Across Philadelphia, people live next to vacant properties that are or could become dangerous.
Drew Miller, a paralegal at the legal aid nonprofit Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said residents living next to risky vacant buildings can take certain steps right away to protect themselves and their properties.
Take pictures. When they start having concerns, they should immediately take pictures of the inside and outside of their home, especially basements and shared walls, Miller said.
“Having those initial photos is crucial for them to very clearly show that damage happened over this period of time,” he said.
Submit a 311 request. They should submit a 311 service request to the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections by calling or using the online portal or app. Miller recommends submitting virtual complaints to easily track updates and to upload photos to give inspectors a head start before they arrive at a site.
“They can often see in the photo whether or not the issue is urgent,” he said. “That can be a helpful tool if the resident’s concern is that this is prioritized.”
Make a specific complaint. And if residents are concerned that a building is dangerous, they should make sure they select the right category for their complaint.
Complaints about vacant properties can range from trash or high grass to structural issues that need urgent attention. So “a vacant property complaint might not immediately be taken as seriously,” Miller said.
“In the most extreme circumstances,” if residents are worried that a building may collapse, they should consider filing a “construction complaint,” which clues L&I in that there may be a structural issue, he said.
But if part of a property collapses, a building facade is crumbling, or the situation otherwise seems like an emergency, call 911, said Basil Merenda, commissioner for L&I’s Inspections, Safety & Compliance division.
Contact your Council member. Merenda also encouraged residents to contact their City Council representative if they are concerned about a vacant property that doesn’t constitute an emergency.
Emily Phillips and her family never slam doors or walk too heavily inside their North Philadelphia rowhouse. They’re afraid of what too much movement could do to the vacant house next door.
In early August, a back window and part of a wall came crashing down during harsh winds and rain. An inspector for the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections declared the vacant rowhouse “imminently dangerous,” which means it is at risk of collapsing.
“I never know when something’s going to actually happen,” Phillips said in late October. “We know it’s just a matter of time. … I’m so scared right now.”
Across Philadelphia, families are living in a limbo of anxiety next to buildings that the city has determined are unsafe or imminently dangerous. The buildings at greatest risk of collapse are usually vacant.
Renters Emily Phillips (left) and Dayani Lemmon examine the basement wall that their home shares with the abandoned and dangerous rowhouse next door.
Philadelphians rely on the city to keep an eye on vacant properties that are or could become dangerous. And in 2016, the city rolled out a method for determining which properties were likely to be vacant. L&I’s commissioner at the time said the inventory tool was making the department more proactive in protecting the public from deteriorating vacant buildings.
But L&I officials now say the department no longer uses the tool. They said the department mainly relies on residents’ complaints and its list of vacant property licenses — which L&I admits is a massive undercount — to monitor empty buildings.
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L&I points out that property owners are responsible for securing vacant properties and repairing dangerous buildings, and the department steps in as resources and laws allow.
Around the time Inquirer reporters spoke with Phillips, the city’s spreadsheet of likely vacant properties listed about 8,000 vacant buildings — a potentially serious threat to their neighbors. An Inquirer analysis of the city’s list of imminently dangerous buildings showed that 79% of those also appeared on the list of likely vacant buildings.
Just under half of those vacant and imminently dangerous buildings were rowhouses, which are especially risky to neighbors because of shared walls. This risk is not borne equally by all of Philadelphia’s residents.
Emily Phillips and her landlord, Samantha Wismann, stand next to a neighboring abandoned rowhouse, where part of a wall collapsed and a tree grows inside.
Nearly eight in 10 of all such rowhouses are in the poorest 25% of the city’s zip codes. The zip code with the most such rowhouses — 19132, where Phillips lives — has a median income of $31,000, according to the latest Census Bureau data. Philadelphia’s median household income is $61,000.
Seven in 10 vacant rowhouses that the city identified as imminently dangerous are in the 34% of the city’s zip codes that are predominantly Black. Roughly nine in 10 residents in 19132 are Black.
Dianna Coleman, a community activist who lives in Southwest Philadelphia, called vacant properties “one of Philadelphia’s most pressing and overlooked crises.”
This summer, a hole opened in the back of an abandoned rowhouse that is connected to a North Philadelphia house owned by Samantha Wismann.
When Coleman and a group of residents in Southwest and West Philadelphia came together last summer to organize around quality of life issues, residents’ top concern was fixing vacant properties. They partnered with the grassroots social justice nonprofit OnePA and launched their first campaign — asking the city to deal with abandoned buildings and vacant lots.
“While we recognize that the city has taken steps — demolishing some buildings, addressing some lots — the pace is way too slow, the resources too scarce, and the strategy too weak,” Coleman, cochair of OnePA West/Southwest Rising, said at a news conference this summer. “Unsafe buildings are left standing for years, growing more hazardous, pulling down property values, and pushing people out of their homes.”
The vacant rowhouse next to Emily Phillips’ North Philadelphia home had its collapsing porch roof removed, but the rest of the home remains in disrepair.
The city’s questionable vacancy data
About a decade ago, the city started using an algorithm that takes feeds from a variety of datasets (such as whether a property has had its water cut off) to determine whether a property is likely to be vacant.
City officials celebrated the tool when it launched.
