Cheaper alternatives to walk-in shower

Consult occupational therapist, others for safety advice

By Bill and Kevin Burnett, Tuesday, April 5, 2011.

Inman News™

Not long ago we responded to a reader with rheumatoid arthritis who wanted to make bathing easier. We directed her to her doctor and her physical therapist. We also mentioned that Kevin had seen a walk-in shower stall for about $5,000 at one of the stores he goes to for disability aids.

We were happy to hear from our reader that she had made appointments with her rheumatologist and physical therapist and that she was planning to install a new walk-in shower-tub combination after found out that Shower Enclosure lists the best shower towers and so all the area could be remodelled.

But other readers were quick to take issue with our advice. We think their feedback bears repeating. We’ve edited their comments to emphasize their salient points.

One reader who appears to have pretty good credentials commented:

“As a physical therapist with a degree in architecture and design, I applaud your making the public aware of the importance of proper consultation when making changes in bathrooms. But instead of seeking input from a physician, I suggest consulting an occupational therapist. They specialize in the activities of daily living.

“Safe bathroom access is critical in remaining independent for as long as possible. Bathroom falls can lead to serious injuries. I encourage the addition of grab bars in any bathroom. Designer styles are readily available that don’t look like hospital or gym equipment, so looks are no reason to exclude them — for anyone.”

We agree.

We should have mentioned occupational therapists as part of the treatment team, but we’re loath to disqualify physicians. We heartily concur with your recommendation of grab bars for all. We especially agree with your comment that the new designer-style bars eliminate the excuse that grab bars don’t look stylish. Safety trumps appearance every time.

Another reader commented:

“I am not able to climb in or out of a bathtub, and I have a problem with balance that makes standing up in a shower dangerous.

“For the past 10 years I have used a shower chair and a shower nozzle with a long hose. I have two handrails I grab to keep me steady when I get into or out of the shower chair. The cost of the chair and the grab bars was about $600 compared to the $5,000 you quoted for the special shower.”

We agree. There is an escalating set of aids that can assist those with disabilities to bathe. But suffice it to say, it’s much easier to step in and out of a shower than it is a standard bathtub.

There’s no way Kevin, who has multiple sclerosis, is able to safely get in and out of a tub with an 18-inch wall. He has a shower with a 4-inch curb that he can negotiate with the help of two horizontal grab bars. The mounting bar of an adjustable showerhead acts as a vertical grab bar. A shower chair completes the package.

Bottom line: Our reader’s treatment team — her doctor, physical therapist and occupational therapist — is in the best position to assess her limitations and to predict the course of her illness. Together, the patient and treatment team should figure out the right path to take.

Contact Bill and Kevin Burnett:
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Copyright 2011 Bill and Kevin Burnett

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Know the limits of the mortgage interest deduction

Refinancing may not bring greater tax savings

By Tom Kelly, Tuesday, April 5, 2011.

Inman News™

The number of homeowners refinancing their home mortgages continues to climb, comprising nearly two-thirds of all home loan applicants.

Mortgage interest rates have remained lower than expected as investors have rushed to the security of U.S. Treasury bonds in light of the disaster in Japan and unrest in other areas of the globe.

Economists from the Mortgage Bankers Association first forecasted that 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rates would reach 5.5 percent in the second quarter this year but recently revised their predictions.

They wrote that long-term rates are expected to remain at 5 percent in the second quarter, then rise to 5.3 percent in the third quarter and 5.5 percent in the fourth quarter.

Some loan representatives say the recent activity has been led by a group of owners seeking to grab the lowest rates they can before the predicted rise. Those homeowners, however, may not be able to deduct all of their new mortgage interest payments from their federal income taxes.

Buyers need to be aware of the mortgage interest ceilings, especially heading into the April 18 tax deadline. According to the Internal Revenue Service, taxpayers may deduct interest on no more than a combined total of $1 million of "home acquisition debt" for a primary home and secondary residence.

Home acquisition debt means any loan used to acquire, to construct, or substantially to improve a qualified home.

Taxpayers may also deduct up to a combined total of $100,000 of home equity debt on their first and second homes. Home equity debt is defined as a loan with a purpose that is not to acquire, to construct or substantially to improve a qualified home.

(The limit is reduced to $500,000 if you are married and filing separately. See Internal Revenue Service Publication 936 for details.)

Taxpayers often are confused by the amount of mortgage interest they can deduct after they refinance. If you did refinance last year, double-check your numbers. You can only deduct interest on the original amount of the loan at the time you refinance, plus $100,000.

