Tiny Shore home holdouts | Real Estate Newsletter
And property reassessment impacts.
Last week’s newsletter featured an Avalon home for sale whose current owners want a buyer who won’t knock it down to build a McMansion.
That home is smaller than many being built up and down the Jersey Shore, but it’s a lot bigger than the Shore homes we’re focusing on this week: bungalows. These cozy beach houses (including one that’s less than 400 square feet) sit in desirable locations, surrounded by homes with two or three stories.
Owners of the few tiny homes still left could rake in big profits if they sold their properties, especially in the swankiest Shore towns. My colleagues talked to the owners of three properties in three towns about why they refuse to sell their bungalows.
Keep scrolling for that story and the rest of this week’s edition:
Property tax questions: See how race, income, gentrification, and more show up in the results of Philly’s property reassessments.
A tenth of the way there: Find out when a Philly program that sold its 100th price-restricted home expects to reach its goal of selling 1,000.
Getting personal in Ocean City: Peek inside a century-old beach house that has special significance for the owner.
Waiting on rates: Hopeful home buyers made for a lukewarm Philly-area housing market in August.
📮Shore season is wrapping up. If you could buy a home (tiny or not) in any Jersey Shore town, where would you buy and why? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me.
— Michaelle Bond
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Bernie and Karen O’Hara’s house in Avalon makes people stop and stare. Not because it’s new or fancy or huge, but because it’s not.
The O’Haras have watched as their roughly 800-square-foot house has been surrounded by much bigger ones, making their more modest home an anomaly. They thought about building a new house on their property, but they can’t afford what they’d have to pay.
That’s thanks to all the construction happening around them.
Elevators. Pools. Multiple bathrooms. The three homes that my colleagues Erin McCarthy and Ariana Perez-Castells focus on in their latest story don’t have any of that. And their owners don’t mind.
One owner’s Avalon house is less than 400 square feet. Her parents bought the property in 1960 for $6,000. Now, it’s worth more than $2 million.
All three owners in this story have been approached about selling, but they’re not interested. Find out why they don’t want to sell, and how much money they could make if they did.
Zyair Bryant bought his three-bedroom Kingsessing home in 2021 for $175,000. His annual property tax bill is $957.
But because of Philly’s latest property reassessments released last month, the taxable value of his property in Southwest Philadelphia increased. It went from $68,400 to $157,800. That means that for 2025, his property tax bill will more than double to $2,206.
As it is, Bryant works two jobs to pay his bills.
His neighborhood saw property assessments for single-family homes rise more than in any other Philly neighborhood.
My colleagues Layla A. Jones and Lizzie Mulvey talked to homeowners and wrote about how race, income, gentrification, rising property values, and lack of information play into property tax increases.
Read on for homeowners’ experiences and some graphics that tell the story.
The latest news to pay attention to
A Philly program celebrated the sale of its 100th price-restricted home. Here’s when it expects to reach its goal of 1,000 homes sold.
A pioneering Camden development next to a PATCO station is getting a reboot.
In a new lawsuit, Philly developer Carl Dranoff accuses George Norcross of interfering in a Camden real estate deal. And he’s asking for tens of millions of dollars in damages.
Architecture critic Inga Saffron ponders whether a Sixers arena or a proposed alternative — a biomedical hub — is more likely to revive East Market Street.
A notorious Philly landlord is facing another voter fraud charge.
House of the week: For $329,900 in South Philly, a three-bedroom rowhouse near the stadium complex.
Since we technically still have another week of summer, let’s fit in another story about a Shore house before fall takes over.
My favorite detail in this story about Kerri McGinley-Kistler’s Ocean City house is a feature of her dining room. It’s not the dog portraits or the plant-filled bay window or the light fixture made of metal gears. It’s her dining room table.
It’s a repurposed library table from a Philadelphia elementary school where she used to be a principal.
“It still has some marks and names carved into it by students from Manayunk, but I did sand out the F-word when I brought it home,” McGinley-Kistler said.
She’s filled the home that she bought in 2020 with personal touches. But the house is also special to her because it’s on the same street where her parents owned a house when she was younger.
Peek inside her home and find out how she snagged her beach home.
🧠 Trivia time
A two-block stretch of Camac Street in Center City is getting its quirky wood paving back. Camac was the last wooden street in Philly and one of just a few anywhere in the country.
Question: When were Camac’s wooden block pavers torn up and replaced with asphalt?
A) 2020
B) 2015
C) 2000
D) 1995
This story has the answer.
📊 The market
A few weeks ago, as mortgage interest rates continued to drop, I called a mortgage loan officer I’ve talked to before to ask whether he was seeing buyers flock to his office.
The average rate for the popular 30-year, fixed-rate loan was 6.35% early this month, down from almost 7% at the beginning of July, according to Freddie Mac.
And dropping mortgage rates = more buyers entering the market, right?
The answer was more of a “yeah, but...”
It turns out that buyers are hoping rates keep on dropping. And they’re holding out to see how low they’ll go.
So the Philly area’s housing market in August was kinda meh.
In the Philly metro area last month, according to the multiple listing service Bright MLS:
🔺The median number of days that homes stayed on the market rose to 11, from nine last August. That’s the slowest sales pace since March.
🔻 Pending home sales and new listings were down slightly from last August.
🔺The overall supply of homes for sale was up compared to last year because of slower sales activity.
Home supply is projected to keep increasing, so there’s some good news for buyers. But prices are stubbornly high and, unlike interest rates, they’re still on the rise.
📷 Photo quiz
Do you know the location this photo shows?
📮 If you think you do, email me back. You and your memories of visiting this spot might be featured in the newsletter.
I thought last week’s photo quiz might be too easy, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe that’s because I used to live over there. Those hammocks were at Spruce Street Harbor Park.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
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