How to make a Philly rowhouse accessible | Real Estate Newsletter

Philly’s signature rowhouses aren’t friendly to anyone who needs help getting around.

Mia Hope Andrilla’s South Philadelphia home looked like thousands of others in the city. Her parents’ three-story rowhouse was built with steps leading up to the entrance, stairs between floors, and a narrow front doorframe.

But after Andrilla survived a spinal cord stroke, the home couldn’t accommodate her and the wheelchair she needed. So her parents got to work.

Read on to see what it takes to make a Philly rowhouse accessible, learn why millennials are struggling to buy their first homes, guess the fate of a Boy Scouts camp in the Poconos, and peek inside a Bucks County home with a Mexico-inspired aesthetic.

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— Michaelle Bond

Mia Hope Andrilla’s parents had to act fast to make their rowhouse accessible for their daughter after her stroke.

Structural changes, including an elevator, were expensive and stressful, but they were necessary for the family to stay in their home.

Adapting a rowhouse for someone who has a disability or is getting older can be difficult, especially with the design, space, and time limitations involved. On top of all that, the Andrillas also got scammed by a contractor.

Read about some of the challenges families like theirs face and how they made their rowhouse accessible.

A few newsletters ago, I shared that millennials had become a majority homeowner generation. Nationwide, 52% of twenty- and thirtysomethings in this group own homes.

Today, we get into some of the hurdles that the largest generation in the U.S. has to clear to become homeowners. And many millennials do want to own homes.

Here are a few of the challenges they’re up against:

🏘️ low housing supply

📈 high inflation

💲 expensive financing

🎓 student loans

🏷️ near record-high home prices

That all adds up to an affordability squeeze that’s keeping many millennials paying rent to a landlord each month when they’d rather be paying off a mortgage.

Millennial renters say they don’t have enough money saved, and home prices are beyond their reach. Hits to careers caused by the Great Recession also have delayed home buying. In general, millennials are buying their first homes later in their lives than their baby boomer parents did.

Read on for tips for millennial and other home buyers.

Philly is hanging onto its reputation as a relatively affordable place to buy a home.

Home buyers across the country have been facing high prices and rising mortgage rates, but in the Philadelphia region, the monthly cost of owning a home in March was still slightly cheaper than the cost of renting — one of only a few areas of the country where that was true.

That’s according to an analysis by the online real estate brokerage Redfin.

These are the only major metros where monthly mortgage payments were cheaper than rents:

🏡 Philadelphia

🏡 Detroit

🏡 Cleveland

🏡 Houston

With mortgage rates what they are, Redfin’s deputy chief economist said “it was almost surprising there were any places” where buying was cheaper than renting.

The study doesn’t take into account home owning costs such as maintenance.

Read more about Redfin’s analysis and what sets these four areas of the country apart.🔑

Jayme Trott and Bud Johnson are world travelers, but they’ve spent the most time in Mexico and fell in love with it.

So when they wanted to renovate their carriage house in their over-55 community, the country was their inspiration.

The couple’s designer used one of their favorite paintings from a trip to Mexico in the ‘90s as a centerpiece and color guide. A woven rug with the same reds, yellows, and blues hangs above a couch in the living room.

The home’s kitchen renovation has meant more space for Trott, an avid cook and baker. She even hosted a croissant baking class for a church auction.

Read on to learn how the couple fell in love with Mexico and how they turned their home into their “very happy place.”

A Boy Scouts council has agreed to sell its 755-acre camp in the Poconos for $7.8 million. Some of that money will go toward a national sex-abuse settlement against the Boy Scouts of America, which declared bankruptcy in 2020.

Question: What do the terms of the sale agreement allow for on the property, which is zoned for housing?

A) Single-family houses

B) Continued use of the camp

C) A solar farm

D) A landfill

This story has the answer.

Can you guess which Jersey Shore municipality this is?

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

Shout out to Chris B., who knew that the refreshed rainbow crosswalk in last week’s newsletter is at 13th and Locust. His memories there include “spending time with my family (wife and sons and their partners) exploring the wonderful atmosphere of the area and the camaraderie of the people we meet.”

This week, I have the last installment of my limited series sharing visual representations of homes submitted by readers. The first was a digital rendering of a Northern Liberties home using computer-aided design software. Last week’s was a watercolor painting of a Wissahickon home.

Now, I present to you a charcoal drawing of a home in Germantown and a photo of the home now. Both were shared by Louis C., who said the undated drawing that hangs in his living room was done by an artist who lived from 1897 to 1981. The drawing had belonged to previous owners.

That was fun. Thank you to these readers for sharing. Enjoy the rest of your week.