For example, let’s say you purchased your home 10 years ago for $100,000 and took out a loan for $80,000. Since then, you have paid the loan down to $20,000.

The house is now worth $275,000 and you want to buy a second home. The house definitely has equity to tap, but your mortgage interest deduction would be limited to the first $120,000 ($20,000 remaining on the old loan at the time of refi, plus $100,000).

It is important to remember that home loan interest deductions simply reduce your taxable income. They are not dollar-for-dollar tax credits that are subtracted from your tax bill.

If you have a $1,000 a month mortgage payment and are in the 15 percent tax bracket, only about $150 a month escapes being taxed in the early months of the loan.

You can deduct the loan fees ("points") paid to buy or improve your main home in the year of purchase. You cannot deduct these fees in the year you refinanced if you refinanced only to obtain a lower interest rate on your loan.

And, talking about a purchase … If you’ve accepted a new job and purchased a new home, your moving expenses can be deductible depending upon the location of your new workplace. If your new job is at least 50 miles farther from your old home than your previous job (the "distance requirement"), then your moving expenses are deductible.

For example, let’s assume you drove 10 miles to your old office. If your new office is 60 miles away, your moving expenses — including storage, fuel, shipping pets, cars and household goods — would be deductible.

Do your best to make the most of your taxable deductions. Don’t forget to pull out your home purchase or refinance papers. Understand there are limits to your mortgage interest deduction and don’t underestimate moving expenses resulting from your new job.

Tom Kelly’s book "Cashing In on a Second Home in Mexico: How to Buy, Rent and Profit from Property South of the Border" was written with Mitch Creekmore, senior vice president of Stewart International. The book is available in retail stores, on Amazon.com and on tomkelly.com.

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The square footage of green roofs in the United States grew by 28.5 percent in 2010, according to the 2011 Annual Industry Survey by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC). For the seventh year in a row, Chicago—where more than 600 green roofs have been or are being built—had the most green roofs, with more than 500,000 square feet installed. Washington, D.C., was a close second.

“Government investment in green roofs for their stormwater, air quality, green space and city cooling benefits largely fuels the growth of our industry,” GRHC president Steven Peck said. “Cities such as Chicago, Washington, New York, Portland, Seattle and Philadelphia continue to lead the way with incentives and regulations that recognize the many benefits from green roofs.”

Green, or living, roofs are planted with vegetation to absorb rainwater and help regulate temperatures. The vegetative coverings also help with energy and resource conservation, storm water management and smog. The plants’ leaves catch dust, the roots filter water and the roofs provide habitat for birds and insects. In Europe, green roofs have been successfully used on homes, office buildings, and parking garages for more than 30 years.  

GRHC chair Jeffrey Bruce said, “As the green roof and wall industry develops further we will see costs come down and benefits to building owners rise, through the application of integrated design practices that turn wasted roof and wall spaces into value-added urban farms, habitat, recreational spaces, horticultural therapy centers, energy conservation, green energy production and stormwater management infrastructure.”

For urban homeowners, green roofs also open up garden space. “We’re seeing a lot of people moving toward rooftop agriculture, especially in areas where land space is difficult to come by,” Ty Voyles, green roof professional for DC Greenworks told Natural Home & Garden.

Green roofs can be divided into two categories: intensive and extensive. Intensive gardens, such as the one built on the roof of Chicago’s City Hall, include trees, shrubs, and manicured landscapes, and they require a minimum soil depth of 1 foot. Extensive green roofs, built primarily for their environmental benefits and less as human habitats, require 2 to 5 inches of soil and are more suitable for retrofitting onto existing roofs. Extensive roofs require very little maintenance.

Built-up green roof systems contain a series of layers: root-repellant, drainage, a filter membrane, the growing medium and vegetation. Modular systems come with the drainage barrier, filter layer, growing medium and plants pre-assembled in molded plastic trays. The growing medium must be lightweight and erosion-resistant; expanded shale, mushroom compost and mineral components are typical.

Natural Home & Garden tells you everything you need to know about green roofs in “Home Grown: A Green Roofs Primer” in the May/June 2011 issue, which is on sale now. Also check out Green Roofs for Healthy Cities and Greenroofs.com for more information.

  

Green roofs, such as these in Norway, have been common in Scandinavia for centuries. 

  

Chicago City Hall ’s living roof is part of the city’s Urban Heat Island Initiative project. The landscape design is based on a formal garden and includes a drip irrigation system fed partially by water collected from the adjacent penthouse roof.  

