Your Tenants Will Send Your Kids to College

Your Tenants Will Send Your Kids to College

Parents, with children getting closer and closer to entering college, may also be feeling stress because they haven’t saved enough for tuition and other expenses. It’s estimated that the average cost for the 2015-16 school year is $32,405 for private colleges, $9,410 for state residents of public colleges and $23,893 for out-of-state residents.

If you started saving the year your child was born, you’d have to save $4,608 per year for 18 years at 5% to accumulate $129,620. If you waited until they were 10 years old, you’d have to save $13,574 per year to have the right amount. Saving enough can be difficult if you have a lot of time but if you only have a short time to meet your goals, it can seem impossible.

Student debt is one way to handle the tuition but many parents are reluctant to saddle their children with the obligation. Currently, there is more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt to 40 million borrowers with an average balance of $29,000. Some economists suggest that this debt is delaying would-be buyers from making their first home purchases.

There is another way to pay for the education by making an investment in a rental property. Rents are continuing to rise, homes in owner-occupied neighborhoods are appreciating and the leverage due to borrowed funds can be a huge help in building the equity to pay the tuition.

Rent the home and maintain its condition over the years. As the loan amortizes and the value increases, the equity will grow. When your student is ready to start college, you'll actually have several options.

You can sell the property; pay the tax on the gain at the reduced capital gains rate and fund the education. Another option would be to refinance and take the proceeds to pay for the tuition. This would allow you to continue to own the asset but would free your equity. Under current tax laws, it is a non-taxable event.

In effect, your tenants are paying to send your kids to college.

Auburn University invites community to witness planting of new oak trees on Valentine's Day

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One of the oaks to be planted.

On Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, Auburn University invites the Auburn Family to watch the new oaks be planted.

Posted: Monday, February 2, 2015 11:28 am | Updated: 11:43 am, Tue Feb 3, 2015.

Special to the Villager | 0 comments

Nearly four years to the day that Auburn University announced the lethal poisoning of the historic Auburn Oaks, two new live oaks will begin taking root in Samford Park at Toomer's Corner.

Landscapers are scheduled to begin planting the 35-foot-tall trees at 8 a.m. on Feb. 14. The university is inviting the public to attend the event, which should finish early in the afternoon. A viewing area will be set up, and streets will be closed for safety reasons.

"We are partnering with the City of Auburn to make this a special day," said Mike Clardy, director of university communications. "Downtown merchants will be open early and three of Auburn's athletic teams will be in action that day. We are hoping people will come to the Plains and make a weekend out of it."

Beginning around 7:30 a.m., crews will close College Street from Thach Avenue to Tichenor Avenue, and Magnolia Avenue from Wright Street to the Compass Bank parking lot entrance.  Roads are expected to remain closed until 2 p.m.

The new trees will arrive at Toomer's Corner via flatbed trailer between 7:30 and 8 a.m.

The planting of the oaks is the final step in Phase I of the Samford Park renovation, which included enlarging the plaza and improving the landscaping near the corner. The second phase, slated to begin after A-Day in April, will feature the planting of 30 15-foot-tall trees — grown from acorns collected from the original oaks — between Toomer's Corner and Samford Hall.

The university is asking fans not to roll the two new oak trees until fall 2016 as they establish roots and acclimate to their new environment.

For more information about the Auburn Oaks, visit www.auburn.edu/oaks<;http://www.auburn.edu/oaks>.

Mud Room Benches, Cabinets, Lockers and more!

How to Make Your Mudroom Shine

Architects and designers tell us how to set up one of the toughest rooms in the house

Mary Jo Bowling

Houzz Editorial Staff; writer, reader, serial remodeler.

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A recent Houzz Call for your mudroom photos drew a lot of praise for this drop-it-all zone off the entryway — and some strong opinions. Perhaps the highest praise came from reader lake1114, who said, “The mudroom is one of the best house creations since indoor plumbing.” When we talked with Houzzers who have created great mudrooms, we found out more about the layout, setup and cost of this hardworking space. All of them emphasized one thing: A mudroom is as individual as the people who use it.

HAYNES & GARTHWAITE ARCHITECTS

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Architects Byron Haynes and Andrew Garthwaite of Haynes & Garthwaite Architects say that mudrooms are essential in New England and other areas that have wet and/or cold weather. In fact, the home feature is so key, when the men launched their practice 18 years ago, “No mudroom is too small” was their private (and only half-joking) motto. “I believe one of our first projects was a mudroom off a garage,” says Garthwaite.

