Seattle Versus Philadelphia: A Tale of Two Real Estate Markets

Unlock the mysteries of the urban real estate market with our latest episode, as Arick Davidson, TikTok sensation and dual expert in law and real estate, joins me to dissect the unique characteristics of Seattle and Philadelphia's housing landscapes. As Bryan Laflame takes a brief hiatus, Arick and I navigate through the nuances of affordability, neighborhood vibes, and the tug-of-war between renting and owning. Philadelphia emerges as a dark horse in this race, offering a surprising equilibrium for prospective homeowners, while we also shine a light on the complexities of rental tenant laws that vary by region.

Venture with us on a journey through the real estate territories of these two cities, contrasting Philadelphia's old-world charm and its historical homes to Seattle's modern marvels and competitive market. We discuss how the cities' respective industries and population densities shape their real estate markets, with an eye-opening look at challenges such as strict COVID regulations and supply chain issues that have left an indelible mark on Seattle's construction and housing availability. Meanwhile, Philadelphia's densely packed row homes and median house age of 93 years tell a story of a city steeped in history and architectural diversity.

Embrace an engaging exploration of market trends and affordability as we analyze the impact of regional differences in income and poverty on housing prices. The conversation turns to the broader canvas, where tech influences, military presence, and cultural offerings paint a vivid picture of Philly and Seattle's urban landscapes. With Arick's insight, we reveal how the interplay between sectors like tech, military, academia, and culture can shape not just the market, but the very heartbeat of a city. This episode is a treasure trove for investors, homebuyers, or anyone enthralled by the pulsing dynamics of city living and real estate investment.

👋 Considering a move to Seattle, Washington or its dynamic suburbs like Tacoma, WA & Bellevue, WA? Dive deep into what living in Seattle and its neighboring areas truly feels like.

Explore through neighborhood vlog tours, and city pros and cons videos, and get unmatched insights into relocating to the Greater Seattle area! Transition confidently with guidance from a native Realtor® who's eager to help you settle in your perfect home! 🔑

Whether you are moving in 9 days or 9 months, give us a call ☎, shoot us a text 📝, or send us an email 📨 so we can help you make a smooth move to the greater Seattle, WA area!

Aaron Morrow Realtor Serving (King, Peirce, & Snohomish counties)
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👋 Considering a move to Philly? Or Buying a Home in Philly? Arik's your guy! Reach out to him here:
Arik Davidson

The Haupt Team

Elfant Wissahickon REALTORS
C. 215-403-6204 (preferred)

E. arik@elfantwissahickon.com

@FindUsInPhilly

https://elfantwissahickon.com/

This is my Intro to every Podcast and YouTube video 

This is my Outro to every Podcast and YouTube video 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Hey everyone. It's Erumaro again doing another weekly live. You know what? Brian Laflame, my normal co-host, is out of town. I think he's doing something special with his wife or something. I know priorities right. Anyways, I'm here with a special guest. Arick Davidson is a buddy and social media TikTok influencer and I knew he was going to make that face. He's actually a licensed realtor and a lawyer in Philadelphia. He's working full-time in real estate. He's lived, studied and worked numerous jobs in Philly since 2007. And he loves the city and the region. He's on the. I'm going to let him know or I'm going to let him take it away with what the team is called, but him and his wife is also an agent, or his wife is also an agent, and they're both on this team, by the way.

Speaker 2: 1:20

So what team are you on? You pronounce it. We are on the help team and the brokerage is called Elphant Wissahickan. Yes, definitely, yeah, so the Elphant, the Elph, the both names and the Wissahickan is both the name and the name of a river in the area. So it is. But if you're not from here, you're like what am I pronouncing?

Speaker 1: 1:44

Yeah, exactly. Well, I've been wanting to do one of these with you for a while. I've actually, so I think this is like my ninth YouTube live podcast for my channel. I've been working out the kinks and I've been scheduling in like I'm trying to get clients on and other people, and I've actually there's been a few people that reached out that I've turned down just because I feel like they wouldn't fit who my audience would want to like, watch and talk to.