   

Perennial sedum varieties make up most of the maintenance-free vegetative cover on the roof of the Fencing Academy of Philadelphia. Fescue grass, sedge, allium, burnet, and dianthus provide accents. 

 

A rooftop garden typically includes six layers: the roof (make sure it’s in good condition), a waterproof barrier, insulation, drainage/root barrier, substrate (3 to 4 inches of growing medium, consisting of compost, shale and other organic elements) and vegetation. 

 

The amount of occupied office space in the U.S. continued to inch higher during the first quarter of 2011 as businesses slowly began to expand. We found some great Austin Tenant Advisors office rentals Austin.

Average effective rents, which include such benefits as free rent and interior work, rose by 0.5% to $22.20 a square foot, according to property-research firm Reis Inc. This marked the second consecutive quarter of rent increases and more evidence the industry has finally turned the corner after more than two years of dramatic rent and occupancy drops.

However, rents are still well below the highs of 2008, when effective rents reached $25 a square foot.

Also the improvement varies among regions. Among the 79 markets tracked by Reis, the nation’s capital continued to boast the lowest vacancy in the first quarter with a 9.2% rate. The district was followed by New York City at 10.7%.

On the other end of the spectrum, Detroit and Phoenix tied for the highest vacancy rates of 26.6%. Detroit continues to suffer from high rates of joblessness and population declines, while Phoenix is still hurting from the housing crisis.

The national vacancy rate inched down slightly to 17.5% from 17.6% in the fourth quarter, which was the highest level in 17 years. “As the overall economy continues on its current path of expansion, we expect that rents and vacancies will continue to improve in 2011,” said Ryan Severino, a Reis senior economist. He noted the potential risks to the recovery include concerns about Europe’s financial woes and unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Washington is benefitting from rising demand from companies like Sterne, Kessler Goldstein & Fox, which is planning to expand into 120,000 square feet of space. The intellectual property law firm had occupied 88,000 square feet and will make a decision where to lease the new space within a few weeks.

“We’re growing and are looking to stay and expand or grow into a new space,” says Robert Burger, chief operating officer of the firm which employs 310 people. It is being represented by CB Richard Ellis.

The improving office market has begun to resuscitate development in the hottest markets. For instance, Boston Properties Inc. recently said it will likely restart construction this year on a $1 billion 40-floor Manhattan skyscraper that’s been on hold since 2009. In Northern Virginia, developer Monday Properties is building a 35-story office tower.

Corrections & Amplifications:
Monday Properties is building a 35-story office tower in Northern Virginia. An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Monday Properties plans to build the office tower.

RISMEDIA, April 4, 2011—(MCT)—A home inspection often means the difference between a sale and no sale, even if the deal that results isn’t exactly what the owner expected. Buyers and sellers typically recognize the need for a home inspection. Still, it may put both sides of a sale Continue reading →

EAGAN, Minn., April 5, 2011 — /PRNewswire/ — While many homeowners continue to wrestle with the fallout of the housing crisis, a majority of Americans say that simply walking away from a mortgage shouldn’t be an option for homeowners, according to a new survey by FindLaw.com, the most popular legal information website.

Many homeowners still facing potential foreclosures or being “underwater” on their mortgages (meaning they owe more on the loan than the house is currently worth) have simply been walking away from their mortgages and refusing to make the required monthly payments. There are no reliable figures on how many homeowners have chosen to take this path, sometimes referred to as a “strategic default.”

According to the FindLaw.com survey, the majority of Americans – 60 percent – believe that it is “never OK” for homeowners to simply stop making payments on their mortgages. One-third of the population (34 percent) says it’s OK for homeowners to walk away from mortgages, but only if they aren’t able to make the monthly payments. Only 3 percent believe that homeowners should be able to walk away from mortgages anytime they want.

This guest post is by Matthew Kepnes of Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site.

Someone once told me that the only way to make money with a blog is to sell massive amounts of text links. “There’s no other way,” he said, and he was resolute in his opinion.

I couldn’t change his mind, so I just listened and nodded my head. I didn’t bother to argue, even though I knew he was wrong. I know plenty of people who make money online and they don’t do it by selling text links. Yet lots of people seem to think that the only way to make money with a blog is through text link sales. When I hear people say this, I often think to myself, “You only think this way because you aren’t thinking outside the box. You aren’t being creative enough.”

