The Tampa Times from Tampa, Florida • 9

Home value can be hilcfwith correct knowledge others. Other real estate experts caution against adding to an existing home, pointing to the obvious inefficiency: an average home costs $15-19 per square foot to build; the cheapest addition will cost $30 pe.r square foot. "The only way a person should add on is if he has a $20,000 house in a $28,000 neighborhood," says White. "You always want the neighbors to up-grade the value of your house, not vice versa." James recommends that homeowners making major improvements do much of the work themselves, or at least hire their own sub-contractors. he says, first thoughts should be toward stretching 'existing space by re-arranging walls and most Florida homes are increasing in dollar value 10-15 per cent each year.

With proper management and maintenance, a single home can be the most fruitful investment a man can make, say real estate professionals. But the homeowner who expects a return on every dollar he puts into a home can easily turn his castle into a bank deposit vault. "The average man has no business speculating in real estate," says John White, president of Realty Exchange in Tampa. "You look at tha people who have created some sufficiency, and most have done it with the homes they have bought and cared for, one good home not above or below their income." White says one of the oldest real estate laws is proof that a homeowner can By RICHARD WHITE Times Staff Writer Real estate experts say any homeowner can judge the true value of his home in a matter of minutes. Here's how: Begin by walking from room to room.

Ask yourself, 'Does my home provide dependable shelter and uncluttered, un-cramped space?" Walk around the outside. Is the view gratifying and the noise tolerable? Sit down in a favorite corner. Can you relax and ignore the room around you? If all answers are affirmative, the experts say, your home is probably too valuable to worry about its price tag on the market. If you need further assurance, take heart in the knowledge that but on emotion. Real estate people have done this for years.

We take a young married couple to see a house just be fore sunset, when it is most romantic." Insurance companies usually base their homeowner's rates on an inspection of the home's exterior, a practice called "windshield checks," notes professional home improver Glen James. "The banks and the insurance companies know that if a man takes care of the outside, odds are he'll take care of the inside, too," says James, who makes a living restoring rundown houses. James teaches the buyers of his refurbished houses good habits of home care by letting them do much of the improvement themselves. "Once people find out how easy it is to take care of their own home, they will continue. The not engineer increased value.

"The Dutch have an old saying, 'You don't buy a house. You buy "You can do anything you want to with a house, but it won't do any good if you can't get your neighbors to do anything." White and other real estate veterans say the cheapest and most efective way to increase a home's market value is through 'cosmetic' improvements, particularly to the exterior. Paint, wallpaper and landscaping are the three basics of cosmetic improvement, especially when an owner begins thinking of selling his home. "A home will sell for $5,000 more just by what it looks like on the outside," White says. "On today's market you're not selling on a brick and mortar basis average person can reshingle a roof in two days and fill cracks in the wall in a matter of minutes." When a homeowner plans a major addition or improvement to his home, he often cannot help think how it might enhance the resell value.

One prominent mortgage house, J. I. Kislak, has published a quick guide to home improvement values. A homeowner can expect to recover 70-80 per cent of his investment in an added family room. Other additions which will pay back most of their cost are a second full bathroom in a three or four bedroom house, a lavatory addition on the ground floor of a two-story house, a fully modernized kitchen, and the addition of a third bedroom to a two-bedroom house, if the new room is of comparable size to the ss usine The Tampa Times, August 19, 1974 Page 8-A Capsuling Business tt-kd from rtmtfad wire rapo U.S.

airlines want to change overseas ruies fill I I jpr" 1 j' I HI Jf i rf Xr vt JJ? 1 i I i I II ''f jh1 She's a hard-driving locomotive engineer There are train engineers and then there are train engineers, and despite the feminine appearance, Christine Gonzalez, 21, of El Paso, is definitely a train engineer. The fourth generation railroader, whose grandmother was a Harvey Girl and whose father is a conductor, is shown aboard her diesel locomotive in the Santa Fe Railroad yards where she works as the first woman engineer employed by the line (UPI). Decline of poor has says board 'NEW YORK Although the number of mericans who can be statistically classified as poor has dropped from 40 million in 1960 to about 23" million today, most of this decline took place in the early 1960s, the Conference Board reports. The board, an independent business research organization, presented its findings in a paper by Fabian Linden, its director of consumer economics. To be statistically "poor" the.

