Charmira and Quincy Pilgrim had wanted to become homeowners for a decade. But saving money was impossible with a growing family, job losses, and jobs that didn’t pay enough.
The Pilgrims were finally able to start saving at the end of last year and found a home they wanted to buy in West Oak Lane this spring. But they were thousands of dollars short for their down payment and closing costs.
What finally turned their homeownership dream into a reality was an assist from a Quaker congregation in Germantown.
Keep scrolling for that story and more in this week’s edition:
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Downtown housing boom: Center City is a major driver for Philadelphia housing, with room to grow, report says.
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Home renos gone wrong: A contractor who’s accused of defrauding homeowners in three local counties is a former South Philly cop with a history of citizen complaints and lawsuits.
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Cozy but dated: This first-time homebuyer bought a “granny special” in South Philly.
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Property revival: Peek inside this Doylestown property that has two homes.
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Market update: Scroll to see what local homebuyers and sellers were up to last month.
— Michaelle Bond
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When Charmira and Quincy Pilgrim bought their home, the money they got to help cover their down payment and closing costs came from an unusual source.
Most first-time homebuyer grants are funded by governments, mortgage lenders, or nonprofits. But the Pilgrims’ grant was funded by a group of Quakers in Germantown.
Green Street Friends Meeting is helping Philadelphians become homeowners with $10,000 grants to overcome a common barrier to homebuying: the up-front cost.
The grants are part of the congregation’s racial justice plan to redistribute wealth to Black residents in the Germantown area as a form of reparations.
In 2021, Green Street pledged to spend $50,000 a year for 10 years as part of its reparations work. Members said they were spurred by a moral calling and the realization of just how much money the congregation had sitting in unrestricted reserves.
Keep reading to learn more about the Quakers’ housing work.
Downtown is a hot spot for home construction in Philly.
Two in five homes built in a recent 18-month period were built in greater Center City, according to Center City District, a business improvement organization.
More than 4,000 homes were completed in greater Center City — defined as the area from Girard Avenue to Tasker Street and from the Schuylkill to the Delaware River — last year and in the first half of this year.
Center City District says there’s still plenty of room to build a lot more homes on properties in the area. Parking lots, for example.
Greater Center City remains a destination for newcomers and established Philadelphians alike. One in eight Philly residents lived there last year.
Keep reading to learn why home construction in Center City matters for the rest of Philadelphia.
The latest news to pay attention to
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This first-time homebuyer bought a “granny special” with purple shag carpeting in South Philly.
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A home-improvement contractor charged with fraud in three local counties is a former South Philly cop with a history of citizen complaints and lawsuits.
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As fears grow over AI, Philadelphia faces calls for a data center moratorium.
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Southwest Philly residents are calling on the city to address neighborhood blight, including abandoned houses.
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Why isn’t the Academy of Natural Sciences building historically protected? No one ever nominated it.
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The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s popular pop-up beer garden in Manayunk is closing permanently.
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The Netflix House building in King of Prussia has sold for $60 million to a developer.
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Neshaminy Mall will close this fall.
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House of the week: For $485,000 in Graduate Hospital, a rowhouse being sold by someone who calls himself “a steward of history.”
Nate Reuther has two homes on his 1.3-acre property in Doylestown: a purple Cape Cod that spans 1,200 square feet, and a tiny home in the form of a 13-by-6-foot tractor trailer.
He lives in the tiny home when he rents the main house as an Airbnb for part of the year.
Reuther has spent years renovating the house. He’s gutted most of the rooms, replaced the roof, and created a bedroom with a plant nook.
Reuther is a landscape designer and built the garden behind the house from scratch. That included tearing down an existing deck and creating a sculpture garden.
Beyond a meadow of native wildflowers sits the tiny home, which Reuther picked up from a Camping World store in Virginia.
Peek inside the property Reuther revived.
📊 The market
In August, homebuyers in the Philly region had more choices than last year. New home listings and the overall supply of homes on the market were up.
But those increases didn’t do much for sales or affordability, especially since mortgage interest rates “have remained persistently high this summer,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at the multiple listing service Bright MLS.
“With home prices still rising in most markets, some homebuyers are simply hitting an affordability ceiling,” Sturtevant said in a statement. “Others are waiting for more certainty in both the economy and the housing market.”
In the Philadelphia metro last month, according to Bright MLS:
🔺The median sale price was $425,000 — up about 5% from the same time last year.
🔻New pending home sales were down 3% from last year.
🔺The market added 6,500 new listings, up roughly 5% from last August.
🔺The number of active home listings was up about 14% from the same time last year.
📷 Photo quiz
Where was this photo taken?
📮 If you think you know, email me back.
A lot of you were confident but wrong in your answers to last week’s photo quiz. I wasn’t trying to trick you, but two neighboring buildings on the Parkway do look similar.
The quiz featured a photo not of the Free Library but of the former Family Court building.
Shout-out to Jay S. and Susan T. for knowing that. As they noted, the building has been empty for a while, and several plans for redevelopment have fizzled.
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A project that actually happened was the construction of the Philadelphia Ballet’s new home on North Broad Street. The organization is celebrating the grand opening over the next three days.
But architecture critic Inga Saffron says she’s frustrated with the new building. She said the ballet has repeated “the architectural mistakes of an earlier generation of cultural venues.”
Keep reading to see what she means.
And enjoy the rest of your week.
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