“Protecting the public from deteriorating vacant, abandoned properties as they grow more and more likely to collapse is critical to L&I’s mission,” former L&I Commissioner David Perri said in a 2016 news release announcing the index. “The Vacant Property Model and dataset are making us more proactive and strategic in carrying out that mission.”
But the reliability of the city’s list of likely vacant buildings and lots was recently called into question by individuals who have worked closely with the tool and collaborated with city officials in the past.
For more than three years, Clean & Green Philly, a nonprofit that — until its closure earlier this year — used data to help Philadelphians deal with vacant properties in their neighborhoods, relied on the city’s tool in combination with other data to identify vacant properties in greatest need of addressing.
But last year, founder Nissim Lebovits and the organization’s former executive director, Amanda Soskin, noticed something was wrong.
For years, the city’s list of suspected vacant properties had hovered somewhere around 40,000 records — buildings and land combined. But then, according to Lebovits and Soskin, that number plunged to around 24,000 in June 2024.
“And at first I was like, ‘OK. Something’s probably broken,’ and we looked into it,” Lebovits said. “And we realized that the city’s actual underlying datasets were no longer reporting the same number of vacant properties.”
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The spreadsheet was showing only about 14,000 records as of this June, according to Lebovits and Soskin.
Then at some point between June and early November, the index grew to about 37,000 total properties.
Inquirer reporters began investigating the connection between vacancy and structural deficiencies in buildings after the April collapse of an abandoned rowhouse in Sharswood. At that time, L&I offered the vacancy index while asserting it could not provide detailed information about the data and referring reporters to CityGeo, the department that developed and maintains the index.
At no point during an hour-long interview with the department’s chief data officer in early June did city officials mention any concerns about the reliability of the data.
Reporters learned about issues with the data when Lebovits and Soskin wrote an article for The Inquirer’s opinion section later that month detailing their concerns. They wrote that city sources told them the process of collecting and publishing vacancy estimates “was quietly discontinued after [Mayor Cherelle L.] Parker took office.”
In an email, a CityGeo spokesperson said the city has not stopped updating the index, asserted that its accuracy depends on continued updates from various departments, and noted that CityGeo pauses updates “every few years” for “a month or so” to ensure the tool continues to work, most recently this past summer.
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about why the index’s size had varied so greatly recently. Lebovits and Soskin told The Inquirer that nobody from the city reached out to them after their article was published.
“My big takeaway here is that the lack of transparency around this dataset is a major liability,” Lebovits wrote in an email. “Having so little accountability regarding data production and quality seriously hampers any community groups trying to use these data and undermines the credibility of the City’s vacancy work.”
The tree inside an abandoned North Philadelphia rowhouse towers above the roofs of the house and its neighbor, owned by Samantha Wismann.
‘Very, very scary’
When Phillips’ landlord, Samantha Wismann, bought the house on North Woodstock Street in 2020, she didn’t know that its neighbor was vacant.
Wismann noticed the house looked a little shabby, but it wasn’t until Phillips moved in the following year that the women saw no one lived there. They didn’t know how long it had been vacant, but they watched it quickly deteriorate.
Most pressing back then was the collapsing porch roof, which was dragging down the roofs of the porches on either side of it.
Someone eventually tore it down. But the rest of the home remains in disrepair.
“It’s very, very scary,” Wismann said in October, “because eventually, if it’s not handled, it’s gonna come down.”
Cracks snake between the homes.
From the women’s backyard, through the door-sized hole in the back of the neighboring house, they can see past splintered beams and an abandoned refrigerator, beyond the staircase that leads to the second floor, and straight through to the front door.
Then there’s the tree that’s growing inside the vacant house. It has pushed outward through bricks and plaster and busted a second-story window. The tree’s branches tower over the homes, and some have reached the window of the bedroom where Phillips’ grandchildren stay.
L&I’s Contractual Services Unit is responsible for inspecting unsafe and imminently dangerous properties and administers the city’s demolition program. The unit has 10 members and openings for two more inspectors, said Basil Merenda, commissioner for L&I’s Inspections, Safety & Compliance division.
“We’re out there doing our job,” he said. “We’re out there making sure that these unsafe and [imminently dangerous] properties are properly addressed through procedures and that public safety is always being maintained.”
Renter Dayani Lemmon looks at the abandoned property located next door to his home in North Philadelphia.
But a 2024 report by the City Controller’s Office said the unit used to have 15 inspectors, which the office said was not enough to keep up with inspections of unsafe and imminently dangerous properties.
Merenda said L&I is “making do with what we have” and mobilizes inspectors in other units when needed.
After L&I declares a property to be unsafe or imminently dangerous, it must issue notices to the property owner, who is responsible for repairs. The department can take unresponsive owners to court and pursue demolition in emergency situations, such as when a property is likely to collapse, is next to an occupied building, and has recent structural failures, Merenda said. The city demolishes imminently dangerous buildings in order of the risk officials determine they pose.
A tree can be seen growing inside the vacant North Philadelphia rowhouse through a hole in the back wall, which partially collapsed this summer.
The city charges owners for tear-down costs and places liens on properties if they do not pay.
L&I was unable to say how many such tear-downs the department has conducted this year and referred questions about the cost of demolitions — and the proportion of those costs recouped from owners — to the city’s Department of Revenue. The revenue department did not provide any figures to The Inquirer.
“In many, many cases, property owners surface at the last minute and request a continuance, request a temporary restraining order from us going in and demolishing the property,” Merenda said. “And you know, that’s the purview of the courts. It’s beyond us.”
