The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 71

S.F. Sunday Examiner Chronicle Mar. 21, 1982 PAGE 13 The computerized home of the future offers wonders galore conceived of. "Your imagination is really all that's stopping you in home computer terminal applications," says Wendy Bollum of First Bank Systems in Minneapolis. By 1985 at least 8 million U.S.

households will use home computer terminals, according to an assessment of home terminal market potential completed late last year by Payment Systems Inc. An independent subsidiary of the American Express Payment Systems is an Atlanta-based research firm specializing in financial services. The Home Terminal Services project predicts that by 1985, sales of home computer terminals will be worth $900 million. Sales of products made through the terminals will be worth from $3 billion to $5 billion. By Marsha Taylor New house News Service WASHINGTON No place like home? The range of consumer services available via a home computer terminal soon may become so broad that, for getting things done, there will be no place except home.

By the year 2000, industry analysts believe, consumers could become stay-at-homes who venture forth only to work. They routinely ill use home computer terminals to shop, pay bills, bank, make inquiries, study, file insurance claims, vote, be entertained, get first-aid information, read the news, obtain an up-to-the-minute weather report and And any one of a ide spectrum of other uses still to be "The number of experiments in the field is growing all the time," says William H. Moore, Payment Systems senior vice president. "All the larger West European countries have them going, and in the United States we have at least 50. We (at Payment Systems) are trying to keep our list of them current but it's hard to do." Retail sales, now worth more than $1 trillion annually in the United States, perhaps is the most obvious area to hich use of home computer terminals is now applied.

"Sweeping changes in technology promise to affect the American retailer in the next decade or two" states a new report by the American Retail Education Foundation. A pioneer in the field of at-home shopping is a Stamford, company called Comp-U-Card of America Inc. In 1973 chief executive officer Walter A. Forbes began a telephone shopping service that today gives 2 million subscribers access to listings of between 30,000 and 50,000 items. A subscriber may call a toll-free number, request computerized information from an operator and place an order for products that then will be delivered by mail.

The company now offers at-home shopping to more than 50,000 subscribers nationwide ho have computer terminals. Its Comp-U-Star service makes available product information via computer terminal, and accepts consumer orders fed into the terminal together with a credit card number. A retail outlet version called Comp-U-Store will be unveiled in Toronto in April. "We see an explosion in this (home computer terminal) field," says Forbes. "We believe that within 10 years 75 million homes will have some kind of computer access, all carrying out some kind of operation like shopping or banking." IIJMW IH II IM WAX (6 JL JiMU-i UJL- Banking also is a major focus for home computer terminal experimentation.

Payment Systems found that in 1980 at least 10 home banking experiments including Project Pronto by Chemical Bank in New York City, Viewtron by Southeast Banking Corp. in Coral Gables, and Channel 2000 by Banc One Corp. in Columbus, Ohio were going on around the United States. Payment Systems estimates that today the number may be twice as high. But its assessment of how consumers hope home computer terminals will work indicates that consumers would be unhappy if offered just one service such as banking.

Consumers would prefer a package of services, conceivably including banking, shopping, information or a mix selected by the individual, the project report says. Tests on banking-shopping package by First Bank System of Minneapolis are to begin soon, according to official Wendy Bollum. The experiment, which uses the French-manufactured Antiote computer system, is capable of two-way communication, says Bollum. "Basically the service will start by being oriented to agribusiness and financial information, plus weather and commodity reports and basic banking facilities," says Bollum. "It will also provide at-home shopping for things like farm implements and seed plus general goods like the top 10 best sellers or paint." A pilot project involving 15 computer terminals in homes and small businesses is scheduled to begin in three North Dakota towns, followed later this month by one involving an additional 250 terminals in for the Minneapolis-St.

Paul area. Results of the experiment should be tabulated and evaluated by late October, says Bollum. The service could be introduced commercially by early 1983, she adds. Real estate bear growling 0 IDID The Height of MarinTownhome Living REAL ESTATE FUNDS AVAILABLE SECOND TRUST DEEDS RESIDENTIAL COMMERCIAL PROPERTY Here is Marin townhome living created with flair and finesse: A strikingly different multi-level 3-bedroom design concept. Interior luxuries are matched only Sinpli Lo Urns Minimum 100.000: MulitiM ,500,000 Tims: BolA Prima plus 2 with floor.

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estate is subject to cyclical ups and downs. But houses are not just items to be entered on computer printouts or stored in a safe-deposit box, like stock certificates or bars of gold. In addition to serving as an investment, they provide the basic need of shelter. In addition, the tax laws are heavily weighted in their favor. Home-ownership is subsidized, in effect, by tax deductions on mortgage interest and property tax payments, and by more favorable capital-gains tax treatment than other kinds of investments.

But Kirkpatrick argues that the quadrupling of home prices in the 1960s and 70s represented a "mania" that has now about exhausted itself. The basis of that boom, he noted, was inflation, and the belief that houses, as tangible assets, offered protection from the shrinking Value of the dollar. Kirkpatrick points out, however, that commodity prices, which often function as the leading edge of cost-of-living trends, "are now faltering severely for the first time in many years. They are indicating to us the first signs of deflation. Such an environment cannot possibly be healthy for house prices." At the same time, he argues, the present high level of mortgage rates has made housing a less attractive investment than it has been at any time in recent years.

"The rate of return from the expected price increase of an asset must be eighed against the cost of the money used to purchase the asset," he said. "Obviously, if house prices are increasing at 20 percent per year and mortgage money is available at 9 percent, the investment incentive is to purchase a house." Such conditions prevailed for most of the time over the past dozen years or so, he added, but they do not now. The equation shifts dramatically when mortgage rates stand at 15 percent-plus, and house prices rise at only a 6.8 percent pace, as they did in 1981. Should house prices actually decline, Kirkpatrick said, 'the incentive to buy would disappear completely, regardless of the interest rate." The huge amount of mortgage debt already outstanding, in Kirkpatrick's view, poses another potential problem. "While its creation led to faster rises in house prices," he maintains, "its contraction (like margin debt in the 1929 stock market) will likely lead to faster declines." He concludes, "The only hope for a resumption of house price increases is a very significant and immediate drop in long-term interest rates, not just to 12 percent or so but to 5 or 6 percent" 5 10 DOWN TO A MAXIMUM LOAN OF M07.000 30-YEAR FIXED LOAN 580 0 CASTRO VALLEY BLVD.

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