"Listed Buildings'' are addressed on the front page of last Saturday's paper.

With great respect to him, the Minister must be extremely careful in his approach to the 300 owners yet to respond. He must take great care to ensure that everyone concerned, not simply those 300, fully understand the liabilities and contingencies they, and their heirs or assigns will incur. He must take great care that his approach will not in any way lead them up the primrose path to believing they are not entering into a commitment that will almost certainly severely devalue their home, most Bermudian families' primary life investment. The main points to be understood are: A. As few can afford to invest in a property frozen as regards future adaptation to modern lifestyles by the listed building upon it, the market, in the case of a desire or need to sell, will be very substantially restricted.

Only those wealthy enough to indulge themselves in the high expense involved in maintaining such buildings in antique condition, as opposed to replacing windows and fittings and even layout over time with modern alternatives, will be purchasers. For example, and it is anyone's guess, a family home, bought with a mortgage and savings for $500,000 a year ago, may, in this very limited market for such anachronisms, fetch $250,000, if that, and bear no relationship to the value of the similar, but unlisted house next door.

B. Should the property and building be collateral for a loan, or mortgage, the new diminished value may no longer be sufficient to support the indebtedness agreement the person has with a bank or mortgage company. Such creditors, on their part, will be concerned that they no longer have sufficient collateral to support their loan.

C. As the two are inseparable, the worth of the underlying property itself is devalued by the presence of the old but listed building upon it that cannot be removed. The listed building dictates the value of the whole. Those who bought such a listed building on the open market, believing that a fall back position existed if it ever became necessary to sell, will now find no such option, unless severe financial loss is accepted. Instead, it will be incumbent on them to go on maintaining the building despite the situation that dictated the need to sell, unless a substantial loss is accepted.

D. Should a person have committed to plans to start a business, or has financed a project dependent on collateral based on a previous valuation of a property that has since been listed, the valuation will be no longer valid and their plan will in all likelihood require their backing.

E. Should a person have borrowed funds via a mortgage to buy a house and property that has since been listed at the previous open market price, resale under the terms of the mortgage at the new diminished value may be impossible without assuming substantial financial loss.

F. The new depressed value of the listed property will in no way reduce the mortgage commitment and payments to a bank or other creditor. The commitment will still remain at the previous rates throughout the term of the mortgage.

G. The extraordinary cost of replacing old windows, blinds and fittings with obsolete and therefore custom-made rot-prone copies will shock the average person used to today's modern long lasting alternatives. In Bermuda's increasingly noise-polluted environment, modern double-glazing and exposed air conditioning equipment will not be a protective option if the home is listed.

Structural updating to reflect contemporary lifestyles and changing family requirements will be extremely contentious and difficult to achieve, if at all. Adding a room or garage, or modernising a kitchen will require the approval of persons not necessarily compatible or sympathetic with the lifestyle and needs of today's family.

H. Whatever is imposed, or agreed upon by families now, will lock in sons and daughters and future generations.

The original warnings were distributed only to occupiers of premises rather than the owners. There is therefore no assurance that many people ever even received the warnings at all. Many of the elderly, who may have received the warnings, but trusting in the Government to always do the right thing, may have no idea of what liabilities they are incurring by keeping silent. It should be strongly recommended therefore, in any advice issued by the Minister, that such people and their heirs, and indeed anyone in doubt, should engage professional counsel to understand fully the various consequences listed above. Further to this, a signed and witnessed affidavit should be suggested ensuring that the commitment is properly understood by all involved, and sensibly their beneficiaries, to protect particularly the susceptible elderly.

OBSERVER City of Hamilton We need consistency January 21, 1999 Dear Sir, Regarding Paul Azzario's letter of January 13, I do not recall reading a letter from you to Dusty Hind condemning him for that infamous ad and asking for a public apology. This is a free Country and apparently you have also overlooked the numerous unsigned letters to the Editor during the election campaign condemning members of the PLP. At least Ms Furbert had the guts to sign her name.

I also thought the writers of the articles regarding the Middleton case was going on a bit too much. The public did not need to see day after day on the front page the same repetitious story. There are more positive stores involving Bermudians that could have gotten on the front page.

CAROL BROWN Southampton