Philadelphia 2035 (Media: salary, sports, ballpark)

[RightonWalnut]

Originally Posted by kyb01

Ah, that would explain it.

There's a lot at the sw corner of 19th and Callowhill if that's where you mean.

The parking lot at on the SW corner of 19th and Callowhill is owned by the city, and was going to be used as an expansion of the Free Library a few years back. I don't think those plans are in the works any longer.

The lot he is talking about is on the Northwest corner of 18th and Callowhill. It is a grass empty lot and needs environmental remediation. Therefore, it will be expensive to build on the lot unless something significantly tall is built.

[Pine to Vine]

Impressive rundown of mid- to high-rise construction set to open next year: http://philly.curbed.com/maps/philad...pment-map-2017

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by Pine to Vine

Impressive rundown of mid- to high-rise construction set to open next year: http://philly.curbed.com/maps/philad...pment-map-2017

There's also an article on there today about Philly being the 10th highest(expensive ?) rental market now or something like that.

[timeEd32]

It's based on this end of year report from Zillow: How Much is Every Home in America Worth? A Lot. - Zillow Research

From Curbed:

...the U.S. housing stock grew to a record-high $29.6 trillion in this past year. In Philly, the total value of all homes is $589.2 billion, a 3.2 percent change from last year, or $18.4 billion ... In Philly, the total rent paid was $8.5 billion, up 4 percent from 2015.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by kyb01

There's also an article on there today about Philly being the 10th highest(expensive ?) rental market now or something like that.

Seems like a trend that will continue for the entire area. I think the biggest setback is the lackluster job market.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by kyb01

There's also an article on there today about Philly being the 10th highest(expensive ?) rental market now or something like that.

Philadelphia's No. 10 ranking is for the total value of all the homes in the market. That's stated in the Zillow research report linked above. By the way, that total - not mentioned in the article, but passed on to me by a Zillow PR rep in hopes I'll write something about this (and I probably will once our Christmas/New Year's break is over) - is $589.2 billion, up $18.4 billion, or 3.2 percent, from last year.

The rental figures in the article are, like the house values, totals - they represent the total amount of rent paid by tenants in those markets. The report lists the nine markets where tenants paid a total of $10 billion or more in rent, then gives Phoenix's $7.4 billion figure for purposes of comparison to another large sum. Tenants in Philadelphia paid a total of $8.5 billion in rent in 2016.

Neither of these sets of statistics tell you how expensive a housing market is. The figure that most surveys use to determine that is the median sale price of a house or the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment (that is, the figure where half the units sold/rented for more and half for less). You could get average values by dividing these totals by the total number of homes (or apartments) in the market.

One of the apartment search engines, Zumper, has also released its latest monthly survey of rents in the 100 largest US markets, based on more than 1 million apartments listed in its database (which may not include all the apartments available in a market). According to Zumper, Philadelphia is the 17th most expensive rental market in the country, down two spots from last month's survey. But rents here have shot up from year-ago levels: while the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment of $1360 is down 2.9 percent from last month, it's up 14.3 percent from one year ago. The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment, $1500, is up 10.3 percent from one year ago.

My explanation for the sharp rise: There's been a lot of new apartments added at the upper end of the market over the last year. Almost all of the new apartment buildings that have come on line in the last 12 months - 3601 Market, Cathedral Tower, 2120 Chestnut, 1919 Market, the Granary - are positioned as "luxury" buildings with many extra community amenities, and even those not explicitly being marketed as luxury buildings have rents in the upper end of the market. All that new supply being added at the top will, of course, send the median rent skyrocketing.

Adding to this, however, may also be a shrinkage in the number of units at the lower end of the market. The Philly Fed recently released a study that found that the city lost one-fourth of its inventory of apartments renting for $750 or less a month - the figure the researchers consider "affordable" to a low- to moderate-income Philadelphian - between 2000 and 2014. If that shrinkage is continuing, it too will add to the upward spike in median rents.

[cpomp]

More Residential Towers Coming Near North Broad - Philadelphia Magazine


More development on North Broad.

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by cpomp

More Residential Towers Coming Near North Broad - Philadelphia Magazine


More development on North Broad.

Does this further reduce the possibility of anything happening to the Inquirer building? Residential must be becoming saturated, especially once this gets built.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

Does this further reduce the possibility of anything happening to the Inquirer building? Residential must be becoming saturated, especially once this gets built.

I would assume that will continue to sit. I love all the construction, but I do not think there are enough jobs to keep up with the amount of residential units going up, I hope rental prices don't tank as a result.

[Duderino]

Originally Posted by cpomp

I would assume that will continue to sit. I love all the construction, but I do not think there are enough jobs to keep up with the amount of residential units going up, I hope rental prices don't tank as a result.

Actually, the job market in the Philly metro has definitely picked up over the past half year, with 1.5% growth at the metro level and 1.9% growth in the city itself (both are very solid numbers, and it's especially encouraging that the city is now growing faster job-wise than the suburbs).

Monthly News Releases

Certainly a lot of new apartment inventory is being added, but more competition is generally good for the market in terms of rental rates and quality product, and if this level of job growth remains (and there's no reason to believe at the moment that it won't), the absorption rate will be just fine, if not even faster than anticipated.