Speaker 2: 2:14

I'm happy to be on and to hopefully provide good information for the folks that are watching and listening.

Speaker 1: 2:22

Yeah, and I'm happy to be on your TikTok too, because I'm definitely I for those watching on my TikTok. I've come on RX TikTok live. I usually stream on TikTok on my PC, but I couldn't figure out how to get him in on that properly in my camera setup. So, thanks Instagram, everyone that's popping on on Instagram, anyone in the chat. What I'm going to do before we get started, though, just for some housekeeping items, I'm going to drop RX contact info in the chat, just so then you all have his contact info if you want to reach out to him, because what we're talking about today is Seattle versus Philadelphia real estate market and just kind of like the difference between the vibes and the cities and the surrounding suburbs and areas. Cause, if that's something you're interested in learning about, that's something we're doing.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Who knows, if it takes off and people show enough engagement on my channel, I might make this a series and do like all 50 States. You know, so in my contact info is there as well. I pinned that. But yeah, all right, tell me a little bit more. I mean, I know I talked a little bit about yourself. Anything else interesting?

Speaker 2: 3:37

So I mean I live in East Falls, We've been here for a long time, my wife is also an agent and we love helping people buy, sell, invest, live in and basically connect communities everywhere. We love this city, we love our neighborhoods and basically we'll talk to anybody about how great Philadelphia is and we work in our primary stomping grounds of the Northwest of Philadelphia, but we go throughout all of Philadelphia and the suburbs. Basically anywhere our MLS reaches is we'll work with you and we just love it. So part of why I'm excited to be on here today is to talk about some of the great stuff in Philadelphia and also the sort of the market dynamics and because what we have in Philly is not only are we a great city but we have low cost housing compared to a lot of what's going on in the country.

Speaker 1: 4:43

I feel like this was a good like what you've got going on in Philly, like it's almost like a very good comparing contrast like of what we've got going on here in the Seattle area.

Speaker 2: 4:56

Yeah, I know, basically to get into home ownership in Philadelphia is still surprisingly manageable for a lot of people, whereas I know, and partly it's the industry and the population size and the number of houses but the Seattle market, I know, is much more difficult to become an entry into home ownership.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Certainly up there. I mean I know we're beat by like New York and LA San Francisco, but we're still well with we're. We're in like the top five, I believe, of you know entry. You know most expensive housing for sure.

Speaker 2: 5:34

So yeah, whereas the stat we had from an article last year and I have not run the numbers recently but for the to purchase the median home, assuming like a solid down payment, your monthly costs are still less than the median rent in the city.

Speaker 1: 5:51

So we really have, which that's fantastic, that you can be in that scenario where you can be, because, if I am interpreting what you're saying is you're better off if you can be in a situation where you're your owning versus renting.

Speaker 2: 6:07

It's right at that inflection point and it's going to vary based upon your own numbers and which kind of houses you want to be in. But you can if for the median house, compared to the median rent, you can own for about the same cost as or for the same cost as renting. And so it makes it makes living here and what you want to do with your housing really up to your individual choice and ability to get the down payment together. But it means that renters here are. You can choose to rent or you can choose to own at the median price and sort of go from there. So it really is sort of that ideal that we talk about.