In the meantime, people living next to dangerous properties are left in the dark.
Kate and Dan Thien and their daughter stand in the backyard of their Port Richmond home, the foundation of which is cracking because of weed trees next door.
Frustrated with L&I
After the back of the abandoned rowhouse on North Woodstock Street opened up this summer, Phillips led an L&I inspector through her home so he could see.
“He went in the backyard, he looked over and was like, ‘My god!’” Phillips said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I can see right through their house.’ And he looked up and was like, ‘It’s a tree!’ I said, ‘Yeah, the tree is pushing the house out.’”
The inspector put an orange “imminently dangerous” notice on a front window, and Phillips and her landlord thought they wouldn’t have to worry much longer. But days after the notice went up, it was ripped down.
Weeds from the neighboring vacant property surround Kate and Dan Thien’s home in Port Richmond.
The property has attracted rats and mice. Water leaked into Phillips’ basement until her landlord reinforced the shared wall with concrete.
For months, her landlord got no response from the city to her calls and emails asking for help.
On Nov. 20 — 3 ½ months after the partial collapse — an L&I inspector visited the vacant rowhouse to post a “final notice” that the owner must repair or demolish the home or else the city will have it demolished.
Kate and Dan Thien are trying to live with the vacant property next to their rowhouse in Port Richmond as they wait for the city to respond to their 311 complaints.
When they bought their house in February 2024, they saw that the neighboring backyard was a mess, but they didn’t know the house was vacant.
Renters who had lived in what is now the Thiens’ home had used and maintained the neighboring backyard. But it quickly became overgrown. Neighbors later told the Thiens that the home had been vacant for more than a decade.
The backyard of the abandoned North Philadelphia rowhouse is full of debris.
“Pretty much the entire neighborhood knows about this house,” Kate Thien said.
She and neighbors on the other side have filed complaints with the city. The property has racked up 19 violations since 2012. Public records show that the city cited the property for “high weeds” last fall and most recently inspected it last December. The property passed inspection.
A year later, a weed tree’s branches stretch above and behind the Thiens’ two-story home. Tree roots are growing into their home’s foundation and cracking the concrete. Trees are “very rapidly growing” as Thien waits for the city to do something, she said. She worries about her home’s property value as the situation worsens.
This abandoned property on Spruce Street in West Philadelphia, pictured on July 30, was one of the houses on a list of problem vacant properties compiled by OnePA West/Southwest Rising.
“It’s not going away,” she said.
Annette Randolph and her husband, Dennis, live in a Point Breeze rowhouse next to a home that’s been vacant for more than a decade and that the city classifies as unsafe, a step below imminently dangerous. Four generations of her family have lived in her home. She hopes she’s not the last.
A tree growing inside the vacant house burst through its back roof, next to a tarp-covered hole. Randolph has had to repair her own roof because of damage from next door. Water gets into her basement.
The home’s legal owners are dead. A scheduled sheriff’s sale in 2011 for overdue property taxes gave Randolph hope for a resolution. But right before the sale, someone paid part of the tax bill to stop it.
On Nov. 20, an inspector with Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections posted a final notice on the vacant North Philadelphia rowhouse that says owners must repair or demolish the home.
Now, “for sale” signs hang in the front windows, and a contractor showed up last week. Randolph hopes any work on the house won’t damage the one she’s called home for 66 years.
She has lost track of the number of times she’s called 311 about the situation. She’s felt helpless. When she needed new homeowner’s insurance, companies told her they wouldn’t insure her or would charge more because of the attached vacant and unsafe house.
“L&I and the city I blame for allowing this type of stuff to happen,” Randolph said.
Merenda said L&I hears neighbors’ complaints, “and we’re going to try to take action as efficiently and properly as possible.”
“I want to make, during my watch, L&I more accessible, responsive, and accountable to the neighbors, stakeholders, contractors, developers, average citizens, the City Council,” he said.
A collapsing roof was removed but the rest of the vacant rowhouse was left to deteriorate.
Neighbors band together
In September 2024, OnePA West/Southwest Rising launched its campaign to get the city to deal with abandoned properties.
The group created a list of 20 of the worst ones as submitted by neighbors. Among the vacant buildings, some had collapsing porches, one’s basement had flooded and damaged a neighbor’s house, and one’s walls were crumbling. Some had squatters, including a property where human waste was dumped in the backyard.
City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s office got the group a meeting with staff at L&I this January.
As a result, this summer, the group celebrated successes: five lots cleaned by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, three properties cleaned and sealed by the city, five properties whose owners the city took to court, and three properties that were repaired and returned to use.
The group believes it was able to get L&I to act because it had the weight of a Council member behind it.
“I do think L&I is overwhelmed. I don’t think they have enough staff to really stay on top of this,” said Eric Braxton, project director for OnePA West/Southwest Rising. “But clearly there are people in leadership that care about our communities and are trying to do the right thing.”
Now the group plans to push for systemic change. It wants the city to make small repairs to stabilize vacant buildings and charge the owners.
“There’s a gap in the system when it comes to dealing with unsafe abandoned buildings,” Braxton said. “The result of that is that those buildings just get worse and worse until they are imminently dangerous and have to be demolished.”
City officials and housing advocates want Philadelphia to close a loophole in its tax code that allows people who forge deeds and steal homes to get a refund for taxes they paid to commit their crimes.
