What do you guys think of this area? Shady/marginal/just fine?

Im looking at a property there, and it seems like West of Springfield gets shady quickly. Personally, I would live there for the right price, but would students at Penn/USP rent there with confidence? My guess is yes, but I would rather hear it from actual residents.

Thanks

Shady? I didn't think so the last time I walked in those neck of the woods. And I thought Springfield was decently nice enough up to 48th?...Unless I'm confusing Springfield and Chester.

Either way, I think that area is fine. Isn't Clark Park right there? I would die to live near the park.

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I used to visit friends on the 4400 block of Springfield all the time, and thought it was quite nice. I haven't been there since they moved 3 years ago, but i imagine it's only gotten better. Can't speak for the mindset of Penn students, however.

oops!

Springfield is great until you get near the park. Slumlords there take advantages of laws to store refuse on the curb all week, every week, across from Sunoco it looks like a dump all year but legally there is nothing to address this as the city says you can happily put dead bodies in front as long as they lean against the house. :twisted:

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Like most everything but abject stupidity. Like most people except the abjectley stupid.

What is shady to you?

What is the right price?

How far west do you need the neighborhood to be good?

WHen I looked at this forum at first I thought it might be about the Construction going on at 45th & Springfield. Don't get me started on that.

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Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. - Robert Orben

I live near 49th and Springfield. My neighbor rents 2 floors of his twin almost exclusively to Penn students and he never has vacancies. I personally own rental property just west of (gosh!) 50th St. and Baltimore and have rented to Penn Grad students several times. The only thing sketchy about the whole area along Springfield and Chester at least out to the R3 tracks is the hookers (they rotate but there is only ever one out there at time- rearkable scheduling) who walk between 49th and the raliroad underpass along Springfield. Oh and the beer deli on 47th between Chester and Kingsessing, Salt and Pepper, off and on attracts some very low level drug dealing especially when a Safe Street's sweep disturbs their usual corners up around 52nd and Kingsessing and 51st and Woodland.

Of course you and I have very different standards of safety and when and where you feel the need to carry your large caliber handgun as has already been established on the Fresh Grocer thread. Personally, however, I would say in terms of being a landlord Penn undergrads are really lousy tenants. There is nothing like a 18 or 19 year old spoiled rich kid using your property for their first experiment in doing their own housekeeping to sour you on the whole experience. Its amazing how people can attend an ivy league institution and be completely unfamiliar with the such complex technological devices as a broom, a mop, or a plunger. Try it a few years and you will come to realize the West Philly vegan semi-professional puppet activist or a soft spoken West African cab driver working 3 jobs to support half a village in Cote D'Ivoire is actually a much more desirable tenant profile, despite the fact they don't mommy and daddy's checkbook behind them, because they have lasting commitment to the neighborhood and don't turn over every academic year.

It has ben my experience that as they will be off to Maine or Connecticut as soon as school is out they have little interest in noise, trash, or even cleaning out furniture when they leave.

Then again lived by 49th and Florence and watched long time renters just pitch trash of their front steps and a neighbor on Saint Bernard who felt his blsted music was what we all wanted to hear 24/7.

12th District cops are jokes.

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Like most everything but abject stupidity. Like most people except the abjectley stupid.

Yeah. There continues to be some awful slumlording still going on around UCity and its sad to see how many West Philly residents think the proper place for trash is all over the sidewalks, rather than in trash can. My point I guess was rather that if you keep up your apartments well and treat your tenants right, there is actually a huge ammount of demand for apartments quite a lot further west than many people would assume. On the other hand, crummy run down apartments where the landlord doesn't even attempt to keep track of who's moving in and out of their building (i.e. are the people listed on the lease are the same one's living there instead of their girlfriend/boyfriends's cousin's friend) are the apartments that sit empty with Apt for Rent signs for months at a time.

Its definitely a case where diminished expectations fufills its own negative prophesy. This is true whereever you are but especially so around the edges of UCity. We have never even had to put up listing anywhere because our apartments look great and our tenants know that if they have a problem they can always get a hold of us to fix it in a timely manner. Its simple really, you shouldn't rent a place that you wouldn't want to live in yourself, and if you keep it up to those standards there is a HUGE rental demand of all kinds of folks from all kinds of backgrounds that aren't necessarily connected to the University of Pennsylvania in any way.

I had a tremendous arguement with the Streets Department. See I kept my trash out back until the night before or morning of trash pick-up. The Streets Department says you can basically chuck out whatever in front so long it touches the house.

Check out the houses across from Sunoco or the 49 hundred block of Florence and tell me it looks good. Or the bastard landlord at 49th and Florence SE corner where it's a virtual rat farm. Better yet check out Charles Georges' property where I actually had to extricate a child from a bundle of wire on St. Bernard Street.

There used to be something called PRIDE. Pigeons are smaarter than us, they don't craaap where they live. :argue:

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Like most everything but abject stupidity. Like most people except the abjectley stupid.