Speaker 1: 6:54

What are you? I and I don't even think we wrote notes on this, so sorry for throwing your curve all back. I kind of just thought of it. What are your rental tenant laws? Like with with, feel like because they're pretty strict in this area, like both on both sides. Like because they made them so strict for landlords, like it's so a tenant pro tenant here. It's made it really hard for people to even get into a rental here. Like when I have people move here, just to let you know I have them definitely look into homeownership as an option, just because it's. It's almost like going through just as much of a hassle to find to get into a good, decent rental here, with how much hoops they have to jump through. So I am like you might as well just look into seeing if you can get into homeownership here first and seeing, if you can, if you need to take that off the table first, you know.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Yeah, so I. When people move here, I tell them, hey, renting is totally an option. Our rental process is pretty quick. You know, when people call, I'm like, well, we can get you in and as little as a couple weeks. So in Pennsylvania and in Philly in particular about half in Philly, about half of our rentals are through brokerages and then half of them are through private landlords, like they'll just be listed on Craigslist, zillow, etc. So I can help people with the ones that are listed through brokerages and essentially you apply, you to the place, you apply, they run a basic application and if they approve you you can sign the lease. First lesson security you move in. As far as landlord tenant laws in the city, I think that we are pretty well balanced because landlords will tell you that it's tenant friendly and tenants will tell you that it's landlord friendly and you know, in the spirit of compromise, if everyone's unhappy, it probably means that there's a good amount of each.

Speaker 1: 8:55

I think that's that's definitely a good viewpoint, for sure.

Speaker 2: 8:57

So, hey, look, it's easy to get into a rental. I would say you know, our notice periods are pretty good, but we do have a lot of well, we do have a lot of, like institutional management companies and big landowners. A lot of Philadelphia rentals are what we would call mom and pop, so like under 25 units, right, and so there's a lot and a lot of people who have just owned for generations, who will own two or three. So it does take a lot of, there's a lot of nuance and negotiation. That happens, but when you get into a place, that's great, it's great, and we have a combination of rentals in single family, multi family, large buildings. You can rent in a lot of the condos. Airbnb has had a large cut back here due to city rules, and so the short term rentals are less available, but the standard is sort of a 12 month lease.

Speaker 1: 10:04

Got it and I think we're going to talk about this later. But I'm fascinated by this topic because it's just not really going on here in Seattle. But build the rent, um, it's just with Seattle lights this is unheard of because they are used to just new construction. To buy, like they. There's like no new construction in the suburbs really to Like I would have to comb to find where it's built a rent here, like there's no big builders doing it. So yeah, is that going on in Philly, so we have.

Speaker 2: 10:40

What we have right now is there's a lot of buildings going up in, like that are Buildings.

Speaker 2: 10:45

So there will be buildings that you're like, oh I wish this was going to be a condo and it's for rent. But we don't have a dev, we don't have a large percentage or big builders coming in to do single-family homes, and it's probably because we are a very urban area, right, yeah, and even in the suburbs, the, the land use laws and Zoning restrictions means that you can't come in and build like 40 homes You're looking to build for and when you're looking to build for the, it doesn't make sense necessarily to have the bills for rent communities. So we see a lot of Home ownership here. We also see a lot of rentals. I think we I think I found the status like around we're about 60% home ownership in the city, right, and so the while there's tons of rentals there's, the new construction is is single-family attached homes are usually attached right now with a small HOA for the community area and they'll usually turn some of those into rentals and some of those into Owner occupied and then they'll look and then the larger buildings that are being built.

Speaker 2: 11:54

I'm seeing, at least in my immediate community, like East Falls, are largely built to rent, but they're like 40 to 100 units. Right and okay, look an apartment building.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Yeah, and I feel like that would be, um, I can imagine, like in a in a home or in a tenants perspective, or a home like in a Person that's looking to buy. That would be more reasonable thinking a big, bigger building is it's more typical that that's going to be a rental, like an apartment complex or whatnot, versus it's For a Seattleite. It would be a shocker to start seeing these big master plan Development communities that we have in our area start going up where oh, no, no, no, sorry, this, this whole area you can't buy these single-family homes now there they're for rent, like it is happening in some parts of the states.

Speaker 2: 12:48

You know, I think Matt's actually joined this live.

Speaker 1: 12:51

I saw Matt join us. Hey, matt, by the way.

