One day, 70+ open houses | Real Estate Newsletter
And mortgage data show bias.
If you’re in the mood to judge living room layouts, critique kitchens, and rhetorically comment on whether you’d spend $1 million “for this,” you’re invited to more than 70 open houses happening in one afternoon across Center City.
Real estate agents normally compete for business, but a bunch of firms are working together to show off properties they’re trying to sell this season.
If you’re curious, nosy, just looking for something to do, or you really are in the market for a home, read about Saturday’s open house event and why agents are collaborating.
Keep scrolling for that story and to discover what a new report says about the Philly mortgage market, learn why we’re asking to see your “fan cave,” and see if you can guess the location of an unusual round building known as a landmark.
📮 Halloween is coming. Do you or your neighbors go all out to decorate your homes? Email me some photos and talk up your giant spiderwebs for a chance to be featured in my newsletter.
— Michaelle Bond
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Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at the multiple listing service Bright MLS, didn’t sugarcoat things when I asked her about the fall real estate market.
She said this will be “probably one of the slowest fourth-quarter housing markets we’ve seen probably since 2010.″
That helps explain why real estate agents might be playing nice and working together to promote one another’s properties. More than 70 homes will be open for tours Saturday in greater Center City as part of a mega open house event that’s meant to promote the area as a housing destination.
A bunch of you told me that you wouldn’t want to live on a very high floor of a condo or apartment tower but would like to visit to take in the views. Well, you have a chance to look out the windows of a corner home on the 51st floor of the iconic Two Liberty Place.
Here are some of the other 70+ homes you can visit Saturday afternoon:
🚪 a $2.2 million piece of the Joseph Horn Mansion in Fitler Square
🚪 two apartments joined together for $2.55 million on Rittenhouse Square
🚪 a $15.1 million penthouse in the Arthaus condo building on South Broad Street
Learn about more properties and get the details of Saturday’s open house event.
Every year, many mortgage lenders have to publicly share information about the loans they made.
That information is used to create public policy, measure how well lenders are doing their jobs, and point out lending patterns that might be discriminatory.
Every year, Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based community investment nonprofit, puts together a report on the latest findings. The report published this month looked at 2022 data and highlights some of the challenges of the housing market.
“After a decade of steady growth coming out of the previous housing recession,” the report says, “2022 potentially signals a new phase in the local housing market — one that will be defined fiscally by higher borrowing costs and higher home prices.”
That’s what we’ve been seeing and feeling lately. We’ll find out if affordability gets better or worse for home buyers.
A few other takeaways from Reinvestment Fund’s report:
Mortgage applications for both home purchases and refinances dropped last year for the first time in a decade.
Lenders were more likely to deny home loans to Black and Hispanic applicants than to white applicants.
Well-qualified Black applicants were denied more often than less-qualified white applicants.
Read on for more about what Philly’s mortgage data tell us.
The latest news to pay attention to
This week, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens sent a team to try to save as much of a famed mosaic as possible before its building is demolished to build short-term rentals.
Temple has paid landlords for more than 300 new cameras and lighting for off-campus student housing.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court could decide how nonprofits are allowed to pay executives if they want to keep not paying local property taxes.
Philly’s Black workers have longer commutes than white workers, a new report says.
In Norristown, social justice and preservation advocates are trying to save an imposing Gothic landmark.
Philly’s Department of Licenses and Inspections told a North Philly record shop it had to close because of zoning and other violations.
House of the week: For $975,000 in Fishtown, a home builder’s personal home.
Let’s see your fan caves
This week, we’re skipping the home tour to ask you to nominate your place for our Haven series.
Specifically, we want to see the room (or rooms, no judgment) in your home where you show off your Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, or Union pride.
It’s an exciting time to be a Philly sports fan. (We’re ignoring the Jets game, of course.) So show us where you take it all in.
To see what you might be up against, check out our 2018 story about Eagles fans’ home shrines.
You can nominate your sports cave by e-mailing properties@inquirer.com with some photos. (CC me, cause I want to see, too.)
And if you don’t have a sports cave but think your home overall is pretty great, email the above address too for a chance to be featured in the Inquirer and this newsletter.
🧠 Trivia time 🧠
The long-empty former A.C. Moore location on South Broad Street is getting a new tenant.
Question: What is moving into the ground floor of the Land Title Building at 100 S. Broad St.?
A) Michaels
B) Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations
C) Wawa
D) Center City District
This story has the answer.
📷 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.
It looks like last week’s “Guess how much this home costs” quiz stumped everybody. That rowhouse near Graduate Hospital is pending sale for $569,900.
We’ll get better at these. Promise.
Enjoy the rest of your week.