn’t received the UVM e-mail message yet, but he knows what it will say: “Be quiet, respect your neighbors.”

UVM and Champlain encourage students and neighbors to get acquainted, exchange phone numbers and so on.

“If we have a barbecue, we’ll invite the neighbors,” said Kerry Kaye, a resident assistant at Bankus House, home to 45 Champlain College students on South Willard Street.

In between welcoming new Champlain students to Sanders House on College Street on Friday afternoon, head resident Julie Capen gestured toward a next-door apartment building. “This building loved us,” she said of the experience last year. “Our students helped them change a car battery.”

Back on Hickock Place, UVM student Meghan Ustianov said that last year, she was the only student living in a five-unit apartment building, yet there was some tension nevertheless — when she held a party, or when her friends were hanging out there.

She said police patrols were common in this neighborhood and that Friday night would likely be the first big night for parties.

“Tonight will be interesting,” she said.

Contact Tim Johnson at 660-1808 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Judge: State must enforce housing rules

August 29, 2008
By Wilson Ring Associated Press

MONTPELIER — For years a division of the Vermont Department of Public Safety failed to enforce the state’s building codes by relying on voluntary compliance by landlords, a practice that in some cases forced tenants from their homes, a judge has ruled.

In the latest chapter in the long-running legal case, Franklin County Superior Court Judge Ben Joseph issued a summary judgment in favor of Vermont tenants, represented by Vermont Legal Aid, ordering the department to come up with a plan to enforce the building codes as intended by the Legislature.

He said that between 2002 and earlier this year, state inspectors found more than 4,000 violations and collected fines in three cases.

“It is obvious that landlords in Vermont know that no direct punishment will be imposed for housing code violations in rental properties,” Joseph wrote in the ruling released last week.

“The harshest consequence of this practice falls on the tenants, not the landlord,” Joseph wrote. “Tenants are thrown out of their homes when the department finds that serious housing code violations are not corrected… These enforcement powers were meant to protect the tenants’ safety, not to punish tenants when their landlords fail to correct code violations.”

Building codes governing such things as plumbing and electrical systems are enforced in Vermont by the Division of Fire Safety, a part of the Department of Public Safety.

Legal Aid Attorney Geoffrey Walsh said the decision would put teeth into code enforcement.

“When (tenants) call up code enforcement officials they don’t have to worry about the inspector evicting them,” Walsh said. “They know the landlord isn’t going to laugh about it.”

Assistant Attorney General Michael Donofrio, who represents the department, said officials were still evaluating Joseph’s ruling and hadn’t made a decision on how to proceed. But the next step will be to hold a hearing in Superior Court to outline how Joseph’s order will be implemented.

Donofrio said the department wanted to focus on the future rather than the past.

He said the enforcement landscape changed a few years ago when code enforcement moved to the new Division of Fire Safety within the Department of Public Safety.

The case grew from a St. Albans situation in which a building at 13 High St. was inspected seven times between 2000 and 2002. Inspectors found “numerous and serious hazards,” including defective smoke detectors, lack of self-closing doors, unsafe stairs and improper railings as well as undersize windows.

But the owner didn’t make repairs until after the department had gone to court and ordered the tenants evicted. Legal Aid kept the tenants in their apartments and the repairs were finally made.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2002, but it was dismissed by the Franklin Superior Court in 2004. In 2006 the Vermont Supreme Court reinstated the case. In 2007 it became a class action suit on behalf of all Vermont tenants.

Last week Joseph issued a summary judgment in favor of the tenants and issued a “writ of mandamus.” In the decision Joseph cited a 1960 Rutland case to define the term: “mandamus takes an official by the coat lapel and orders him to do what, up to that moment, he has felt he had no right to do and was under no compulsion to do.”

In court papers filed last month, Donofrio said that since the lawsuit was originally filed the Department of Fire Safety has implemented a new system of following up on violations by working closely with landlords.

“The inspector enters into a dialogue with the landowner and attempts to move the landowner closer and closer to compliance with the codes,” Donofrio said Thursday.

So few enforcement actions are needed.

“Of course there are situations that arise where conditions are discovered at a building that are so hazardous the only way to ensure safety of tenants are to ask them to vacate,” Donofrio said.

Legal Aid Attorney Maryellen Griffin said most landlords will correct problems without the need to resort to fines. “There are a few bad apples out there who won’t do the right thing,” she said. “You need to have a consequence.”