Speaker 2: 12:54

But I think he asked a good question about inventory and how that kind of impacts the home values in the area. So Philly has a surprisingly high inventory. So there's, we really got to break this in the Philly area. We really break it down into two places Philadelphia, which is both the city and the county, and then the surrounding suburbs. So you know, in Philly are we have five point two months of inventory in February, right now and and With, I think the current inventory is four thousand three hundred and forty four Homes for sale and that's single-family homes or condos, right, but it's like single-family.

Speaker 2: 13:33

And when we compare that to the suburbs and so the army, our median home sale price in Philadelphia is two hundred and sixty thousand dollars and Partly it's that there is that inventory, partly it's the housing stock, but largely it is the inventory when you look at into the suburbs, so like lower Marion Township for us, for those who who might know the area, we are looking at a Right now in February, like we have, we have 78 houses for sale and two point nine months. So the the vast diff of inventory. So it is Very much a mixed market in the city and then in the suburbs, while we have some inventory. Part of the reason that something said is condition and that people want too much. But the median home sale price in lower Marion is seven hundred K, and so it's okay, right. And so we're looking at More than double the median home sale price of just ten minutes away in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Yeah, that makes total sense. And when we did, um, when I was trying to compare notes, when we were gathering information to compare, I thought it was interesting because your, your area is quite a bit bigger. So I was kind of comparing Our cities. When we get into some stats on population size and density and stuff, I felt to really compare the area because we have Seattle does have it's much like failure when it's also a city of suburbs surrounding it, but to really kind of be more fair with how everything's close together geographically speaking, to compare with what you've got going on, I kind of have to compare the stats of all of King County that Seattle resides in.

Speaker 2: 15:19

What are those for you guys?

Speaker 1: 15:20

Yeah, so current inventory is sitting at 1852 and the median list price right now for King County is 836,000 Um and as of December, so there's a little bit of a lag for months worth of inventory in our MLS. We're at 1.42 months of inventory for all of King County. Okay, now I'm sure that again, if I broke it and Did some heavy research that would go up a little or up or down a little bit. It varies depending. Like in some areas you might get down to 2.6 months of inventory and then some areas you might get up to two, but like there's nothing that's like above two in the greater Seattle region.

Speaker 2: 16:09

Yeah, and so in Philly we're looking at a popular in the city. We're looking at about 1.5 to 1.6 million people. Yeah, what is that compared to Seattle?

Speaker 1: 16:21

Yeah, so all of let's see here, let me, let me pull up my stats here, so I Don't. So city of Seattle population currently is sitting around 762,500. Okay, and all of Seattle Metro, which includes King, pierce and Snomish County All three counties is sitting around about 3,549,000.

Speaker 2: 16:49

Yeah, so whereas our greater area, which includes parts of Jersey and Delaware, our metro area, has 7.36 million so we're quite a bit smaller Than what you've got going on. Well, I think part of what's driving. I mean, we look at the industries and we look at just the size. If you Build a city to hold a certain number of people and then more people want to be there, it's inherently gonna change the amount of inventory and the sales price if we had. Because if there's just no supply, then this and people who that's.

Speaker 1: 17:24

That's what we've been dealing with, even like we've Forever, and we've had a huge supply versus demand issue here.

Speaker 2: 17:33

Yeah, Is in Seattle. Is it driven by no new construct? Like is it land?

Speaker 1: 17:39

Yeah, so you know, I actually just so I on my YouTube channel and I I repurpose this content for my tiktoks. I do a monthly update and I we had even the the the greatest increase in new construction production Within the last year and it's still.

Speaker 1: 18:03

We're far behind on what is going on with my camera. We are far behind on what we need to to be built. So there's just not enough now new construction, I mean they are doing as much as they can, but there's just not for the population size. There's not enough homes, yeah, so now I think here I'm. Seattle was very strict during COVID. Lots of shutdown, new construction was just halted. I think we were halted the longest out of anyone in the nation like to get started. And then there was supply chain issues and all of that happened during COVID. So now they're, they're racing to pick back up and they, they keep building, but people just keep buying and they're gobbling it up and they just keep golf, they keep got. There's never enough homes to sell. You know I? You know what this, this camera, will fix itself.

