Ocean City is paying $20M for lots it could have gotten for $9M | Real Estate Newsletter

Talk about inflation.

In the summer of 2018, two brothers were willing to sell their empty lots in the center of Ocean City for $9 million.

In stepped a group of taxpayers, who thought the brothers were asking for too much. Then the pandemic happened and property values at the Shore shot up.

This is the story of how Ocean City agreed to pay more than $20 million for the vacant block of land to keep homes from being built there.

Keep scrolling for that story and to see how the Philadelphia Housing Authority changed its mind about what to do with two of its last high rises, learn what a National Association of Realtors report says about race and home buying, hear about your fellow readers’ Jenga-like roommate situations, and peek inside a Delaware County home that the owners almost doubled in size.

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In some ways, 2018 feels like a lifetime ago. A Cape May County jury thought the same last year when it decided that the empty lots that Ocean City wanted to buy were worth $20 million with interest, not the $9 million the owners agreed to sell them for in 2018.

How did the price jump so much? My colleague Amy Rosenberg reports that it was thanks to a combo of things: objections by a group of taxpayers, missteps by the city, and a red-hot pandemic real estate market at the Shore.

The Klause brothers started working to build single-family homes on the empty lots that they referred to as “coastal cottages,” which also drove up the value of their land.

The president of Fairness in Taxes, the taxpayer group that helped stop the $9 million sale, said he has no regrets.

Ocean City’s mayor said the higher price tag is “a far superior result than more housing density.”

What do you picture when you hear the term public housing?

For decades, it was defined by high-rise apartment towers in complexes set apart from the rest of the neighborhood. But that style of public housing isn’t popular anymore, and in recent decades, the Philadelphia Housing Authority has torn down most of its towers.

But a new proposal would preserve two of its last high-rises.

However, PHA’s president said, “it’s not your grandmother’s public housing.”

Under the plan, the towers would be rehabilitated for 202 homes for seniors, and 150 townhouses would be built. A community center would be reopened and include outdoor space, a basketball court, and an indoor pool.

The plan would make the complex more integrated into the surrounding community.

Keep reading for more details about the project, which PHA plans to complete in three phases.

Every year, the National Association of Realtors puts out a national report about race and home buying.

The report released this week looked at 2022 stats and found that home ownership rates increased across all racial and ethnic groups over the last decade.

Home ownership rates among Asian Americans — 63.3% — and Hispanic Americans — 51.1% — reached record highs in 2022 and have grown the most. Asian Americans saw the highest rate increase — 6.1 percentage points. That’s 1.5 million more homeowners. More than 3 million more Hispanic Americans owned homes in 2022 — an increase of 5.4 percentage points.

The home ownership rate for Black Americans grew a bit but continued to fall behind at 44.1%. The 28-percentage-point gap between Black and white home ownership rates was higher in 2022 than in 2012.

Overall, the country added 10.5 million homeowners between 2012 and 2022. The national home ownership rate hit 65.2% in 2022, slightly less than the 65.4% rate in 2021. The National Association of Realtors points to two challenges: housing (un)affordability and home supply shortages. Both are more of a barrier for people of color.

Read the full report.

Seth and Samantha Reeser basically added a house onto their house.

They bought their 1915 brick Colonial in Wayne five years ago. The three-story home had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and two powder rooms. But it didn’t have a family room. And even though the kitchen had been updated, it was small. They thought about combining it with the dining room but liked having the formal space.

So the Reesers decided to build an addition onto the home they share with their children.

The house they bought was 4,500 square feet. The addition that was completed last June expanded the family’s home by 2,000 square feet.

Their contractor built the addition off the house’s back brick wall and worked around the arched Palladian window that the Reesers didn’t want to lose.

Peek inside the Reesers’ home and get the details of the addition that won their contractor a regional award from a national remodeling association.

Bristol Borough’s downtown is booming eight years after it won a national contest to revitalize Mill Street. The borough now has more shops, bars, and restaurants and plans for a boutique hotel.

Question: In what decade did a dance called the Bristol Stomp bring fame to the old river town?

A) 1950s

B) 1960s

C) 1980s

D) 1990s

This story has the answer.

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Shout out to John K., who came very close to guessing the cost of the three-bedroom, three-bath home in an over-55 community in Warrington. He guessed $575,000, and it’s pending sale for $600,000.

Last week, I asked for the highest number of roommates you’ve lived with outside of college who weren’t immediate family.

Ivy K. told me that she and several friends weren’t happy with their apartments shortly after college, so they decided to rent a four-bedroom house together in Delaware County. At one point, six people lived there before things settled into a five-person household. She and the man she later married were the constants in the largest bedroom and saved a lot of money.

“Each time a roommate wanted to leave, the remaining roommates had a meeting to determine who among our friend group we were going to reach out to invite. This arrangement lasted for 10 years and may have lasted longer but the property owner decided to sell the property, and we didn’t have the means (or desire based on the asking price) to purchase the property.”

Amy G.Z. said that she once lived with seven people — her band and a few others (including a 3-year-old) — in a big house in West Philly.

“The women that owned it at first didn’t want to rent to us because of an old Philadelphia blue law that stated that a mix of men and women in the house could be construed as a brothel.”

Howard P. told me that right after college, he paid $240 a month for a room in a six-bedroom house in South Philly with six roommates. One of them paid $200 to live in the unfinished basement. Howard said the guy lived there for two years.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

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