Save Money, Save Your Building

Going smoke-free saves you money - and helps save your building. Some interesting facts:

	Maintenance Savings. Multi-unit apartment owners estimate that it costs anywhere from $500 to over $8,000 extra to rehabilitate an apartment which has had a smoker versus a non-smoker. Extra costs include: scrubbing, priming and re-painting walls covered with tar and nicotine; replacing carpet; replacing counter tops that have cigarette burns; scrubbing fans in bathrooms and kitchens that have tar and nicotine; etc.
	Risk of Fire. Of the property completely destroyed in 2002, an estimated $6.055 billion occurred in residential structures, an estimated $9.26 million of which occurred in apartments. (NFPA Fire Analysis and Research, Fire Loss in the U.S. During 2002.)
	Risk of Fire. Nationally, smoking was the cause of 9% of apartment fires. (NFIRS, 2002)
	Improved Resale Opportunities. Recent research suggests that smoke-free apartment buildings may have increased re-sale value, should you ever decide to sell your building. Agents who have assisted people selling or shopping for everything from starter-home Capes to Victorian mansions, agree: as the number of public places in which a person can smoke has shrunk, so has the number of home buyers who are even willing to consider a house with smoking in its past. (New York Times, "Real Estate & Secondhand Smoke: On Tobacco Road, It's a Tougher Sell," February 8, 2004.)

The December, 2007 issue of UNITS magazine, published by the National Apartment Association, has a cover/feature set of articles, which you can access, titled Clearing the Air: Industry Discusses Trend Toward Smoke-Free Housing explaining why it makes business sense to adopt a smoke-free policy.