Speaker 2: 19:04

There we go, um, yeah, gotcha. So I think in Philly part of what happens a lot is we have a lot of old houses, right Are. The average age of a house is in Philly is 93 years old, right, okay. And while there are some lots where you can build, you know so much of the houses, so much in Philly itself, so much it. When you think of South Philly, you think of these tight packed row homes which, yeah, it's great for walkability because we're an old city, right, I mean outside of actual old city, which is an area where we're like, you know, the founding fathers and like Independence Hall were right, we have Places, are the names of our areas are because of the industries that were there Brewery town, fish town, the pying market, which is still amazing but, like, the houses there are sort of small and Because of the amount of home ownership, you don't get people coming in and renovating whole blocks very often, but we do have that in some areas because we also, because of the age of the houses, in areas where there has not been as much development, you will see rows of you know, basically, you'll see depictions of like if you ever see somebody saying like, oh, philly's broken down and run down and they'll show an image, because those images exist and where that's happening, there is room for people to come in, take things down or renovate extensively.

Speaker 2: 20:26

So I've been in some, especially recently. You'll see tons of bad flips, but right now you're also seeing people who are doing I mean just incredible renovations and where you walk in, you're like I cannot believe that this house was built in 1925, because you walk in and the floors are perfect, everything is there, it's all modern and they've included, they've added a third floor in one place. I went and it's just rock solid and feels like walking into new construction.

Speaker 1: 20:54

Oh, that's amazing. Okay, so you've got some good flippers there, which?

Speaker 2: 20:58

is, we have some bad ones and we have some good ones, and Because of the price point, right, it's the the good and the bad of that is that a lot of people will come in who think they can and Many who really can, because there are that in a lot of places, there is that margin to be made and, yeah, I think that also like getting into home ownership here, though, from the investor perspective, can be a really good way to go. I think right now, we're the biggest challenge. You mean like house hacking, possibly. So there's two things that people can do. One is still, you can still house hack, but you need to understand like it is truly a city where it can be done. Okay, which is like when people are like oh you know, you do.

Speaker 2: 21:47

You know, if I could start over in real estate, I would get a multi unit and live in one and rent out the others and you're like sure, sure, where the answer is is. My wife and I did that in Philly back in the you know early, like 2000, and I think we started in 2013 to 2014. So it is fully possible. We lived in a place where people were like you live where now, because it's not the place that people expected you to buy, and so the challenge is is that people are? You can absolutely do it, but you end up, in order to make it work financially, you have to be buying in a place that hasn't already been developed.

Speaker 2: 22:29

Right, because there's not a lot of the margins on rentals here are not huge, and it's because, just like how we have a huge amount of, we have a really steady supply of for sale inventory, we also have a steady supply of rental inventory, so you can come in by a house and say, well, I'm just going to run up the rents or I can charge you got to charge the market rate and to get into those. It means that your margins are going to be reasonable. Right, we're looking at six, seven cap rates. No one's going to get a 10 to 12% or if they do, it's going to get snapped up in four seconds for cash.

Speaker 1: 23:10

Right, okay, gotcha Right Interesting. Yeah, you're mentioning how old your houses are. When I looked at the stats to compare, the average home in the greater Seattle area is built in 1971.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Wow.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:27

So about half the age of the average house in Philly.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Yeah, yeah, now we, I go into plenty of old homes, like in because that's taking the greater Seattle area like. I go into plenty of older homes, like when you go into the greater Seattle area has a lot of neighboring bigger cities like or not bigger, but like Seattle's the biggest, but then the you know, the second largest city is Tacoma. Then you've got Everett's up north and then you got Bellevue, which is like right across a water, a body of water, small body of water, and anyways you've got and Bellevue is kind of where the money's at. You know, you've got like the tech on the East side where Bellevue, redmond Lake, sammamish, issaquah, mercer Island, that's where, that's where all the money is driving a lot of, a lot of prices up. I mean that's where you can easily to like.

