Now that SP has posted the highest gains in median sale prices of all the quadrants of the city, where to now? If the median home is $169K, will it stabilize to a still higher price?

My gut tells me that location, location, location with a still decreasing organized drug trade that stakes out valuable locations will lead to further gains even if interest rates go up.

Posted on Mon, Feb. 27, 2006 from www.phillynews.com

"Realty good year for city: HOME SALE PRICES UP NEARLY 20%"
[no author listed]

"IF THE real estate market could be bottled like fine wine, 2005 would be considered a very good year for Philadelphia home-buyers and sellers.

The median home purchase price in Philadelphia rose 19.4 percent to $109,950, according to a Prudential Fox & Roach analysis of sales reported last year to Trend, the multiple listing service used by the region's Realtors.

In fact, home-sale prices in Philadelphia rose at a faster pace than in any of the four neighboring southeastern Pennsylvania counties. The city also recorded the highest number of homes sold in the region - 20,000 up from 18,815 - than its suburban neighbors.

Even after several years of record-high sales activity, Steve Storti, CEO senior vice president of marketing for Prudential Fox & Roach, is still "surprised" by the change in the Philadelphia real estate market.

"The city is a bit of a wild-card," Storti said from his office in suburban Montgomery County. "All of a sudden, the city is an acceptable place to move back into, that's surprising, but it's a very good surprise."

According to the PF&R Hometown Spotlight analysis, all but one area of the city experienced a rise in the median sale price of homes sold in 2005.

South Philadelphia posted the largest increase percentagewise, with a 34 percent jump to $169,500, followed by the lower Northeast at 31.5 percent to $124,950, the central Northeast at 23.6 percent to $135,950 and North Philadelphia at 18.2 percent to $81,000.

Center City's rapid price rise slowed to a more modest 12.7 percent to $292,250 - the highest of any city neighborhood. That's slower than the 14.2 percent growth in price during 2004.

The Trend numbers are considered a good indicator of market trend since the listing service captures 85 percent of total residential sales activity in Philadelphia. Ironically, the sales most likely to be left out are individual sales in the new townhouse and condo towers, or conversion projects that often are not listed with a Realtor.

The 2006 forecast calls for a less-than-vintage year, but that isn't slowing the tsunami of condo towers and condo conversions in Center City, especially along the waterfront.

Dockside, a three-year-old luxury apartment building on Columbus Boulevard, is the latest to make the switch. The DePaul Group, the building's owner, hopes buyers will be more enthusiastic than renters when it comes to forking over large gobs of cash for digs with 360-degree waterfront views.

Prices for the 242 unusually spacious units start at around $296,000 for a studio and top out at more than $1 million. Buyers also benefit from the seven years left to run on Dockside's property-tax abatement, said Kathleen Ullo, vice president with Equity Marketing Service.

Ullo, who is overseeing the Dockside sales, was expecting a very busy weekend based on more than 400 people signed up to attend a VIP sales launch on Saturday.

"Philadelphia is in the infancy stages compared to what I've seen in the rest of the country," said Ullo, who came here from Chicago. "There's plenty of room for growth here. I say the more the merrier."

Another surprise in the numbers was the strong sales activity in North Philadelphia, an area left virtually untouched by the city's last housing boom in the 1980s.

This time, however, Mayor Street's anti-blight initiative combined with soaring home prices in Center City neighborhoods sent buyers northward in search of a less-expensive option. The result - a 133.1 percent leap in median price since 2003. The one anomaly in the otherwise positive picture was a slight 2.1 percent dip in the median sale price for the 19118 ZIP code that belongs to Chestnut Hill. It appears the days of multiple offers and bidding wars are over - at least for the near future."

Posted on Tue, Feb. 28, 2006 from www.phillynews.com

"Correction"

"In Earni Young's column yesterday, Prudential Fox & Roach's Steve Storti was misidentified. He is the company's senior vice president of marketing. Also, the median home-purchase price in Philadelphia last year rose 19.4 percent to $131,250, not $109,950 as reported."