Corinne Bluto, 55, has lived at 13 High St. in St. Albans, the building that started the lawsuit, for 22 years. In years past, the water froze and her stove broke.

“It was just a mess, all and all,” Bluto said.

Now her building has a new owner.

“Things have gotten better. It’s all been renovated and carpeted,” Bluto said. “Everything’s pretty well up to date.”

Guest Post as shown in 7 Days
By Mike Ives [08.27.08]

Every fall, when thousands of college students arrive in Burlington for the new school year, one of the nation’s tightest housing markets gets even tighter.

The greatest pressure comes from the Queen City’s largest academic institution, the University of Vermont, which this year is expecting nearly 9300 undergraduates — at least a third of whom will live off campus, according to estimates by city and university officials.

UVM has made a “pretty good attempt” to keep up with the housing needs of its growing student body, said Brian Pine, assistant director for housing at the city’s Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO). Still, with a vacancy rate of just 1 percent, the Burlington housing market struggles to keep pace with the influx of several thousand renting students every year.

“I’d say we’re reaching a point where the need for greater student housing is pressing,” Pine noted.

That much was clear a decade ago, when the city and UVM first tried to get a handle on the university’s impact on the local housing market. In 1998, UVM commissioned an economic analysis that found students occupied more than 16 percent of the city’s 8100 rental units. At the time, about 2566 UVM students were living off campus — 90 percent of all students in the rental market.

The study concluded that student demand “serves to inflate rents and lower vacancies” in Burlington. Indeed, students living off-campus increased rents in Chittenden County by 10 to 15 percent, according to the study. In Burlington’s prosperous Hill Section, where more than half of all students lived, the price of rental housing was as much as 30 percent higher.

Tom Gustafson, UVM’s vice president for campus and student life, said that the low vacancy rate in Burlington can’t be attributed solely to increased student enrollment. For example, he said, vacancy rates were low in the mid-1990s, when UVM’s student population was significantly smaller than it is now. Moreover, two years after the housing analysis, UVM agreed to add 400 beds on campus. In fact, the university has added 1456 new beds since 2000 — for a total of 5544 — including the 800-bed University Heights complex.

Gustafson said juniors and seniors are responding more favorably to on-campus housing options than they have in the past. “We’re opening very full this fall,” he said, “which we take as a good sign in terms of how popular our residence halls are.”

Mark Brooks, of the real estate firm Allen & Brooks, which helped conduct the 1998 housing analysis for UVM, applauds the university’s campus housing initiatives. However, he said, continued growth in enrollment is bound to have an impact on the local rental market no matter how many residential halls are built.

“A lot of students prefer to live off-campus no matter what you do on-campus,” Brooks said. “It’s just a fact.”

As the number of students who seek housing off campus has continued to increase, both the Burlington City Council and housing advocacy groups have tried to force the issue with UVM. In 2005, the council’s “Housing Super Committee” directed city officials to “secure a pledge” from UVM limiting the number of students living off campus to 3100.

Pine and Gustafson acknowledge that pledge never materialized. Instead, according to Gustafson, the two parties agreed to meet regularly to develop “creative” solutions to housing problems.

“I think we all sort of informally agreed, ‘Let’s just keep working and not worry about doing agreement after agreement,’” Gustafson recalled.

A year after the council committee’s directive, Vermont Interfaith Action, a consortium of religious congregations, sought its own agreement with UVM by pressing Gustafson to commit to an update of the 1998 housing analysis. He declined, but agreed to discuss an increase in on-campus housing, said Kathy Bonilla, the president of VIA’s board of directors.

Bonilla said it was eventually decided that the best short-term solution would be for UVM to build 50 units of affordable housing for university employees on land it owned in South Burlington.

“At the time,” Bonilla recalled, “they were saying their debt ratio was maxed out, so they couldn’t create any more student housing.”

Bonilla said her organization is satisfied with the employee housing because it’s a needed addition to the local rental market. “In a way, it was more effective, because if you create more student housing, then you have to hope and pray that students actually move into it,” she said.

UVM isn’t the only campus in town struggling to house its students. Earlier this year, Champlain College overcame opposition from its neighbors before winning approval to tear down the Eagles Club, at the corner of Maple and St. Paul streets, to build 200 student apartments.

The school’s eventual goal is to build housing for as many as 600 students. In the meantime, Champlain has agreed to lease space for 272 students at Spinner Place, a downtown Winooski complex, through 2011.