Thieves commit deed fraud when they illegally transfer a property’s ownership and record a fraudulent deed with the city.
This fraud often occurs after a homeowner dies but remains the legal owner of a property. Thieves use deceptive means, such as posing as fake heirs and forging documents, to take and sell properties, often flipping them to developers for large profits.
To record a deed, property owners — including fraudsters — need to pay a realty transfer tax. If a judge later determines that a sale was fraudulent, the person who paid the tax can request a refund from the city. That includes thieves.
“It’s a nightmare for victims of deed fraud, and while we can’t necessarily improve the situation, we can help to ease some of their financial burden,” Gilmore Richardson said during a Council hearing Wednesday.
Philadelphia’s portion of the realty transfer tax is 3.578% of the value of a home sold. So for a stolen $100,000 home, a victim could receive a refund of about $3,500.
A longstanding issue
Deed fraud is a persistent problem in Philadelphia. The city’s records department received about 130 reports of deed fraud in 2023 and about 110 reports in 2024.
Investigations by The Inquirer have shown that deed theft grew alongside gentrification in Philadelphia, as property values rose in neighborhoods that became more desirable. Victims of deed fraud disproportionately are people of color and seniors.
James Leonard, commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Records, said the Parker administration supports the Council bill, which “addresses a gap in how we help victims of deed fraud.”
“We see these cases regularly,” he said. “They devastate families, they undermine confidence in our property system, and they impose significant costs on victims, who must fight in court to reclaim what was always rightfully theirs.”
Victims face a long legal battle in which they must prove that a deed is fraudulent and often must pay attorney fees. And they have to keep paying mortgages while they fight to reclaim properties.
“When they finally win, they get their property back. But they’re often financially and emotionally devastated by the process,” Leonard said.
The new Council legislation allows a victim who gets a court order that voids a fraudulent deed to request a refund of the realty transfer taxes that a thief paid. Leonard estimates the city will see at most 25 to 50 cases per year, a “modest” fiscal impact for the city.
And under current law, the city keeps tax payments that it never would have received if not for the deed fraud, he said, so the city has been benefiting from fraudsters’ payments.
“From an equity standpoint, this bill is the right thing to do,” he said.
Vincent Gilliam and his family were victims of deed fraud when his deceased mother’s home in North Philadelphia was stolen. Between the belongings that deed thieves took and the fight to reclaim the home, he estimates that the ordeal cost his family at least $5,000.
He told Council members that getting some money back from the city through a realty transfer tax refund “would be a tremendous help.”
Kate Dugan, a divisional supervising attorney at the legal aid nonprofit Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said the problem of deed theft “is expensive and complicated to fix.”
“Even when free representation is available, which is normally not the case, victims are stuck paying for costs like repairs, changing locks, filing fees … out of their own pockets,” she said. “It’s rare for a deed fraud victim to collect any meaningful money damages or restitution.”
On Wednesday, Council’s Finance Committee sent the bill to the full Council for consideration.
Philadelphia renters have some more to be thankful for this holiday season.
City Council bills that cap rental application fees and allow renters to pay security deposits in installments take effect Tuesday.
“The goal was to address the unaffordability of moving in for so many tenants in Philadelphia,” said City Councilmember Rue Landau, who introduced the legislation. “Rents have gone up tremendously, and people’s incomes have not.”
Parker signed the bills capping renter application fees and allowing for security deposit installments in September.
Capped application fees
Starting Tuesday, the city is prohibiting landlords from charging a rental application fee of more than $50 or the cost of running a background and/or credit check, whichever is less, within a 12-month period. Landlords are prohibited from charging application fees unless they are used to cover the cost of these checks.
Landlords can’t perform a “hard pull” credit check that affects a prospective tenant’s credit score and have to provide tenants with a copy of any credit and/or background check performed.
And landlords who have more than one unit available can charge a prospective tenant only one application fee if the tenant applies for multiple units. Landau said some renters had been paying $100 or more per application. That adds up when renters have to apply for multiple homes.
“Historic discrimination of Black and brown, immigrant, LGBTQ, and disabled Philadelphians causes higher barriers for them to overcome in order to secure housing, with increased costs as they pay application fees throughout the city,” Landau said. “As a city, we still need to tackle housing discrimination in a serious way. But in the meantime, this bill will reduce those costs.”
Payment plans for security deposits
Also starting Tuesday, some landlords will have to allow renters to pay a portion of their security deposit in installments if the deposit is more than one month’s rent. According to state law, landlords can charge up to two months’ rent for a security deposit, with the charge of the last month’s rent included in the tally.
This ordinance does not apply to landlords with one or two units, a concession Landau made after pushback from other Council members and small landlords.
Landau said that when renters have to come up with a security deposit of multiple months’ rent, “it creates a barrier that many people can’t overcome,” which leaves people stuck in shelters, unsafe homes, or squeezed into overcrowded homes with family or friends.
“We’ve seen a national conversation about affordability happening because people are rightly concerned” about the costs of necessities, Landau said. “If they have to move for any reason, the affordability crisis is just exacerbated.”
If you’re buying a home, refinancing your mortgage, or just want to know how much your home is worth, you’re probably going to need a property appraisal.
At its most basic, “an appraisal is an opinion of value for a home,” said Matthew Sestito, a Philadelphia-based appraiser who works throughout the five-county area for the national company Velox Valuations.
