A ‘weird’ time for luxury condos | Real Estate Newsletter

Philly’s luxury condo market has always been slow. Developers play the long game, knowing it’ll take some time to fill high-end towers.

Our market is small compared to ones in other East Coast cities, and it’s slowed down even more since 2020.

It’s a building-by-building landscape, with some places doing better than others. One new luxury tower is mostly empty. What does that say about Philly’s high-end condo market?

Keep scrolling for that story and to learn how parking requirements for new apartments affect rents, see the most expensive homes for sale by state, and peek into a West Mount Airy garden that’s a symbol of its owner’s resilience.

📮 If you could live on either the fifth or the 45th floor of a Philly apartment or condo building, which floor would you pick? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me.

— Michaelle Bond

If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

In February 2021, a photographer colleague and I toured the construction site where the Arthaus condo tower was rising at Broad and Spruce Streets. We saw where fireplaces would go, the rebar that would support the pool, and what City Hall looked like from the 36th floor.

Monica Herndon and I braved rides in a temporary elevator for my story about how pandemic-related delays were slowing home construction.

About a year ago, Arthaus opened. Marketing for its condos had started three years before that. But deed records show that about 85% of the condos haven’t been sold.

The tower’s veteran condo developer called the ultra-luxury condo business “a marathon, not a sprint.”

It’s a weird time in the luxury condo market, an agent who sells them said. Prices are up, but the population of potential buyers is down. Some Center City buildings have had stronger sales than others.

Read on for more about Philly’s high-end condo market and how things like the pandemic, rising interest rates, and hesitation from wealthy suburban buyers are affecting it.

I know we (society, residents of the Philly area, my readers) have strong feelings about parking.

It’s a topic that comes up a lot when a developer wants to build homes — and apartments, especially — in dense urban spaces. Existing residents say there’s not enough parking for new residents. Builders would rather not have to follow policies telling them how many parking spaces they have to create.

A new report by the Rutgers Center for Real Estate at the Rutgers Business School found that New Jersey’s parking space requirements for apartments far exceed demand, increase construction costs, and raise rents.

My colleague talked to Debra Tantleff, a coauthor of the study and a New Jersey real estate professional, and she said that scaling back parking minimums would cut costs and lower rents.

She estimated that state standards mean that a hypothetical high-rise building with 400 apartments would build 75 unnecessary parking spaces. And she said adjusting those standards would cut rents by almost 4%.

Read on for more of the report’s findings and a Q&A with Tantleff.

Have you ever wondered just how high home prices go in your state? Well, here’s a list for you.

A real estate search website put together a ranking of the most expensive homes for sale in every state. And as you can guess, there’s a pretty wide range of what “most expensive” means depending on where you live.

In Nebraska, it means a $3.89 million home that’s 9,900 square feet and has six bedrooms and bathrooms, according to the report by Point2.

I couldn’t afford it, but it’s nowhere near as expensive as the most expensive home on the list: a $250 million property in Los Angeles that’s 40,000 square feet. It has an underground tunnel that connects two holes of its golf course, because of course it does.

The top expensive homes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are priced in the middle of these two extremes.

I know I have some out-of-town readers, too. Read on to discover the priciest home in your state.

I have three houseplants that are doing pretty well, but sometimes I think that’s in spite of me. (I once killed a beautiful vine that thrived with my mom for decades. I shouldn’t have brought it to our old newsroom.)

I can admire pretty flowers, but don’t ask me to name them.

So if I fell down the back steps of my home and hurt my back so badly that I had to be in the hospital for five days, sorry, houseplants, but I’m not thinking about you.

But as Jean Wilcox lay unable to move after falling at her West Mount Airy home, she worried about how she’d take care of her sprawling garden of flowers and vegetables.

That was in January. Thankfully, by spring, she was back to digging in her garden, which is thriving.

A neighbor replaced her back steps. A pink mandevilla vine (thank you to Inquirer photographer Tyger Williams for showing me what that is) climbs up a handrail.

Peek into Wilcox’s garden and learn how she protects her vegetables from a groundhog and started a business selling aprons with “vegetable people” on them.

The panoramic windows of Sister Cities Cafe on Logan Square have a new dotted design. The café and the organization Bird Safe Philly are trying to prevent birds from crashing into the windows three years after a particularly deadly day for our feathered friends.

Question: How many birds died from flying into skyscrapers and other buildings in a small section of Center City on Oct. 2, 2020?

A) 500

B) 700

C) 1,000

D) 1,500

This story has the answer.

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.

Shout out to Elizabeth B. and Denise S., who knew that last week’s photo of a special clock was taken in Melrose Diner. Special shout outs to Randall H. and Carolyn K., who sang the opening line to the jingle to me via email.

Carolyn said she grew up across the street from the Melrose.

She shares: “Without air-conditioning, my windows were open all summer. As a child growing up across from a diner open 24 hours a day, my Melrose lullaby was a mix of car doors slamming, impromptu tipsy doo-wop groups singing the classics beneath the streetlights, and most notably, lots of salty language shouted by late night/early morning patrons as they arrived to or departed from breakfast after a night out hitting the clubs, certainly enhancing my vocabulary!”

I think that’s a great way to end a newsletter. Enjoy the rest of your week.