Program Overcame Challenges From Start

The first student-built house in Montgomery County almost wasn't.

It was 1975, and things did not look good for the newly established Montgomery County Students Construction Trades Foundation, the group formed by community members to oversee the building project.

Montgomery officials had declared a moratorium on sewer construction -- in effect preventing new homes from being built. The foundation couldn't find a bank willing to lend a group with no assets the $100,000 needed to buy land and materials. And the residents along Linden Avenue, where the foundation hoped to build, were up in arms -- student builders might bring drugs and vandalism to their picturesque Bethesda neighborhood.

But Lawrence Shulman, a real estate lawyer with no construction experience who was elected president of the foundation, was undeterred. He found a bank willing to lend the money. He persuaded the county council to grant the group a waiver on sewer construction on the grounds that the project was an "educational venture." And he convinced the neighbors and their lawyer that it would be all right.

In June 1977, Montgomery County's first student-built project -- a four-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bathroom, 2,682-square-foot home in the Alta Vista/Maplewood neighborhood -- sold for $106,500. The median price for a home in the county was about $65,000, in a part of Bethesda that was considered the boonies.

Thirty years later, that home is still standing. It's now worth $607,450, according to county records. Judy and Joseph Bleiberg and their four children are the second family to live in the house, which they bought in 1986 after looking at almost 200 others.

The housing market then was not unlike the most recent boom. The Bleibergs found themselves competing in a market where homes often sold before being listed. The house on Linden Avenue, however, was an anomaly. It had been on the market for about six months when the young couple came for a look-see.

It was, Judy Bleiberg recalled, a fixer-upper.

"We looked at the house, and my husband walked out laughing,'' Bleiberg said. "I said, 'Oh, no, that's the one we're buying.' His jaw dropped."

It had nothing to do with the construction of the home, so much as the care. The yard was overrun with weeds. Inside there was water damage.

Still, "I just had a sense that the house was of good quality,'' she said.

The Bleibergs have since added two bedrooms to the property, a screened-in porch and a deck. They've moved a wall or two and added a fireplace. Through it all, the bones of the house, which they paid $195,000 for, have remained solid.

Judy Bleiberg said, "Thirty years, and not a crack."