Part of the job of a real estate expert in the Philadelphia Metro Area is to follow, track and understand market trends. Not only do appraisers need to stay on top of the market as a whole but, we have to understand what is going on in the individual neighborhoods and communities.
Since, Philadelphia is known for being a “city of neighborhoods” I will be publishing our research on certain neighborhoods in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. If you have a particular neighborhood, market or community you would like to see trending information for, just let me know.
To get started, I’d like to show you how my particular neighborhood is trending these days. Lafayette Hill is a suburb located just outside the Philly city limits in Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County. Lafayette Hill is located within the award winning Colonial School District. It’s a typical suburb comprised primarily of single family detached, semi-detached homes and townhouses. There are some condos in the area but I will only be providing data for Fee Simple homes in Lafayette Hill.
Below is a chart that shows the sales activity in Lafayette Hill since January 2006 through May 20, 2010. During that time there were 415 sales of homes, not including condos. The cumulative average sale price for that time period was $392,063. The highest sale was $1.685M in March 2007 and the lowest was $150,000 in January 2007.
The yellow line represents the path upon which the data has been trending. In this case, you can see, the overall trend in Lafayette Hill has been moving downward. In fact, the average sale price in Lafayette Hill has dropped more than 11%, since January 2006. Keep in mind that there are segments of this market that may trend outside of what is indicated here in the macro data models.
If we were to track more specific sub-markets and property attributes we may see different results. For instance, if we tracked only sales of 3 bedroom homes in Lafayette Hill, we may find that the declines are different or even stable.
What are your thoughts? If you have a particular market or neighborhood that you would like to see featured on our Philly Appraisal Blog, please let us know by leaving a comment.