Value City

A recent study by apartment search company Adobo perfectly encapsulates what I've been saying about Philly all these years.  Here's a link to a nice summation from Curbed Philly, and I'll boil it down to two points:

(1) Millennials, when surveyed about the perfect city, overwhelmingly chose New York City or San Francisco, with Philadelphia ranking 17th out of 20 cities.

(2) And yet, when asked what matters in a residential location, out of the top 20 characteristics they listed, guess which city has the most of those characteristics?  That's right, it's Philly.


I could go on and on about my particular slice of Philly but I won't.  All's I can say is, I'm lucky to have stumbled into a great neighborhood in a great city at the perfect time.  

PS Btw, and this is a bit of a quirk due to my great fortune in getting in on University City just as it started booming, but true story: a buddy of mine sends me listings from our old neighborhood in San Jose all the time, because he's thinking about moving back someday.  He sent me one of a newish 2,400 SF 4 BR 3 Bath house on his old block.  $2.5 mil.  That is not a typo.  I immediately pulled out my calculator and then wrote him back: "That's $1,036 a foot.  Did you know that when Amy and I bought our 2,700 SF 6 BR 2.5 Bath house in 2000, we paid...$36 a foot?"  Yup, houses are selling for $1,000 more per foot in my old neighborhood than in my current neighborhood.  Mind blown.  Can't even begin to fathom paying 10 G's or so a month just for your mortgage (to say nothing of property taxes), since 10 G's represents a year and a half of mortgage payments for us.  I mean, we have money worries, but forking over five figures every month for the next 30 years isn't one of them, thankfully.