Nearly two decades and many mudrooms later, they still believe in the importance of the space. According to these New Hampshire architects, the front door on most New England homes is ceremonial. “Most people enter through the garage,” says Haynes. “But the key thing is that it has to be in a location that’s convenient.” And by “people,” he means guests too; that’s why the architects generally make the mudrooms fit the style of the house.

The configuration of the room depends on what their clients want. “We have clients who don’t like to see any clutter, and they want everything put away. For those people we give them closets and cabinets,” says Garthwaite.

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“But for some others, such as people with kids, it’s more important that everything be accessible and easy to find. Those are the people who do well with cubbies or hooks,” Garthwaite says.

When it comes to cubbies, the architects have found that a stack of niches — one for shoes on the floor, one for coats in the middle and one for less frequently used items on the top — works nicely.

A lot of mudrooms on Houzz are more than mudrooms — some incorporate laundries, message centers and even craft tables. When clients ask Garthwaite and Haynes for additional functions in the mudroom, it’s generally a powder room, a dog shower or a small countertop that can hold keys and mail.

Browse thousands of mudrooms and filter by style, size and budget

HAYNES & GARTHWAITE ARCHITECTS

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In terms of surfaces, the architects think the key surface is the floor. They say that most of their projects have some variety of a slip-resistant natural stone, such as Vermont slate, but they have also used porcelain tiles and Marmoleum. “We think the best mudroom floor materials don’t absorb water, aren’t slippery and are easy to clean,” says Haynes.

Weedman Design Partners

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Travis and Arielle Weedman, of Weedman Design Partners in Oregon, do all kinds of mudrooms, but in general their philosophyis “less is more.” The two remodel a lot of older homes, and they find that there’s not always room for a large mudroom lined with hooks and cabinets. “In my opinion, mudrooms that work well have just what you need on a daily basis,” says Travis. “There are other places in the house to store the rest.”

Case in point: The small but mighty drop zone seen here, which the Weedmans created in the entry of an older home. It holds the bare essentials: a bench for removing shoes, a mesh-front cabinet for hanging jackets and stowing backpacks (note: Each family member has one jacket space here, and the bottom of the unit is divided into two backpack cubbies), drawers under the bench for stowing shoes and a small drawer for keys.

Weedman Design Partners

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“I personally don’t think every pair of shoes belongs in the mudroom,” says Travis. “That’s what the bedroom closet is for.” Following that line of thinking, the two adults and two kids in this household each stow just one pair of shoes here.

The key drawer is seen at right; the small cupboard below is for the dog’s leash and waste bags.

The Weedmans have designed mudrooms with painted cabinets and with natural wood finishes. “Natural wood wears well and does not chip, but wood painted with a semigloss paint should be easy to wipe down,” says Arielle. “A lot of it is simply personal preference.”

Individual styles also come into play for colors of walls and floors. “We have clients who don’t like to see dirt, so they choose darker colors,” she says. “However, we have others who want to see the dirt so they can clean it.”

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Shelly Lindstrom, of Fluidesign Studio, has designed a number of mudrooms that were built by Barak Steenlage, of Anchor Builders, including this one. In her design mind, the room should be laid out carefully with an eye to operations, just like a kitchen. “There’s a high level of traffic in these rooms, so you want to make sure there’s good flow,” she says. “It should be easy to enter and exit, and you should be able to do so without causing everyone to shuffle around. You don’t want people to have to move so others can walk in or out.”

Other layout considerations include sight lines and seating. “In general you want to make sure you can’t see directly into the mudroom from other parts of the house. Not everyone wants to see a row of drying boots,” Lindstrom says. “And you will always need a place to sit to remove boots and shoes.”

Fluidesign Studio

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Lindstrom echoes the other designers when she says that flooring needs to be durable and not slippery. For other finishes she favors beadboard paneling painted in a semigloss finish. “I like the lighter, brighter feeling of painted wood, and I’ve found it much easier to clean and maintain than drywall,” she says. The designer says she usually reserves darker wood for the top of bench seating, because that area takes the brunt of the wear.

Many of her clients with kids choose open hooks for coat and backpack storage. Lindstrom favors hooks with two prongs — one for coats, one for backpacks.

Costs: You can create a mudroom inexpensively with freestanding lockers and cubbies, or you can invest in custom built-ins. The consensus among the architects and designers interviewed is that setting up a built-in mudroom can range from a few thousand dollars to $10,000, depending on the amount of cabinetry and built-ins.

Haynes and Garthwaite estimate that a budget between $5,000 and $10,000 would be needed.