Speaker 1: 24:27

I was just working with a buyer that they're like you know we're setting up a search for them and they're like oh, can you just send me anything in those areas? That's at one mill I'm like you know, like we you need to get into that's not going to like. So I had to show her, I had to walk her through. I'm like we in each city. I broke it down. I was like this is the minimum. This is the very minimum price point for Issaquah right now 1.6 mill, redmond, 1.8 mill.

Speaker 1: 24:58

You know like I was just, I was listening to him out. Right, I forget where I was going with that. Oh right, so Tacoma, in Seattle you can find a lot more older homes like historic looking, where you get some good flippers in there that rejuvenate it but keep like the historic look, you know, which is beautiful and phenomenal. And then you get some people that like do some botched jobs, which is like you know. By the way, how are some of your builders? And I think that's the best part, because I always tell people to not skip the home inspection, even on their new builds, because I had a even like well-known builders here. I had a client one time again I don't name names they went into a new construction and there was no insulation in the attic.

Speaker 2: 25:52

Yeah, so, for me, I deal with so little new construction, and partly because that's just if you're doing new construct, so the new construction is the buildings. A couple, a small HOA is where you're like taking 20 houses, and so I know what to look for when I go into the houses, right, yeah, because it's you get used to showing houses that are really old, right, right? So my ability to walk through a house you know, I attend every inspection I can just to learn about how everything I can, and that definitely helps. And again, when I go into a house, I practice by saying I am not an inspector. These are inspector questions, but here's what I'm seeing.

Speaker 2: 26:35

And so some of the new construction, I don't know the. I don't know the big players, because the big players which there are several, like the post brothers, right, like there are they are doing these developments and these investments, but a lot of that is in-house, so they will have their own agents and so if I have a client who is looking for that in that price point in that neighborhood, we might see one or two. Right, got it? Yeah, sort of like I was in a new construction, a 2023 build.

Speaker 2: 27:08

The other day it's felt rock solid until you go up the stairs, and there's definitely two stairs where they are not level. They're just off by five degrees and it's like you can feel it. And I point out like hey, compared to everything that's old, I can tell you that that's a new heater, that's everything is there. It's 30 degrees outside, the thermostat is set to 60 and it's toastie in here. I can tell you that's working right and sort of. The point of comparison is, your alternative is a 100 year old home that's been renovated and that you can walk around and say I can see what the problems are. But yeah, I even.

Speaker 1: 27:46

Especially on new construction renovations, in particular old houses, we have great inspectors and we encourage people to bring them out every single time Good, awesome, and you know what the good builders here will encourage it, because that here they treat it like it's a punch list of like hey, they were items that they were already going to take care of and they just haven't gotten to them yet, so it's a good reminder. To just get them done prior to the final walk through is kind of like how they treat it here. So but this is what's crazy. So during the pandemic and I never saw this before, it was the first time ever because usually pre pandemic, the new construction was almost a guaranteed bet where you could go in and just like the builders were like the price is the price, you just give us the amount that we want for the house. You can negotiate closing costs and all this other stuff and upgrades and first come, first set, first come, first serve is how builders treated it here.

Speaker 1: 28:47

During COVID in the pandemic, people were doing bidding wars on new construction like crazy, crazy bidding wars.

Speaker 1: 28:55

Like we're talking like up on the like northeast side, like in Kirkland, there were bidding wars on one mil plus properties that went up like 300 K above list price on stuff, where everyone was just waving everything appraisal waived, inspection waived, financing waived and I'm like like how do you compete with that as like even a, but even like a tech buyer that makes 200 K a year, that has a good decent amount down, like 100 K down, you know like how do they compete with the person that can do 300 K more? Wave the appraisal way, you know like it's just super risky. But that was going on and I'm like this is bananas, just to kind of share what, what some people forged buying on through the pandemic, like they were forged through fire buying here through pandemic stuff and we're not seeing pandemic level craziness or shenanigans going on. But like I still come into every once in a while a popular new construction that there's multiple offers on in this area, where I'm like oh, we actually have to compete on this.

