1,000+ applications for 3 rentals | Real Estate Newsletter

In today’s newsletter, we’re talking housing affordability.

More than 1,000 people have applied for three rental homes that a wealthy South Jersey borough is offering at below-market-rate prices. Three. (That wasn’t a typo.)

Haddonfield is taking steps to meet its court-ordered requirements to provide affordable housing within its borders.

The Camden County borough’s plan to build and buy affordable rental homes and sprinkle them throughout its neighborhoods follows years of opposition and reluctance from the community.🔑

Also, read on to peek inside a Delaware County home owned by a lifelong amateur interior designer, see where Philly ranks in apartment sizes, and learn what to do if you get a rental eviction notice.

📮 Today, we’re touring a home that used to have a dark purple ceiling in the living room. Where do you stand on boldly painted ceilings? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer.

If you see this 🔑 in today's newsletter, that means we're highlighting our exclusive journalism. You need to be a subscriber to read these stories.

— Michaelle Bond

Haddonfield is known for its strong schools and lively downtown. It’s not known as an affordable place to live.

“Historically, Haddonfield hasn’t done a good job with affordable housing,” the borough’s mayor said. But, she said, “we’ve had enough ‘not in my backyard.’”

Haddonfield signed a legally binding agreement with the Fair Share Housing Center in 2019 in which the borough agreed to aim to provide 83 affordable homes by 2025.

The first round of applications for a few available rental homes closed last month, but the private firm Haddonfield hired to manage its affordable housing program is continuing to accept applications for a waitlist.

One project in the works is a 20-unit rental townhouse development for households that make below a certain amount of money. It’ll be built behind Haddonfield’s Borough Hall on Kings Highway.

Read about Haddonfield’s plan to scatter affordable homes so each neighborhood has families who otherwise couldn’t afford to live in the borough.🔑

Thirteen acres of land at 4601 Market St. could soon sprout 1,240 new homes in six apartment towers. It would be the largest housing development in decades in this section of West Philadelphia.

But City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier wants the developer to go back to the drawing board.

She’s asking Iron Stone Real Estate Partners to make sure at least 20% of its new apartments are offered for a lower cost than they would rent for on the open market. She wants these apartments reserved for households making about $30,000/year for one person or $42,000/year for four people.

Gauthier argues that since the city and state spent tens of millions of dollars to improve the site that the developer later bought, the developer should include homes that are affordable to current residents of the area.

The developer is scheduled to meet with community members next week and then take its proposal to the city’s advisory Civic Design Review board.

Read more about the letter Gauthier sent the developer and see drawings of how the proposed development would fit into the neighborhood.

More space, more space, more space. It’s been a loud drumbeat over the last three years as households looked to spread out during the pandemic.

Even though I like watching shows about tiny houses, I’m not sure I could live in one. And for anyone renting an apartment in a city, there’s only so much space you can get (if you’re not rich).

Nationally, newly built apartments have shrunk — from an average of 941 square feet a decade ago to 887 square feet in 2022 — according to an analysis released this week by the apartment search portal RentCafe.

The main reason? Developers are building more studios and one-bedroom apartments.

Philadelphia ranked No. 9 on RentCafe’s list of cities with the smallest average apartment sizes. The average size of a Philly apartment is 780 square feet. That’s 10 square feet bigger than a decade ago.

Renters in Silver Spring, Md., which is tied for ninth place with Philly, have lost a good chunk of space. The average apartment there has shrunk from 894 square feet to 780.

Cities that come to mind when you think of postage stamp-sized apartments, like Manhattan, Washington, and San Francisco, have built larger apartments over the last decade but not by much.

Check out RentCafe’s analysis of apartment sizes in the 100 largest cities.

Last month, Philadelphia rental property owners filed in court for about 1,400 evictions, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. That’s a little less than the January average of about 1,800 filings.

Landlords can evict tenants from their rental properties for not paying rent, breaking the terms of a lease, or refusing to leave after a lease ends. Philadelphia landlords now are required to try mediation with tenants before formally filing for eviction in court in most cases.

The simple act of a landlord filing of an eviction can hurt a tenant’s chances of finding future housing, but an eviction notice is only the start of what can be a long process. There are steps tenants can take to avoid a court-ordered eviction.

My colleague Henry Savage lays out what to do if you get an eviction notice.

Growing up in Chicago, Caitlin Chase loved redecorating her room.

Now, she’s living in Delaware County, has a daughter of her own, and has a four-bedroom, four-bathroom home to play with.

“This was my first opportunity to re-envision a whole space,” she said.

The house was built in 1968 and was in good shape on the outside. The inside needed some sprucing up. The sunken living room’s ceiling had been painted dark purple, and most of the house’s lighting either didn’t work or was fluorescent.

Chase decided on a mid-century modern style to honor the architecture of the house. The redesign is a work in progress.

Read on to find out what Chase found by the side of the road that she incorporated into her kitchen renovation.

A Georgia-based nonprofit has granted Philadelphia a title that honors cities that have done a good job supporting and including immigrants. The city had to meet the nonprofit’s standards in categories like equitable access and government leadership.

What is the title that Philly can now claim? This story has the answer.

There aren’t many places in Philly these days where you can go for a short stack at 2 a.m. But this photo shows one of them. Do you know which diner this is and which neighborhood it’s in?

📮 If you think you do, email me back. You and your memories of visiting this spot might be featured in the newsletter.

If you’ve been following me on this newsletter journey for the last couple of weeks, you know I grew up in Jersey. So you should know my opinion on diners: Jersey has the best ones. (I’m not sorry.)

Now I’ve made myself hungry. Enjoy the rest of your week.