Don’t get me wrong. Text links can be good money. I’ve sold text links in the past, and I know many sites that still do. Those sites still rank highly in Google, and they still have good PageRank. Sites that sell text links are controversial, especially after the JC Penny controversy, and I won’t get into whether or not you should sell text links.

This post is about a larger issue: the idea that without text links, you can’t make money online. I think that is a great fallacy and it is a line of thinking that is perpetually argued by those who are stuck in the box.

Outside the box

When most people think of the phrase, “think outside the box,” they imagine a big boardroom of people brainstorming the next big idea. There’s some guy at the head of the table going, “Come on, people, we need to think outside the box on this one!” and then everyone at the table looks around nervously at each other, unsure of what to do.

However, thinking outside the box, as contrived of a statement maybe, is the only way to succeed with a blog.

When most people think of monetization, they think AdSense, sponsored posts, affiliate sales, or text links. But the biggest sites in the world don’t use any of those techniques. They get more creative than that.

Let me give you two examples.

First, take a site like Zen Habits by Leo Babuta. It’s a popular site on simple living that probably gets over 500,000 visitors per month. But it didn’t start that way. Leo grew the site every day, and he has made it a point to never sell advertising on the site. It is completely ad-free, and his site eventually allowed him to quit his job and focus on what he loved doing.

So what is on his site? Ebooks. Leo created a trusted brand and now people buy his books to learn more. The site even got him a real, physical-book deal. By focusing on delivering what his readers wanted, Leo was able to develop a following of loyal fans that supported him by buying his products.

Everyone has an ebook these days, but the most successful ebooks are completely unique. For example, everyone seems to have an ebook on how to travel the world these days, but I decided to think outside of the box. I launched a new ebook that offers a bit of a spin on the traditional travel ebook by lining up travel companies and offering exclusive discounts in the book worth over $700 USD. Now, my book is more than just another travel book on the internet. I found something people weren’t doing, I did it, and I also created a better way for my readers to save money.

Secondly, look at the lifecaster, iJustine. All she does is video-blog her life. She didn’t just start a website and think, “I’m going to sell text ads.” No, she did something unique and cutting-edge. She thought outside the box. (And the fact that she is a beautiful blonde certainly helps!) She started doing crazy stuff online like singing and dancing in Apple stores and she got a great following. Now, she gets sponsorships and speaking deals. (After all, you can’t put text links on YouTube!)

Take guest blogging, for example. I focus on travel, but this isn’t a travel site. I guest blog on finance blogs, life hacking sites, and a wide range of other topics. I do this to leverage my knowledge into other fields, because, after all, everyone likes to travel and everyone likes to save money. So when I blog on other niches, I let people know I’m an expert in travel to people who would never have come into my own niche on their own. But many bloggers never do this. They only stay in their niche—but if you do this, you have nowhere to grow. Think laterally. Blog in niches that are similarly related. Don’t always get stuck in your niche.

Experimentation pays

It’s important to continue acting outside of the box. You should always be trying something new. In the words of Thomas Edison, “I didn’t fail; I just tried 1,000 ways that didn’t work.” You must be willing to experiment, take risks, and lose in order to finally win. I’ve tried Facebook ads, AdWords, guest posting, using AdSense, not using AdSense, Facebook ads again, different hostel booking engines, and flight engines in order to see what works and what doesn’t. I’ll try new products and services. I am always testing. I’m always experimenting to find that perfect mix.

If you limit the online game to text links and banner ads, you will fail. My friend is right. You won’t make any money. Even with over 100,000 visitors a month, I still have trouble attracting banner ads. The ad space in travel just isn’t there yet. So I got creative, I found ways to expand my audience beyond just travel blogs, and I figured out how to expand my income beyond text ads. I experimented. I tried. I failed. I keep trying. I keep failing. I keep experimenting. And in the long run, I succeed.

There are many ways to make it online. Those who have made it have done it by bucking conventional wisdom and thinking outside the box. They got creative. They went right when everyone was going left. If you also want to make it with your blog, you must do the same. Narrow thinking won’t help you last on the Internet. Be bold. Be daring. And when you are, you’ll be successful.

Do you think outside the box when it comes to monetizing your blog? Let us know in the comments.

Matthew Kepnes has been traveling around the world for the past four years. He runs the award winning budget travel site, Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian UK, AOL’s Wallet Pop, and Yahoo! Finance. He currently writes for AOL Travel and The Huffington Post For more information, you can visit his Facebook page or sign up for his RSS feed.