This strange year led to a lot of big changes — including some unexpected changes of address.
The Greater Philadelphia residential real estate market had been on a tear for several years when 2020 began. Then came alarming news about a deadly new coronavirus making its way to these shores from abroad. When we began to feel the virus’s effects here in March, the market seemed to go into hibernation. Real estate sales moved underground during the spring lockdown — which happened to coincide with one of the busiest seasons for buying and selling homes.
But once it became legal to actually sell real estate again, the market went into overdrive.
Bidding wars broke out as too many buyers chased too few houses — many of them feeling a sudden urge to move after COVID turned what had been comfortable homes into stressful living spaces.
Some of the pressure on local real estate came from a rising tide of New Yorkers moving down to Philly. Christopher Plant, who has specialized in helping New Yorkers move here as an agent with Elfant Wissahickon Realtors since making the move himself almost 20 years ago, says COVID was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“I found that people were just fed up,” he says. “Between the financial crisis of 2008 and everything that happened after that and then COVID, a lot of people had just reached the end of their rope. And with the uncertainty over when COVID restrictions would be lifted and the gradual acceptance of telecommuting, the immediacy of being in New York became less important and less attractive.”
But there was also an internal migration going on — one that many generations of young Philadelphians have undertaken. This one follows a standard script: have children, move to the suburbs. The difference with COVID is that childless couples and empty nesters made the move, too. Robin Gordon of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach Realtors, a broker who specializes in upscale Main Line and Center City real estate, says, “I’m seeing not only millennials moving out, but also older people who had been in the city and thought they were going to stay longer. They just want more space.”
Or less: “There are empty nesters who thought they were going to move into town from their big homes and are now looking for a flat or a small carriage or ranch house in the suburbs,” says Gordon. On the Main Line, she continues, such houses “sell like hotcakes because there’s really a lack of inventory for the empty nesters who probably would have gone into town and now don’t want to.”
Sales haven’t completely fizzled in the city, however. New Yorkers, especially, who want to be close to city amenities once they reopen but don’t care to pay New York prices are still buying city properties.
“There were a ton of high-number transactions in the Rittenhouse area, on Delancey, in Society Hill, where buyers were coming from Manhattan,” says Plant.
Young Philly suburbanites for whom city living still has appeal are also buying properties in outlying neighborhoods like Manayunk, Germantown and Mount Airy, where attractive, reasonably priced starter homes can be found.
In all the movement, some Philly folks found themselves in dream homes they couldn’t have dreamed of just a short while ago. Contact our team to get started today.
(Via Philly Mag)
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