Uggg, I am so sick of seeing people highlight the ONE "bright" spot in the housing market right now. Yes, the median home price has gone up slightly. BUT, this is an extremely misleading statistic! People, please realize this!

If lower income people and/or people with rocky credit can't get a mortgage now like they could LAST YEAR, then the lower end of the housing market disappears. If all those $150-250,000 homes in some really crappy Philly neighborhoods aren't selling now since people can't get loans, you are left with a disproportionate number of higher income, better credit folks buying the more expensive homes.

It's SIMPLE MATH. Don't be fooled. Take the low prices out of the data set, and the median home price naturally shifts up.

To be fair, I don't think a lot of these guys are talking about the "crappy home" market.

I've been house hunting for 10 months and am just finally starting to see some listings that are reasonably priced. Now that it's mid-August we're officially past the denial phase and into the reality phase of this mild downturn. BUY!

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"Power does what it wants." - George Carlin

if by "one bright spot", you mean PRICE, well then yeah, we'll just have to agree then. haha.

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~Lets cut taxes and pensions out of Philadelphia.
http://www.philadelphiaforward.org

I'd buy that. Well, really, i wouldn't buy that b/c i live in one of those
$150-250,000 homes in some really crappy neighborhood.

but yeah, i've seen some of those houses on Christian, and seeing as how comparables north of South St. are ~$1mil I don't think $525k is at all unreasonable.

I have, several times, shown that relying on the NAR's median-price stats is silly. Ignore my explanation at your own financial peril.

"THAT" didn't "fill" if it was bought by flippers who are now finding renters instead. The rents do not even get close to meeting the carrying costs of these condos.

If you're going to quote the median-sales figures, you're quoting the entire market -- of which "crappy homes" is a part. If fewer crappy-homes are being sold because of (finally) increasing underwriting standards, then that's another reason why median prices are misleading.

This home sold for 22% below asking price? It's new construction, and it sold for only $200/sq. ft? Yet some on this board still find this sale to be a good thing. Amazing.

I love how the seller is being labeled as "greedy". If that home had sold for near the asking price, you would have celebrated that high price and hoped that the builder would build another similar home nearby. But now that the home only sold for $500K, the excuse is that the seller was greedy. You can't have it both ways.

BTW, there are many similar examples of homes selling way below asking in G-Ho and throughout Philly. This is not a good sign.

No, it's a great thing.

The nicest house on our same block sold two years ago for $418,000, with 4 PARKING SPOTS! I would value this house at least $75,000 more then the recent sale. I'm pretty confident that if he listed his house today he could get $575,000 for it, a 37% appreciation in just two years.

About a year and a half ago we paid in the mid $300K ($150/sqft) for a similar (although not as nicely appointed house) on the same block. We could have our house in the same condition as the new construction house for about $65,000, which would have our total investment in the low $400,000 range. We could stand to make 20% in just a year and a half.

The days of doubling value every year or two are over, but this sale indicates some nice growth still happening.

Both ways? I said his original asking price was greedy, he obviously didn't need to sell for $639K to turn a profit. The realtor actually told me at the first showing that they were testing the market and the price was very negotiable. Builders had unrealistic expectations of how high prices were going, and of course they tried to get as much as possible. My point is that prices are still way up, if this is as much of a correction as we are going to see, then I think most builders and homeowners will be happy.

I work for a homebuilder who's sales are down about 40%, so I will not deny that the market as a whole is not as strong as it was last year at it's height, but that 40% decline would still have beat our numbers up until 2004. 22% below asking probably still represents a 30%+ profit, which I know is higher then most of the national homebuilders are seeing right now. To do this on a block with 32.5% vacancy (and I'm only counting the ones that are obviously vacant, ie, missing windows...) and one short block away from a top 20 drug corner is pretty amazing to me.

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"I been a prisoner to a white Mr. Coffee
Down here on Christian Street" - Marah

You don't even know what the costs were, because the building was on fire a year before it opened and thus insurance was involved in getting the construction to completion. When I saw the White go up in flames the year prior I figured that project was over. If the whole building was going to flip why would have the developer even bothered to continue?

Oh, because the developer gets paid either way; I forgot. And the units are selling... I forgot that, too.


And lastly, 19107 is a very high rent neighborhood... most people who live in -07 rent. And rental in Center City is tight. A space like that in a location as central as that, even with all the nearby negatives it has... still draws renters...


and we're not talking Section 8 renters, honey. These people think shelling out $1,500 a month for an empty loft is OK.

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Buh-bye.