government says a single person must have an income of less than $2,300 a year and a fami-- ly of six less than $6,000 a year. Inflation and the general slowdown in economic growth since 1968 has caused the rapid progress in diminishing the number of poor in American society of the early 1960s to fade away. Linden said. He also said that the outlook for cutting the proportion of poor in the years ahead is not good. And, he said the poor now include a higher proportion of unemployables, aged and infirm persons and children too young to hold jobs.

Export limits planned WASHINGTON Administration farm officials are fighting pressure to hold down food and clothing prices by limiting exports of key farm crops. The only exception is a temporary embargo on soybean product exports in 1973. Agriculture secretary Earl L. Butz so far has managed to keep the White House on the an-ticontrol side, but no one knows if President Ford will continue to back the Butz policy as did former President Nixon. The issue this time is corn, hurt severly by a June-July drought in the middle west.

Corn is the basic raw material for the nation's meat, dairy and poultry industries. American supplies also flow abroad to feed livestock and provide food in many parts of the world. Both Butz and his critics agree that because of the drought the United States will not have enough corn to meet both domestic and foreign needs. Auto workers strike Strikes at two key parts suppliers and other auto industry labor problems left thousands of autq workers out of work today and forced a delay in the production of 1975 model cars and trucks Some 16,000 General Motors (GM) employes were idled at six GM truck plants in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Canada and a GM auto plant in Massachusetts as the nation's largest automaker postponed the start of new model production. The postponement was triggered by strikes -against two Milwaukee plants, A.

O. Smith which makes suspension parts and frames, and Briggs Stratton which manufactures door and ignition locks. --Some 4,300 workers at GM's Chevrolet plant in Indianapolis also have been laid off because of the strikes. GM was particularly hard hit, since the strikes at Briggs Stratton and A. O.

Smith come on top of lingering strikes at GM plants in Lardstown, Ohio and St. Louis. Those strikes af feJstSome 13,500 workers. I Some 3,800 workers at the Chrysler truck plnt in St. Louis were also idled because of the sfifikes and American Motors said it may have to close its Kenosha, assembly plant Aug.

2s Jf the strikes are not settled. Mushroom program set i PHILADELPHIA The Mushroom Processors Association (MPA) says it will open its canneries to inspections by independent processing experts in the hope of revitalizing the mushroom business after recent disclosures reports of contaminated products. Shows who is responsible Computer keeps track of mishaps By DAN MILLER (c) 1974, Chicago Dally News It's not hard to figure out why U.S. international airlines feel like they're being mugged when they fly into foreign airports. 5 Consider this: when United lands a Boeing 747 and 200 passengers at Sydney Airpotr, the carrier is assessed $4,200 in landing fees.

When Australia's Qantas Airways eases into Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the carrier pays only $408. Or this: When TWA lands in Rome, the landing fee comes to about $600 (plus 50 per cent if the landing is at night). When the Italian national carrier, Alitalia, comes into Rome, it pays nothing. Last year, TWA paid $600,000 in lamling fees to Athens' airport. Olympic Airlines paid none.

