Philadelphia is in a construction boom, but many long-time residents worry about the negative effects of all this development. In gentrifying neighborhoods property assessments have increased exponentially, yielding property tax bills that fixed-income earners find difficult to pay.
I’m starting to work with real estate data to explore gentrification patterns in the city. Point Breeze is an up-and-coming neighborhood (at least in its north end), with all sorts of new buildings going up. But has that development ‘rubbed off’ on the rest of the neighborhood? With this snapshot, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Controlling for home size, price increases are almost entirely tied to condos, not single-family units. On the one hand, this suggests that long-time residents should not be facing steeply rising property taxes. But on the other, the financial benefits from these developments (through higher sales prices) appear to accrue to developers, not to home-owners.
