When Power Outages Strike, Are Your Clients Left in the Dark?Stand By

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Few home buyers initially purchase a generator, but losing all the contents of a refrigerator or having a finished basement ruined because a sump pump doesn't turn on is a powerful memory. "Anyone who has had a loss of power is an easy sell," says Joel Andersen, president of Andersen Homes in Downers Grove, Ill.

Still, the cost of a whole-house generator may be out of reach for many home buyers. Stuart McDonald, vice president of operations at Mercedes Homes in Melbourne, Fla., proposes that the federal government could help out. If it offered a rebate, much like the one on solar power, "based on the interest of people

I've talked to, I think more than 70 percent of people would buy [a generator]." Even without a rebate, 8 percent to 9 percent of his clients opted for a generator this year, up from 4 percent to 5 percent last year, McDonald says.

Gianpetroni suggests: Although generators can be added as a retrofit, it's much less expensive to install the transfer switch and run the pipe out of the wall during construction. Plus, home buyers can roll the cost into their mortgages.

Although most power outages are brief, longer lapses can cause costly damage. For homeowners, living through the insurance nightmare of getting damages repaired is usually worse than the power outage itself, points out custom builder Scott Hobbs of Hobbs Inc. in New Canaan, Conn. "For the expense of one insurance deductible, our clients can install some minimal protection" in the form of a low-kilowatt standby generator, he says.