Speaker 2: 30:05

So we have a combination of things. I mean. First, you mentioned sort of the, the incomes that people come in and in Seattle, right, so our median household income in Philly is 57,000, right, and I gave the wrong stat earlier. I said owner occupied was closer to 60. Owner occupied is 52.2% but home ownership rates are still very high and but so our lower median incomes sort of just inherently shift the market compared to Seattle, I think.

Speaker 2: 30:37

But yeah, the idea of a bidding war, it's fascinating because I have people who are looking in Philly and in the suburbs and I also work with agents who, especially on the listing side, who will like predominantly do either city, who, especially in people who go into the summer, who work in the suburbs, will do a listing in the city, and just sort of the vast difference in negotiation technique and the outcomes and what you have to coach people on for home purchases changes completely.

Speaker 2: 31:07

So I'll have people looking in the city and we like well, we can probably get a solid concession here, we can potentially go under asking, we may be competitive because it's a great house. And then in the suburbs, if it's a good house, we'll be like okay, same buyers, same price point, folks you have to go with an escalation clause and there are going to be five offers today and you got to move right now and you're not going to get anything. We're hopefully going to get the inspection. It's just sort of this sort of whiplash effect, especially for buyers who are like why is it so different? And partly it's just this for whatever reason, people really want to be in this neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 31:45

Yeah, tracking that data. Now the cool thing with RMLS is they're actually one thing they're starting to do is they just came out with this that they're going to try to start tracking anonymous statistics on pending sales, not just solds. So you can't look up like because before what I would do to try to get more accurate information when I'm trying to comp out a property for a buyer or a seller like I do this for my buyers too, in a competitive market situation I would try to I call the pendings on a comp to get an idea of what those pendings went under contract with. Because, like there's no harm in asking to see if the agent will tell me, you know, and if they shared it, I can get a more accurate idea of what, how much above list price. I can scientifically track what above list price this area has gone for for the last 30 days because I can track that number and then tell my clients hey look, this is at least what it's done.

Speaker 1: 32:52

So if you're trying to figure out what to do in a bidding war, then you've made an informed decision and my clients feel better about that, because then they're like oh well, whatever number we picked in our bidding war, or max offer, then if someone went above that, then whatever, whoever beat them was just like the record breaker, you know.

Speaker 2: 33:12

But the cool thing is the MLS will start providing that info. Having access to the more recent your data, the stronger your ability to make this is a certainly. I think that for us I things don't move quite as quickly here and I will find that agents don't usually tell us like hey, what you know, what the other offer is, unless the seller, of course, wants to, but they usually will. I can usually get a sense of like hey, where are we going to be competitive? And they will say, like if you bring us a good offer, like if you bring us an offer that's above asking, like you're in pretty good shape, and that usually helps us sort of figure out where we're going to be making offers.

Speaker 1: 34:00

Hold on, sorry, one second. Hey Joe Smith, is there an echo on my end or with Arik? Just to confirm. I just want to make sure that I fix it on my end. Oh, I don't know how to fix my echo.

Speaker 2: 34:23

Okay, everyone's saying Are you muted on your phone?

Speaker 1: 34:29

Should I be muted on my phone?

Speaker 2: 34:30

On your phone. You should be muted. Sorry, just the, not the. You've turned off your camera. There you go.

Speaker 1: 34:38

Okay, well, I'm muted on my phone, but now I don't think anyone on TikTok will hear me, right?

Speaker 2: 34:44

You're on through mine and you're. The intake for my volume is directly next to the speakerphone. Awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1: 34:52

Sorry guys, this is a TikTok fail for me, because I don't normally do collab TikToks with peeps, I'm usually just doing the YouTube LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 35:02

Shelly says the echo is gone. Also, I'm commented that we're the bearded from coast to coast realtors.