Lenders require borrowers to get them for mortgages and lines of credit against a home. Families get appraisals to assess the value of properties after a divorce or a loved one’s death.
Costs depend on the scope of work, the type of property, and the borrower’s bank, but appraisals can range from about $300 to thousands of dollars, Sestito said.
A lot of people don’t understand the appraisal process, he said, and they’re very nervous the first time an appraiser comes to their home.
“You don’t have to be nervous,” he said. “It’s an easy inspection.”
The Inquirer talked to Sestito, who has been a licensed appraiser since 2009, about what people should know about home appraisals. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When you do an appraisal, what factors do you take into account?
The basic number of bedrooms, bathrooms. And then the amenities: decks, patios, garages. And then the overall condition: updated kitchens, updated bathrooms. And so on.
Location is always the No. 1 thing in real estate. The market dictates what is desired. And then there’s submarkets to each market. And what each market is looking for varies.
And then there’s different price points. A bathroom in a million-dollar home is different than a bathroom in a $300,000 home.
What the market is telling us is what we use to determine our opinion of value.
What should homeowners expect when an appraiser comes to their property?
The length of an appraisal depends on the size of the home. For example, if I were to do a standard South Philly rowhouse with two stories, three bedrooms, it takes about 15 minutes.
I’ll take a picture of the front of the house, the street view. And then when I come in the door, it’s a photo of the living room, dining room, kitchen, back of the house, backyard, bathrooms, each bedroom, then the basement.
Then I’ll take some measurements: the width of the house, the length.
I’ll talk to the homeowner and ask them anything they’ve done to the house, updates like kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, windows.
And then I’ll explain to them that I’ll type the report, give it to the lender, and then it’s basically out of my hands after that.
One of the common questions is: Do I get a copy of the report? The answer is no, from me. I’m not legally allowed to give you a copy of the report if this is for a refinance or a purchase. The bank is the client who orders the report, and legally, whoever orders the appraisal is the owner of the appraisal.
If they want to release it to you, they will. I don’t think I’ve come across a bank saying, “No, you can’t have a copy of it.”
What types of property design choices and features matter for an appraisal?
It goes back to the market. But you can’t go wrong with updated kitchens, updated bathrooms, flooring, windows, roof, driveway.
Parking, especially in the city, is almost No. 1. If you have a spot to park, that’s like gold.
And then adding a deck, a roof deck, patio, all those things add value to the house.
It’s all determined by what the market will be willing to pay.
How should a homeowner prepare for an appraisal?
You know, make the house look presentable. You’re showcasing your house.
I always tell people clutter doesn’t matter. I look through the clutter. So if there are toys on the floor, I don’t even see them. But it’s better to clean up.
Turn all the lights on. It looks better in the photos.
Lenders are looking for any safety issues: missing handrails, broken steps, anything that could cause a health or safety issue, any mold. Get them taken care of, because they will call for that repair. Missing handrails in the basement is one of the biggest ones.
And not having smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. It just started recently within the past couple years that they started asking for those to be in the homes.
How do you choose and use comps (sales of comparable homes)?
Lining each comp up and seeing what each home has, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, and just comparing each home. If you have a three-bedroom house, I’ll start looking for three-bedroom homes.
I start out [looking] at [comparable homes that sold within] three months, then six months, then one year if need be.
Typically, within the city, you try to stay within a quarter mile. I’ll expand to a half a mile sometimes if I need comps. But you typically want to stay within a quarter mile of the home.
I’ll narrow it down to where I have some matches of the property that I’m trying to appraise. I look at a ton of houses every day.
What are common misconceptions people have about appraisals?
There are a lot of checks and balances when we hand in the report. The report runs through a computer software program. There are multiple reviewers. And they’re looking at everything. They’re asking why you didn’t use certain comps or why you did use these comps.
There are a lot of regulations that we have to follow. It’s not just as simple as taking photos and saying your house is worth this amount.
What happens if a house appraises differently than you expected?
There is a formal process. You can file an appeal and then you provide some comparables that you think the appraiser should have used. And there’s a review process.
More out-of-towners and fewer locals are searching for rental homes in the Philadelphia region, with New Yorkers leading the way. No word on whether they plan to become Eagles fans.
In an analysis of the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Philadelphia had the second-largest drop in local rental demand since before the pandemic, as measured by listing views on Realtor.com.
In fall 2019, about 68% of the Philadelphia metro’s rental traffic on the website came from local residents. By this fall, that share had dropped to about 45%, according to a Realtor.com report published this month.
This fall, most of the Philadelphia metro’s out-of-town rental traffic — 48% — came from the New York metro, which includes some North Jersey cities. The share of listing views coming from the New York metro grew from almost 7% of all traffic before the pandemic to more than 25% this fall.
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In the Philadelphia region, the median asking rent for rentals with zero to two bedrooms was $1,743 in October, according to Realtor.com. The area’s affordability compared to New York and other large nearby metros attracts out-of-town renters. That’s also the case in such metros as San Francisco and Charlotte, N.C.
“Shifting affordability across regions is reshaping renter behavior, with a growing share of demand coming from outside local markets,” Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said in a statement.
“Data show that more renters are willing to look farther afield, in some cases to entirely new markets, for homes that better align with their budgets,” Hale said.