Arielle Weedman says there’s quite a range in costs of mudrooms, and notes that many of them are folded into kitchen renovations. She would budget roughly $3,000 to $10,000 for a mudroom project, and says a mudroom similar to the one shown previously from her company would cost roughly $7,500.

“In Minnesota you could spend between $1,000 and $8,000 to do a mudroom in a renovation,” Lindstrom says. “For a mudroom addition, you would expect to spend $15,000 and up.”

A comment from fern6951 sums it up nicely: “Each person/family has different lifestyles, so each mudroom needs to be designed differently. Some people need and want a simple, bare-bones, workhorse of a room; others prefer something more refined. There are no right or wrong ways to set up a mudroom as long as it works for the family living there.”

More:
See how to create a makeshift mudroom
These real-life mudrooms really clean up
Browse thousands of mudroom photos on Houzz

Run-down Warehouse converted into a stunning home.

Family-Friendly Renovation of a Brick Warehouse in Alabama

WRITTEN BY 

OLIVIA MARTIN

PHOTOS BY 

JEAN ALLSOPP

JUNE 17, 2014

In Alabama, a commercial building with a multifarious past begins a fresh chapter for a young family after a modern renovation.

SLIDESHOW

Architect David Hill, his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children (from left: Wade, eight, Luke, six, and Breyton, ten), have an unusual home by the standards of their college-town setting in Auburn, Alabama. Built in 1920, the industrial brickbuilding has had previous incarnations as a church, a recycling center, and a pool hall, among others. 

PROJECT 

Bragg House

ARCHITECT 

HILL works

“I wish people would not stick their heads into my living room and ask, ‘What kind of business is this?’” architect and landscape designer David Hill says with a laugh. This happens often, which is understandable given that his home, an industrial red-brick building, contrasts sharply with the student apartments surrounding Auburn University, where David is an assistant professor, and the typical cozy houses that populate Auburn, Alabama.

When David and his wife, Elizabeth, moved here from Virginia with their three children, it was the anomaly of a historic brick building off the main street that grabbed their attention. Built in 1920 as a mercantile space in a thriving African-American neighborhood during segregation, the building has since hosted several pool halls, a barbershop, a Baptist church, a few cab companies, several restaurants, and, rather dubiously, a “fish shop.”

Auburn city officials had deemed the neighborhood a “development district,” so the Hills received little pushback when reclassifying the commercial building for residential use. “We think the area is healthy and diverse, so everyone was supportive,” David says.

When the Hills purchased the building, they were unaware of its backstory —it was merely a termite-infested plumbing storehouse with a promising brick-and-concrete exterior. “During construction our neighbors kept coming up and sharing stories about getting their hair cut here, or eating here when it was a cafe,” David says. “We realized we had to be a little more careful. This thing had a life, a more interesting life, than we had ever imagined. We kind of stepped back a little bit and didn’t do some of the architectural moves that we originally thought we were going to do.”

Rather than change the existing walls, David, a principal at the Virginia-based firm D.I.R.T. Studio, worked within the existing spatial volume. Even though several interior walls were added to create bedrooms and bathrooms, David demarcated six significant masonry changes with steel cladding and trim. He ended up with a steel-clad fireplace, a steel-framed front door and trim work, as well as a custom half-ton steel sliding door separating the kitchen, dining, and sitting areas from the living room. “That’s a really fun piece of the house. We can literally close the kids in and have adult conversations, or close the adults in and have kid conversations,” David says. The door is one of several that delineate the public and private rooms, as well as the children’s and adults’ spaces.

David and Elizabeth salvaged as many of the original ceiling tiles as possible for the main living spaces and incorporated pieces of ephemera found nearby, including a Southern Delite cafe sign for the kitchen. The living, kitchen, and dining areas retained their original brick walls and plaster, which boasts a patina of paint layers, including a splash of red glitter from the building’s time as the King’s Kongo Klub.

In the master bedroom—once a cab mechanic’s station during another chapter of the building’s life—a French door now leads to the garden, through the same spot where cars once drove in and out. The decision to create a direct opening to the outdoors was “very strategic, because you can only afford to get this kind of connection between inside and outside in a couple of spots,” David says.

It is precisely the many careful considerations, from the sliding doors to structural orientation to historical sensitivity, that provide a sense of home. And, despite the unusual choice of building that garners, as David puts it, “a few funny looks from our friends,” a distinctly Southern tradition pervades. “We’re not all on top of each other,” Elizabeth says, “but I can cook dinner while one child is reading a book, and another is playing Legos, and the other is doing something else, and we’re all in this shared space. I just love it.”

Originally published

in 

Modern Across America

as 

New Old Fashioned