Nearly a quarter of the homes built in Philly last year were in one zip code

Homebuilders have been busy across greater Center City and especially along the Delaware River.

Roughly 3,800 homes were completed in greater Center City last year — the highest number in the last five years, according to Center City District’s annual housing report, released Tuesday. Developers built almost 1,000 more homes in this region in 2024 than in 2023, which held the previous record for housing production in a five-year period.

Now, one in eight Philadelphians live in greater Center City, which the business improvement district defines as Girard Avenue to Tasker Street and between the Schuylkill and the Delaware River.

Of the more than 8,000 homes completed in Philadelphia in 2024, 44% were located in the eight zip codes of greater Center City. Most of those homes were built just north and south of the downtown core.

But one zip code in greater Center City stands out. Roughly a quarter of all the homes completed in Philadelphia last year were built in the 19123 zip code. That’s the area in and around Northern Liberties from Callowhill Street to West Girard Avenue and from North Broad Street to the Delaware River.

The city is seeing “this sort of entire new neighborhood essentially rise out of the ground from scratch along Delaware Avenue,” said Clint Randall, Center City District’s vice president of economic development.

Greater Center City and Philadelphia as a whole probably won’t see this level of housing production again in the near future. The city’s 10-year property tax abatement for newly built homes has helped spur housing development across Philadelphia, and the cutting of the tax break a few years ago resulted in a surge of developers obtaining construction permits to take advantage of the full incentive while they still could.

That has meant that more projects have been completed recently, including in the 19123 zip code. Because of a slowdown in construction permits since the weakening of the property tax incentive, as well as economic factors such as elevated interest rates, Center City District estimates that one-third as many housing units will be completed in 2025 compared to 2024.

Here are some more takeaways from Center City District’s 2024 housing report.

Why were 24% of the homes completed in Philadelphia in 2024 — or nearly 2,100 units — built in the 19123 zip code?

“This geography contains several rapidly developing corridors, with the Delaware River waterfront from Callowhill Street to Penn Treaty Park being the most active,” the Center City District report said. “Spring Garden Street and North Broad are other areas of intensifying development.”

“The waterfront more than anything is the source of that really astonishing number of new units,” Randall said. “And I think that’s a function of how much intentional focus has been put on that area, where it’s taken more than a decade since that master planning process to see it come to fruition.”

Planning along the Delaware waterfront included rezoning to allow for the types of residential projects that have emerged.

“What’s been really remarkable is that nearly every large parcel between Spring Garden Street and Penn Treaty Park has seen some kind of construction move forward,” Randall said. “And you can’t say that about other places that are places where there are larger parcels that are still conspicuously waiting for construction to start. But in the case of the waterfront, you really did see sort of everybody figure out the financing and get into the ground kind of within 12 months of each other.”

A bunch of projects whose developers obtained permits before the tax abatement changed have been completed or are underway. But “a substantial number of permitted projects remain approved without any subsequent construction,” the report said.

“Projects that have been unable to secure financing or otherwise kick off after securing permits under the former 10-year tax abatement may either race to completion or fade away as those entitlements sunset,” the report said. To get the full abatement, projects must be built by 2026.

According to Center City District, of the 60 projects that have more than 100 units and obtained permits by the 2021 deadline for the full tax abatement, 39% have been completed, 23% are under construction, and 38% have not started construction.

“2021 me would have expected that not nearly this many of those units would have actually moved forward to become real,” Randall said. “I would have assumed that developers were sort of hoping and being optimistic and wanted to get the paperwork done, but I wouldn’t have expected that to necessarily translate into as much as we’ve seen.”

He said “the two kind of pleasant surprises are more than we expected has actually gone into production and then more than we expected has actually been filled.”

Housing production has mostly kept pace with population growth across Greater Center City, according to the report.

And “the fact that greater Center City can support this level of housing production is positive for affordability, because on a basic level, a sharp increase in supply can help to moderate pricing,” Randall said.

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The anticipated slowdown in home production gives housing demand some more time to catch up with supply, especially in some neighborhoods “where supply has come in this kind of unexpectedly large wave,” he said.

But there are areas of Center City where more homes can be built, including along East Market Street, he said.

“If you look at where housing has been built over the past, you know, five, 10 years, that corridor’s conspicuously absent,” he said. That’s with the exception of the East Market development on the 1100 block of Market Street, “which continues to serve as a model for the type of density and mixed-use development that’s possible in Market East.”

Greater Center City has gained population faster than the rest of Philadelphia for decades.

Based on cell phone data from Placer.ai, greater Center City’s population grew by 1.5% last year and core Center City’s population grew by 3%. In contrast, Philadelphia’s overall population stayed relatively flat.

Greater Center City’s population gains are bolstering downtown businesses, Randall said.

“You’re really seeing retailers setting up shop here because of who’s living here,” he said. “It’s no longer as much about how to capture the spending power of the office workers. … This ongoing clustering of housing in the core is itself a kind of return-to-office strategy, and it’s also a business-attraction strategy.”

The number of college-educated young professionals in Center City has been growing. More than four in five residents in core Center City have college degrees, according to the report. Almost half — 48% — are ages 22 to 34.

Greater Center City has gained almost 44,000 residents with advanced degrees since 2011.