looking .:HERE:. i do not see a bubble.

the last two months look like this:
btw that 525K medain is a record for 19130

and for 19121 (brewerytown north philly)

http://www.melissadata.com/lists/ezl...aspx?zip=19121

we have been looking for a house in 19121 specificaly brewerytown lower straw mansion and it is becoming very difficult. there is no way to even touch 33rd st right now. shells start at 90K. a friend bought a house on oxford near 33rd for 95K and within one month 4 houses sold on his block including 3 shells for 80K,80K, and 100K! the house sold for 130K. there 2 renovations around the corner. what happened? i thought that we where in a housing slump! not a good time to buy in the hood i guess.

i dont understand

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"

It's always a great time to buy residential real estate.

Buy now or forever be priced out of the market.

Bubbles are for bathtubs.

Real estate never goes down.

There has never been a national deflation in the value of real estate.

"

Listen to your local real estate agent and buy now. Buy while you still can, sales are only down 40% YOY from Feb 2007 and it's a great time to buy!

Never mind that sales are dropping through the floor and demand must meet supply. That doesn't matter. It's different this time!

Woweeee!

Er, the column clearly states "average." Houses are not being sold for $525K in any sort of regularity in Fairmount. There's always going to be some edge case, but that's not really happening.

Besides, average is completely different than median. For example, if you have one property that sells for $10 million, and is a single property that might only change hands once every 30 years, and a bunch for $100K, then you are going to get a really skewed view of the market if you only look at average. That's why economists generally report on median, which is an ordered list of sale prices, where the middle value is selected. This reduces wild fluctuations based upon a small number of anomalous inputs.




What does this mean in real life? Well, the average sale price of a 4 bedroom home in Philadelphia is up 41% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, the median is down 20% for the same classification of homes. Obviously, this gives us two different impressions.

Now for the bad news... the median sale price of a property in 19130 is down 22.1% during the December - February quarter, versus September - November. This is fairly dramatic. [Note: Before anyone has a heart attack, even the median is slightly skewed by the fact that a high number of recent transactions of "as is" foreclosures and short-sales where homes typically sell far less than comparable properties that are not foreclosures. This doesn't necessarily mean the house you bought for $300K will now appraise for $240K but it almost definitely won't sell for what you bought it for.]

On the whole, the Philly real estate market median sale price is off 8.7% between the Autumn and Winter quarters. Year after year would be bad enough, but that's quarter after quarter. That works out to an annualized rate of.... oh my.




Yeah, I don't know who you are doing business with or talking to, but it seems like you're not getting a full view of the big picture. I guess the stats could be compiled incorrectly by trulia.com, where I am getting this data from, but it seems as though half the homes that sold in 19121 in the past quarter went for less than $30K and half for more than $30K, the median, which is 14% lower than previous quarter.



Based upon my reading of average and median home values in a few areas in Philly, my impression is that high end places are still being transacted (jumbo loans, commercial, etc) but the lower end stuff has dried up. Judging by the dramatic decrease in transactions in Philadelphia on a quarter by quarter basis, and soaring average prices, combined with declining median prices, I think I can make a pretty solid case for that. Also, from the stats, judging by asking prices, sellers really don't know what's going on in the market.

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http://www.freethoughtsociety.org/ - Independent Writers' Collective, based in Philadelphia

both samples sizes are too small to throw out the effect of outliers - without taking the data directly out. the median is best represented by the this example... the AVERAGE microsoft employee is a millionaire, the MEDIAN isn't. How does that work? Well Bill Gates and his exec team are worth so much - that those 10 people completely skew that Johhny WhiteCollar (the typical worker) who only makes $80K a year - has more debt than assets etc.

House prices might be down across the city- but there will be a few pockets of resistance, where the market is hot - like 33rd - where things are being sold a rapid pace and for more than the surrounding area. Residents of btown are still selling houses for less than market b/c of leins or family $1 sales- which doesn't reflect the true value of the property. so if there is a house with $30K in leins and the market value of the house is $31K - a flipper might come along and buy the house for $1K - assuming the $30K in leins. Trulia will only reflect the $1K. Or the $1 sale from grandmother to granddaughter.

Prices for shells have not fallen in btown- but it looks like they are for the houses in btown sqr. My theory is the upper end of the market and the bottom end of the market will be fine during this downturn... so rich people will always be able to afford high rise condos and middle class people will be looking for affordable housing that they can afford in the rising imortgage rate climate that we are in. The problem will be in (and was caused by) people wanting to buy too much house. So with the rising interest rates people can't afford higher end houses that need mortgages (rich people don't mortgage houses) and the poeple who bought at the top of the market (and are in a house they can't afford) will have to sell for the price they paid- in other words they can't take a loss and since they put little or no money down there is no cushion. the houses in the upper range of affordability for the middle class will be the most affected.

When is it a good time to buy a house?
When you want to buy one and will be there for quite some time- some say 5 years. the average joe trying to time the market is useless. Buy a house that you want and forget about real estate prices until you are ready to sell +5 years down the road.

What is the value of living in a house you want to live in? priceless

Maybe so, but that web site uses the same means every month to compile data. So in an isolate sense, its not the best read, but relative to previously yearly and quarterly results, its a good way to see trends. It certainly beats anecdotal evidence or second hand stories.

No matter how you dice it, transactions are down about 70-80%.

__________________
http://www.freethoughtsociety.org/ - Independent Writers' Collective, based in Philadelphia

And, if anyone's looking to buy, contrary to popular belief, sub-prime mortgages do still exist. They are now spelled F-H-A.

__________________
http://www.freethoughtsociety.org/ - Independent Writers' Collective, based in Philadelphia

I'm no real estate guru but I would guess that investors/speculators are setting themselves up for the next real estate boom. It's still relatively inexpensive and with the quality of the architecture (at least the exterior architecture) Strawberry Mansion's going to be in demand eventually. They want to be in the game when the area gets "hot."

Again, not sure how you are all getting your information, I suspect anecdotally, but my TrendMLS account shows 75 properties between $20K and $80K and 45 properties between $5K and $50K in 19121. You can still get a shell for under $30K in 19121. You can get many shells for $30K. Get in touch if you need an agent.

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http://www.freethoughtsociety.org/ - Independent Writers' Collective, based in Philadelphia

19121 is a pretty big area... on good streets where progress is being made... you won't touch for less then $50K. So yes... I can buy a shell with serious structural problems for $20K but I don't want it.

19121 is a big area. i guess that we are loking between girard and cecil b and 26th to the park. there is very little for 30K, maybe a front wall and nothing else. my neighbor offered me his shell for 10K, but it is only a front wall and the rest of the house is still in the lot. so a 10K shell is not a 15K shell. brokers dont care for selling 30K shells. they want to sell houses for more so they can make more.

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