Although New York renters are among those eyeing the Philadelphia region, many are looking to stay put. The New York metro had the highest share of local rental demand this fall. About three in four online views for rentals in that metro came from inside the metro, about the same share as in 2019.
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Nationwide, the rental market has continued to cool, Hale said. From January to October of this year, the median asking rent stayed roughly flat, falling by 0.1%. Over the same period of 2024, the median asking rent increased by 1.1%.
Across Philadelphia, low- and moderate-income households rely on federal subsidies that reduce the cost of their rent.
Federal housing programs directly subsidize at least 476 properties,totaling about 34,350 rental units. But the city is at risk of losing more than one in five of these affordable housing units during the next decade, according to an analysis by the Housing Initiative at Penn published Thursday.
Between 2026 and 2036, federal contracts or mandates that cap the rents at these properties can expire.
Owners candecide whether to renew contracts or let them end and then chargehigher market-rate rents orsell their properties in potentially lucrative deals as property values in the city continue to rise.
A property owner’s decision in 2021 not to renew a subsidy contract at the University City Townhomes in West Philadelphia is a recent high-profile example of what’s at stake. The site had grown much more valuable since the subsidized townhomes were built four decades earlier, and the owner decided to sell the property, displacing 69 households.
“Philadelphia has long relied on a large number of federally subsidized properties to provide affordable housing options that are protected from market forces,” researchers at the Housing Initiative at Penn wrote.
Also helpful, researchers noted, will be the public database of subsidized housing properties and their subsidy expiration dates that the city is creating, as directed by legislation City Council passed in 2023. City officials said they hope to launch the database early next year.
Here are some takeaways from Penn researchers’ analysis of subsidized properties in Philadelphia.
These properties are concentrated in certain areas
Subsidized properties, including those at risk of having their subsidies expire, operate in neighborhoods across the city.
But they are most concentrated in three City Council districts: the Third in West Philadelphia, the Fifth in North Philadelphia, and the Eighth, which includes the area around Germantown and Mount Airy.
The report’s total count of federally subsidized properties does not include those added in the last two to three years, due to limitations of the data.
Subsidies face several risk factors
Researchers found that where properties are located influences the odds of an owner ending participation in a subsidy program and if they do, how much rents potentially could increase.
Thirty-eight of the 136 Philadelphia properties whose subsidies will be up for renewal during the next decade are in areas where rents, household incomes, and home values have increased more than in the city as a whole.
In census tracts that have properties with expiring subsidies, home values increased by 28% in the last decade, compared to 21% citywide.
In areas with strong housing markets, property owners have more incentive to end subsidy contracts and charge market-rate rents.
For-profit property owners are less likely than nonprofit owners to renew subsidy contracts. And about six in 10 properties with expiring subsidies are owned by for-profit owners.
Researchers also noted that any policy change by President Donald Trump’s administration that reduces federal funding for subsidy programs would make properties less affordable for tenants.
These are the most common subsidies
The country’s largest source of funding for new and renovated subsidized rental housing is the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. It’s also the most common subsidy source in Philadelphia.
These properties have to keep rents affordable for 30 to 40 years after they are built.
Of the properties that have subsidies that expire within the next 10 years, 57% use Low-Income Housing Tax Credit subsidies, either alone or in combination with other programs.
In a 2024 report, Fannie Mae said the credit was “one of the most successful” programs that support affordable housing for “some of the most vulnerable renters in the country.”
Fannie Mae found that in early 2024, the average asking rent for Low-Income Housing Tax Credit properties in the Philadelphia metropolitan area was about half the average asking rent for a market-rate property.
For Philadelphia properties, the next largest source of federal housing subsidies is the Section 8 program that ties subsidies to units, not households.
This program, either alone or in combination with other programs, covers 27% of the city’s subsidized properties that have agreements that expire during the next decade.
Property owners can choose whether to renew these contracts when they end, which is usually after five to 20 years. Current contracts are all renewals of agreements that date back to before 1983, when Congress ended the program.
City Council this week again delayed a key piece of legislation that needs to pass before the Parker administration can sell hundreds of millions of dollars in city bonds, the primary source of funds for the myriad housing programs being created or expanded through the mayor’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative, or H.O.M.E.
The delay comes as lawmakers negotiate to amend the legislation — a resolution setting the first-year budget for H.O.M.E. — to increase spending levels beyond the currently proposed $195 million and to lower income eligibility thresholds for some programs, prioritizing poorer residents.
The most recent setback came this week, when Council President Kenyatta Johnson canceled a Monday hearing to advance the resolution and declined to reschedule it before Thursday’s regular Council meeting, when the administration said the proposal would need to receive final approval for the first $400 million round of bonds to be sold in 2025. (The city plans to sell a second and final $400 million tranche of bonds in 2027.)
The administration sent Johnson’s office an initial draft of the resolution in July, but the Council president has repeatedly delayed advancing the measure throughout the fall.
“It is critically important to get the first-year spending plan right because what is agreed upon in the first year will influence all future spending for the H.O.M.E. program,” Johnson said in a statement explaining the cancellation of Monday’s hearing. “It is also essential that the final legislation include spending priorities important to City Councilmembers.”
Parker is known as a hard-line negotiator who rarely cedes ground, and Johnson’s delays might be meant to send the signal that if she doesn’t bend on Council’s demands, he won’t meet her timelines.
