45th and larchwood
Zillow.com is a site that allows users to find data about home prices in a given area. When you search for an address or a neighborhood, it pulls up a satellite map with the residences marked. Clicking on one of the marks will pull up an infobox with lightweight data. (It doesn’t work in Safari.) I’m far from being in the market for a house, but the site did provide me with minutes of entertainment.
I was curious about the house I lived in in West Philadelphia. On occasion, I’d walk past the realtor’s office on Baltimore Ave. and look at the houses advertised in the window. Many houses were listed for less than $50K. I assumed that these houses were distressed “shells” or otherwise needed a lot of work. Information about my old house wasn’t available on Zillow.com, but they had some data about other houses on the street. I was surprised to learn that many of the houses are appraised around $30K. There are some pretty nice houses on S. 45th St, so this was quite a shock. Of course, street crime is a non-trivial issue in this neighborhood, which might drive home prices down, but, regardless, $30K for a 3,000 square foot house seems like quite a bargain! I’m not sure how reliable these prices are, either. I don’t know how often homes are re-assessed in Philadelphia, and corruption is rampant among folks like fire inspectors and tax assessors may be no different. It’s still pretty surprising when you compare prices in West Philly with prices in Austin or even Tulsa.