David Provost, Champlain College’s vice president of finance and administration, said leasing rental housing in Winooski isn’t consistent with the college’s goal of housing its students in Burlington. But, he said, it was a necessary response to a “desperate need for beds.”

While about 30 UVM students will live at Spinner Place this year, that’s far fewer than expected when the $23.6 million complex was proposed. At the time, the idea was that UVM would aggressively market the complex to its students.

Gustafson said that although Spinner Place is advertised on the university’s website, UVM never made a formal commitment to house students there. The apparent lack of interest in the complex by UVM students is not creating problems in the local housing market, he said. The students who live at Spinner Place take pressure off the Burlington housing market, no matter where they attend classes.

Gustafson said that, while the growth in UVM’s undergraduate population is expected to taper off, the university is moving forward with a complex on the Redstone Campus in Burlington’s Hill Section that will house up to 394 students.

Pine said the city is “optimistic” that UVM shares its concerns about the local rental market, and that the university understands the need to increase options for its students.

“When they have students who are forced to take units off campus that are perhaps cheaper, but are substandard, that concerns the students and their parents, I think, and rightly so,” Pine said. “But when the university is able to offer high-quality, comfortable, state-of-the-art living units, that gives them an edge, and I think they see it that way.”

Great Reasons to Rent 1 Month ago
4 great reasons to rent

Who says you have to own a home to live the American dream? Renting can actually be better for your pocketbook and lifestyle.
By Mike Hammer, Parade
Original Article

Before the housing boom went bust this year, homeownership was considered a good investment. But now, with the rash of mortgage foreclosures, renting may be a more attractive option. Here’s why.

1. Renting can save money
According to popular myth, renters are just throwing their money away. But the reality is that when you buy a home, you’re paying for closing fees, mortgage interest, property taxes, private homeowners’ insurance and maintenance — costs that return nothing on your investment. You’d be better off banking that money or putting it into the stock market. In fact, a recent study by Fidelity Investments indicates that stocks provided investors with nearly 4.6% higher average returns in the past 45 years than real estate.

2. Homeowners’ tax deductions are overstated
Conventional wisdom says that buying a home saves you money because the mortgage interest is tax-deductible. But a study by the National Multi Housing Council – a national advocacy group representing the interests of large apartment firms in the U.S. — points out that half of homeowners don’t get a break, because even with mortgage interest and property taxes, their total deductions do not exceed the standard federal tax deduction ($10,900 for couples and $5,450 for singles).

3. More options are available to renters
With fewer houses and condos selling, more owners are converting their properties into rentals or providing incentives to lure prospective tenants. In condo-heavy cities such as Palm Beach, Fla., for example — where the vacancy rate has jumped 2.5% — investors are undercutting apartment rates to generate interest. “A lot of people are offering three free months to attract renters,” says Robert Smith, a real-estate adviser in Orlando, Fla. “And modern apartments offer amenities that may be unaffordable in a new home.”

4. Renting gives you flexibility
Buying a home is a big commitment. If you have to move for any reason — say, for work — your property would need to appreciate by at least 10% for you to recover your sales costs, which typically takes about five years. Renting allows you the freedom and mobility you need to find the right job before you tie yourself to a massive home investment.

Rental Insurance 1 Week, 6 Days ago
A Recent fire in Burlington in an apartment building underscores the importance of having rental insurance as well as mandatory interconnected AC/DC smoke alarms that alerted neighbors.

“The interconnected smoke alarms saved their lives,” Middleton said. Had the apartment contained single station smoke alarms, the occupants would probably not have heard the alarm in time to escape.

Interconnected AC/DC smoke alarms are required in Burlington apartment buildings, but not in all types of residences, and residents relying on battery-operated alarms should consider installing interconnected photoelectric detectors, Middleton said.

The fire caused an estimated $50,000 in damage to the three-story building, which contained five apartments and housed 10 occupants. No injuries were reported.

Neither tenant had renter’s insurance, and both lost belongings. The landlord’s fire insurance protects only the building, and renters are urged to carry their own insurance policy, Middleton said.

Insuring Your Apartment

* Most landlords’ policies just cover the actual structure of your apartment or rental, not your personal belongings.
* renter’s insurance can provide you with crucial liability protection if someone were to hurt themselves on your property and subsequently sue you.
* The liability component can protect you from any judgments against you and pay for your legal defense.

Check out http://www.apartmentinsurancerates.com/