The saga marks a rare moment of discord between Parker and Johnson, who have worked hand in glove on most issues since both took office in January 2024 — including the passage of the initial package of legislation related to H.O.M.E. last spring.
At left is Council president Kenyatta Johnson speaking with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker before start of her press conference regarding her first budget in Philadelphia City Hall on Thursday, June 6, 2024.
In a hearing last week, Johnson appeared to side with lawmakers, led by Housing Committee Chair Jamie Gauthier, who were pushing for the administration to lower income thresholds for some H.O.M.E. programs, saying the city should prioritize the neediest Philadelphians.
Parker has proposed expanding income eligibility requirements in some cases so that the programs can also be accessible to middle-class residents, saying she does not want to pit “the have-nots vs. the have-a-littles.”
‘Pit one against the other’
Even with the bonds delayed until next year, the mayor does not appear to have given up the fight to maintain her vision for the housing initiative. At an unrelated Council hearing on the school district on Tuesday, Parker brought up the H.O.M.E. initiative unprompted.
She then called out four Council members who have middle-class constituencies that are likely to benefit from increased income thresholds for housing programs: Curtis Jones Jr., whose district includes Roxborough and Overbook; Anthony Phillips, who represents East Mount Airy and West Oak Lane; Mike Driscoll, of the Lower Northeast; and Katherine Gilmore Richardson, who represents the city at large but is a Democratic ward leader for Wynnefield.
“I am unapologetic about making sure that constituents represented by you … should not be left out of any investment that we make in the city of Philadelphia,” Parker said. “Every community can be lifted up with the work that we are doing, so I won’t let us pit one against the other.”
The remarks, however, effectively pitted members with poorer constituencies against those with middle-class bases. Johnson represents Southwest Philadelphia and the western half of South Philly; Gauthier’s district covers much of West Philadelphia.
Despite the dustup, it remains unlikely that a lasting fissure has emerged in Parker and Johnson’s relationship, given that they still share many policy priorities and can benefit each other politically.
“Council President Kenyatta Johnson and I have an amazing working relationship,” Parker, a former Council member, said in an interview Monday. “Council has a right to do its due diligence. If I hadn’t been there, if I wasn’t a former staffer in there, maybe it would be foreign [to me]. No. We’re going through the process, and I have to trust the process.”
Additionally, Johnson standing up for Council members’ concerns over the H.O.M.E. budget may help shield him from questions about whether he is overly compliant with the mayor’s agenda.
“Both branches of government remain committed to ensuring the H.O.M.E. program is implemented transparently, equitably, and in a way that maximizes benefits to Philadelphia residents,” Johnson said in his statement. “Taking extra time to finalize these critical elements will result in a stronger, more effective program.”
Tracking progress
The administration is not waiting for the H.O.M.E. bonds to be sold to start notching wins for Parker’s 30,000 housing units goal. The city’s Philly Stat 360 website has already begun tallying units built and preserved during her tenure.
To be sure, some of the mayor’s strategies for the H.O.M.E. initiative do not require bond money. For instance, Parker has led a shake-up of the Land Bank, which she hopes will accelerate the redevelopment of unoccupied city-owned parcels into housing, and she won Council approval last spring for zoning changes meant to streamline building.
But the potential infusion of $800 million is undoubtedly the centerpiece of the initiative. The money will help launch programs like Parker’s One Philly Mortgage, which aims to provide 30-year fixed-rate loans to qualified homebuyers, and will buttress existing ones like the Basic Systems Repair Program, which has been credited with preventing the displacement of low-income residents who end up moving if they cannot afford needed home repairs.
“It’s never been done in the history of our city, and we do that together in partnership with each other, and that’s what we’re working to do right now,” Parker said.
Staff writers Jake Blumgart, Kristen A. Graham, and Anna Orso contributed to this article.
In Philly and Delaware County, listings and sales of luxury homes are down from last year,according to an analysis by the real estate brokerage Redfin.
The luxury home market in the counties is relatively small, “so it can be somewhat volatile,” said Chen Zhao, head of economics research at Redfin.
In the combined market of Philadelphia and Delaware Counties, 285 luxury homes sold between July and September of this year. That’s down about 16% from the same time last year.
Redfin defines luxury homes as those in the top 5% of an area’s prices. The median luxury sale price in this region was about $1.3 million, according to Redfin.
A low supply of homes for sale is helping drive luxury trends. At the end of September, the number of active listings of luxury homes — 503 — was down about 23% from last year, the sharpest drop out of the 50 populous metro areas that Redfin analyzed.
Zhao noted that luxury home owners are less likely to need to sell their properties, and decisions to hold onto multiple luxury homes during a time of economic uncertaintymay be contributing to the tight supply.
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Faster price growth for luxury homes
Prices for luxury homes have grown faster than prices for other homes both in the Philadelphia region and nationwide.
In the combined market of Philadelphia and Delaware Counties, sale prices grew by almost 8% for luxury homes and about 6% for homes in the middle-price range over the last year.
Nationally, luxury prices increased by about 5%. Prices for homes in the middle range increased by about 2%.
“Luxury prices are outpacing the rest of the market because the people buying at the top end are playing by different rules,” Sheharyar Bokhari, senior economist at Redfin, said in a statement.
Unlike middle-income homebuyers, people purchasing homes at the highest price points don’t need mortgage interest rates or prices to fall before they can afford to buy. They’re more likely to pay in cash or take out smaller loans. Some are choosing real estate as a more stable investment.