Or this: When U. S. airlines buy another airplane, they borrow money at prevailing interest rates, currently around 10 to 12 per cent a year. When KLM-Royal Dutch wants to buy a Boing or McDonnell-Douglass or any other U.S.-built airplane, it bellies up to the U.S, export-import bank, which will advance part of the necessary cash for about 7 per cent a year. That means that U.S.

carriers paya bout $7 million more for a jumbo jet than do the foreign carriers. Or this: When an Italian comes to the United States on private or governmental business, he flies on Alitalia or he say, Venice, by way of Rome and tries to fly on a U.S.-based airline, he may find that connecting space from Rome to Venice is "not available." If he switches his trans-Atlantic flight to Alitalia, space suddenly opens for the Rome-to-Venice elg. Referring to these kinds of practices. Air Line Pilot magazine, a trade publication for the airline industry, says, "When the burdens of discrimination are coupled with traditional enormous wage disparities and the recent extraordinary escalation in fuel costs around the world, it is little wonder that the future viability of U.S.-flag carriers is currently in serious question." The U.S. carriers are basing much of their hope for the future on pending legislation that would open up the government troughs so they could take their turn.

Among the changes being sought by the carriers: Access to export-import bank financing for planes made by U.S. firms and used primarily in international service. Only four U. S. airlines would qualify for the financing since only five U.S, carriers have international routes: Pan Am, TWA, Braniff, National and Northwest.

But 57 foreign carriers fly to and from the United States. 'Parity for carrying the mail. The U. S. Postal Service currently pays U.S.

carriers 31 cents for every, ton of mail carried one mile. But the same government unit pays as much as $1.73 per ton-mile to foreign airlines to transport U.S. mail. A legislative mandate that U.S.-financed travel be made on U.S.-flag airliners. Backers of the legislation note that most nations already require their nationals to travel on government airlines whenever the business is financed in whole or in part by the government.

Promotional and advertising help from the U.S. travel service to urge U.S. citizens to "fly American." Foreign airlines get free advertising on the television networks back home. The U.S. carriers also would like to see the United States lean on foreign governments to lay a lighter regulatory hand on U.S.

operations abroad. For instance, some nations tax the gross revenues of a U.S. carrier abroad but collect taxes only on the net income of the national airline. Or the foreign nation may exempt its own carrier from customs charges or levy extra duties on support equipment imported by U.S. car-riers.

U. S. airlines also would like a chance to develop a complete travel operation, from the travel agents and tour operators to the freight agents and forwarders to the airline loading gate. Antitrust laws currently prevent such combinations. IN ADDITION, THERE ARE NUMEROUS NUISANCE PROGRAMS INFLICTED ON U.

S. carriers, such as the worst slotting for boarding gates at foreign airports, lackadaisical baggage handling and currency restrictions on nationals traveling a U.S.-flag lane. The U.S. carriers insist they' are willing to pay their share for support services such as communications, navigation work, air traffic control and airport maintenance abroad. But they also insist they shouldn't be assessed for fuqities they don't use.

The Australian carriers argue that the high landing fee structure at Sydney Airport is necessary to balance losses incurred at secondary landing fields like Perth and Brisbane, which U.S. carriers don't use. The cozy relationship between foreign airlines and their governments is eyed with increasing wistfulness by the U.S. carriers. They point to a civil aeronautics board statement that the prime objective of U.S.

air-traffic policy should be "equality of opportunity for U.S. carriers to compete for the national traffic on an equal footing with the national carriers." Since it seems unlikely that U.S. trade negotiations can convince foreign government to stop running their airlines as in-house travel agencies, the alternative seems to be to grant U.S. carriers the same preferential treatment that foreign carriers enjoy. And the U.S.

airlines are waiting with open loading gates for the federal regulations to climb aboard. in the industry. But they were convinced they had to do something about their lost time accident rate, said Bowden. Since the computer program was started last April 10, Bowden says he has noticed a slackening of accidents. There were 67 lost time injuries in the company's Tampa operations in 1970! compared to 58 injuries for the entire company as of June of this year.

