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Crossing Real Estate: The $1.25 Million Fishtown House Has to Sell After Another $100,000 Drop
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Are you ready to buy?
Now’s the time, because the $1.25 million Fishtown house has been cut down to $695,000:
This thing came off the market entirely over the summer and was re-listed at the new price. Debuting at $1.25 million in January, it was reduced to $1 million in the summer of 2024, then $884,000 this past winter, followed by a $795,000 number before it was pulled. Property records listed through Zillow show that the plot was purchased for $186,000 in October of 2019, pre-pandemic, while the property taxes are listed at $4,523, so basically one-third of what you’d pay in New Jersey. Heyo! And you get the abatement anyway, so there ya go.
The house itself really isn’t bad. It’s three bedrooms and four bathrooms with a finished basement and walk out into a back yard with a deck. You have storage space underneath the deck and enough room for a grill and some outdoor seating, a small bit of grass to work with. The bathrooms are adequate and the showers have some nice tiling and finishes, while you get the flat roof deck that will start leaking almost immediately (speaking from personal experience). The house is full of that Millennial gray and black/white motif that everybody was using back in 2015.
I don’t have any hard proof of this, but talking to a couple of real estate people very casually, it seems like during the pandemic a lot of New Yorkers were trying to get out of the city, and they looked at Philadelphia as “affordable” because apparently you pay a bazillion dollars to live in Manhattan. So some developers, not all, but some saw an opportunity to price these houses higher, knowing that supply was low and demand was high. At the same time, it seemed like everyone was trying to get out of Philadelphia and go to the suburbs, where the inventory was even worse. Dunno how prevalent that was, but when we sold in 2020 we had multiple New York families look at our place.
Whatever the case, this house has been sitting on the market for almost two years now. New construction on this same street was going for $400,000 in 2015, albeit less square footage, but the $800,000 jump was incredible.
This thing should sell now. You’ve got a nice view of the 95 ramp and can walk to Dunkin Donuts* and Beer City, if it’s still there. Check out the Zillow listing! We’re just trying to help.
*EDIT – eyewitnesses tell us the Dunkin closed 6 months ago, which is a bummer
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com