“That demand, even at a smaller scale, is enough to keep pushing luxury prices up faster than the broader market,” Bokhari said.
How other metros compare
Between 2024 and 2025, luxury sales rose the most — almost 31% — in the pricey market of San Francisco. The median luxury sale price was more than $6 million.
Luxury homes sold the fastest — in a median of 14 days — in the San Jose, Calif., region and the slowest — in a median of 130 days — in the Miami metro area.
Florida is home to the areas where luxury prices rose and fell the most over the last year. They increased by about 15% in the West Palm Beach metro, and decreased by about 3% in the Tampa area.
Roughly one in four small residential buildings bought in Philadelphia from2017 and 2022were purchased by corporations, according to a new report about investor activity in the city.
Investors compete with low-income homebuyers. They are more likely to pay with cash and less likely to be denied mortgages. They sometimes pursueproperties before they hit the market.
“There are a lot of neighborhoods that are seeing investor activity, that are raising concerns,” said Emily Dowdall, president of policy solutions at Reinvestment Fund. “Our hope is that this report, that other reports, are going to help inform a strategy going forward.”
Smaller operators are buying most Philadelphia homes purchased by investors. But researchers have seen an increase in larger corporate landlords.
Researchers looked at sales of residential buildings with one to four housing units. Most were single-unit homes, but the city records that researchers classified properties with one to four units as single-family housing.
Researchers found that 13 investors bought 100 or more properties and eight bought more than 200 from 2017 through 2022.
Here are some other takeaways from the new study.
No sign of big national players
From 2020 through 2022, 91% of homes purchased by corporations were bought by smallerinvestors.
Researchers said they found no evidence that the biggest national investors in single-family homes — such as the private equity firm Blackstone and Invitation Homes, one of the country’s largest landlords of single-family homes — are active in Philadelphia.
Private equity-backed national investment organizations have bought single-family homes in bulk in places such as the southeastern United States, which has been targeted because it has newer housing stock and fewer tenant protections, Dowdall said.
These types of investors have been tied to rent increases and fewer opportunities for first-time homebuyers and buyers with low and moderate incomes.
Philadelphia is less likely to see these organizations operating here because of the city’s many renter protections and an older housing stock that needs a lot of investment, Dowdall said. The city’s foreclosure prevention program and the relatively long foreclosure process in Pennsylvania also deter these organizations, which like to quickly buy and lease homes on a large scale.
“It’s still possible that we could see more national players, as they have already saturated the easier markets to get into,” she said.
During the pandemic, some larger regional and national companies started to come to Philadelphia, researchers found.
Investor activity is concentrated in certain areas
Corporate investors mostly buy single-family homes in areas of the city where prices are lowest. Those neighborhoods also are predominately Black and Hispanic, including Brewerytown, Germantown, Juniata Park, and Kingsessing.
From 2020 to 2022, the median purchase price for an investor was $129,000, compared to the citywide median purchase price of $225,000 and individual buyers’ median purchase price of $247,000.
During this time, investors were most active in North, West, and Southwest Philadelphia and sections of Lower Northeast and Northwest Philadelphia. Investors bought more than half of all homes sold in these areas.
Before sheriff sales paused because of the pandemic, investors often bought a chunk of their properties that way.
The share of foreclosed homes purchased by investors grew from 31% of properties sold in sheriff sales in 2012 to 60% in 2019.
From 2017 to 2019, high-volume investors got about a third of their single-family properties through sheriff sales.
From 2020 through 2022, fewer than 40 properties were auctioned off each year. So investors relied more on other ways of acquiring properties, including buying directly from homeowners, “potentially creating more direct competition with individual homebuyers,” the report said.
More eviction filings and code violations
Large corporate landlords were more likely to file in court to evict tenants than smaller investors.
About one in seven homes bought by high-volume investors were associated with eviction filings within five years, compared to less than one in 20 homes bought by smaller investors.
Investors of all sizes were more likely than individual homebuyers to have code violations. About 20% of properties bought by investors had violations within five years of the purchase. The share of violations in owner-occupied properties was 9%.
Researchers plan to learn more about the types of code violations these properties generate, since violations can range from trash issues to unsafe conditions.
More work on properties
Researchers also uncovered “potentially positive findings” about large investors, Dowdall said.
Philadelphia’s aging housing stock needs investment for renovations and maintenance, and the report found that larger investors were more likely to get permits to alter their properties than smaller investors. “Bringing much needed dollars in to refurbish our housing stock,” she said.
Large corporate investors received alteration permits for 42% of the properties they bought, compared to 29% for smaller investors and 13% for individual homebuyers.
Like code violations, projects that need permits can range from the minor to the major, from adding electrical outlets to total renovation.
In future analyses, researchers plan to drill down on the specific work being done on investors’ properties.
Researchers’ recommendations
Many investors purchase properties using a variety of corporate names, so identifying who is in control of corporations can be challenging, researchers said. That makes it difficult to hold operators accountable for problems at their properties.
Researchers recommend state lawmakers require limited liability companies to disclose who is in control.
They also recommended that the city:
Enforce rental license requirementsto create a more complete inventory of rental properties
Use public data to understand how investors operate and their effects on the market and renters
Prioritizeindividuals and nonprofits at sheriff sales
Help individual homebuyerscompete in the housing market, including by giving more money to homebuyer assistance programs