The program has also given Bowden more freedom to personally see to the needs of the injured man's family. He said he now has the time to act as in in-temediary at the hospital and attend to other needs during a serious accident. The company also knew that help was needed with the compilation of better safety and medical data and that a better nethod was needed with the voluminous Occupational Safety and Health Act record keeping and reporting By GRANT DONALDSON Times Staff Writer Computer technology has long been known as an aid to industry, and at Tampa's Florida Steel the computer has invaded yet another facet of business, that of accident prevention. Oh, they're still letting the workers cause the accidents, but they're letting the computer tell when and who caused them. The new information is a welcomed addition for accident prevention experts who have been studying the baffling problem since the first worker accident-ly threw the wrong switch and rolled his arm up in a steel rod.

Florida Steel's manager of accident prevention, Curtis D. Bowden, is ecstatic over the results of the $45,000 computer program, even though he admits the data is sometimes painfully truthful. Among some of the old concepts that the computer exploded was the long-held notion that the young inexperienced worker has the most lost-time accidents. Early the computer established that it is the employe with 10 or .12 years experience who has the most time-lost accidents, a hard pill for veterans to swallow but true just the same. Another old truism which had to be discarded held that most accidents occur in the wee hours of the morning when men are sleepy and sluggish.

Instead, the computer says, most accidents occur between 9 a.m and 10 p.m. "We don't know why they occur at that time, but at least we can now spend most of our time solving the problem instead of trying to define it," said Bowden. A computer has no preconceived notion about who causes the accidents, it just spits out the facts, he added. Those at Florida Steel had no idea whether the program was worth the money, since it was the first of its kind Investment for retirement can be fruitful i uany f.T Investor A Dan Compbell When you've done just about all there is to be done, where do you go from there? Investing for retirement is a good case in point: you adopt and your life-style, and then you just steadily plug away at it and try not to fret over the fact that you can't do more. My wife and I are 50 years old and both of us are in reasonably good health and are employed.

My wife earns $11,800 a year and I earn between $12,000 and $20,000 in sales and commissions. We have one daughter at home (16 years old). We own a mortgage-free home worth $50,000 on today's market and have a total of $25,000 invested in it. We have a total of 350 shares in two utilities, $10,000 in four-year certificates at 7 the bottom of the market yet, of course, but a turn-about within the next year is almost an inevitability. Every time I mention refinancing a mortgage-free home, of course, the skies fall in on me from two well-meaning, but vocal, schools of thought: 1 from the "a-debt-free home is-sacred" believers, and (2) from those who can't see the mathematics of refinancing a house at 9 per cent in order to put the money in the bank at 7 per cent.

I'm not, of course, talking about putting the money into a fixed income security like a bank time deposit, but in an EQUITY investment where a reasonable growth of 8 or 9 per cent a year, compounded, is in the cards. a month at age 62. 1 will have only Social Security. Any suggestions? Nothing very earth-shaking in the way of suggestions, I'm afraid. You're well situated, well diversified and the fund is a good one.

One point: in view of your age and the fact that you're both employed, why not look into the possibility of refinancing your home to the tune of about $10,000 which would not be an onerous burden and would give you a nice lump sum to put into an equity investment with good growth potentials over the next 10 or 12 years either a mutual fund or in three or four good growth stocks that are currently depressed in price. We may not have seen Arthur T. Pratt, president of the associa tibn, announced the new" program, known as process certification, yesterday. -'Regular inspections will be made by independent processing experts of critical control points in mushroom canneries to be sure they ape functioning properly," Pratt said at MPA headquarters in surburban Kenneth Square. This southeastern Pennsylvania community is one of the country's largest mushroom growing centers.

per cent; $2,000 in certificates at 6 per cent; $1,000 in certificates and $3,800 in regular passbook savings. From reading your column and your strong suggestion at various times on investigating no-load mutual funds, I went to the library and, after studying performances, I chose the David L. Babson fund. We now have 140 shares and continue to invest at $100 a month. Since our lifestyle is simple we will live on my wife's income of about $400 law oaiu nic mautiauuu a mcuiUCla, representing about two thirds of the nation's mushroom processors, were prompted to adopt trje new processing standards by the Federal Drtig Administration's (FDA) scrutiny of the inHutry, and by record lows in mushroom prof- hi.