Speaker 1: 35:11

Well, here, just for anyone that well, never mind. I was like I wanted to show them my thumbnail I worked on, but none of these TikTokers can see it.

Speaker 2: 35:21

I'll tell you, we have remarkably similar bearded glasses. And there you go.

Speaker 1: 35:26

Yeah Well, hey, anyone. What we'll do is I'm going to make our to you guys share my YouTube link, so then you guys could go check out, if any of you want to go check out the thumbnail or whatever. I worked hard on it, okay, so we're both in it. So yeah, definitely, because this is streaming on YouTube in widescreen as well, so afterwards though. So anyways.

Speaker 2: 35:54

So but kind of the speed to talk about a little bit. So our days on market averages 56 right now in Philly.

Speaker 1: 36:00

And oh yeah, I wanted to get back to that. Okay, right.

Speaker 2: 36:03

So our days on market are like currently, 56 is the average and we are right now coming out of our. So every single I mean I'm sure it's very similar with your weather there Every single year in Philly we peak in June and are the lowest in January, february, and that's for days on market. That's, like you know, the inverse, or whatever. It's days on market and for prices, for inventory sold, for like everything, and it just we're coming out of that now. I will tell you the last two weekends are coming out faster and stronger than I thought. Usually it starts around the Super Bowl to get sort of big, and I'm seeing a whole lot more activity anecdotally, both for me and hearing from other members of our team and brokerage, that things are really picking up a couple of weeks earlier than usual, and so it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the spring market here.

Speaker 1: 37:11

Yeah, definitely, I totally agree with you. By the way, joe Smith asked when's the last time we had a market crash.

Speaker 2: 37:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:18

And someone already answered it yeah, 2008.

Speaker 2: 37:21

Yeah, I mean, the last true crash was then and you will see annual again here. You see annual dips and ebbs and flows and I think year over year. In Philly right now we are holding pretty steady from last year. But as far as any, if you define a crash as something that's more than a percent or two even, I mean it's usually considered a lot more than that. We're looking back to 2008 to 2011. And just the inventory plus the demand. Unless we see something drastic happen and externality for the real estate market, I don't see Philly prices dropping significantly, if at all. But I also don't think that we're in a position where we're going to see skyrocketing prices again.

Speaker 1: 38:10

Yeah, I completely agree with you. We actually had this is a very general for the whole entire area. I mean it was pretty plateau, but it was about still between 4 and 5% for the whole area last year, even with the increases in interest rates. So we're still having slower growth on the appreciation and that's kind of why I did a.

Speaker 1: 38:39

TikTok video on the difference between a deep what was it? I did it so long ago. It was basically talking about the difference between the price like the value going down and a decrease in appreciation. So yeah, I think we're just curbing that crazy, because those are just crazy numbers we had during the pandemic. We had certain cities or suburbs around Seattle hit 30% year over year appreciation. That's just an ungodly amount of appreciation that took place.

Speaker 2: 39:21

And it is interesting that we are seeing I'm still seeing some sellers try for that same sort of level of appreciation over the last year and I'm going to show one of them tomorrow. I don't think it's there, but we are about to find out. Yeah, they bought it last year and they're trying to list it for about 20% more than they bought it and I'm like I don't think that that's there, folks, but we are about to find out, because if they get the offers and they sell it, then I'm wrong and if not, you quickly pivot right and if they're wrong, I will be right there with my buyers to have already offered what I think the house is probably Real quick before we pivot into any different steps.

Speaker 1: 40:07

I wanted to follow up with if anyone's been tracking the conversations, I want to follow up with my stats to your stats. So, regarding the, let's see here. So, regarding the, where was it? I had it right here. Ok, so median household income for Seattle it's around, or the greatest Seattle area, it's around 116,000.

Speaker 2: 40:32

Right, so we just over 15,000. So it's like all it's about double Just over double yeah, about double yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:38

And then let's see here Now the poverty. We didn't talk about the poverty, right, Sure? So I think you mentioned, I thought your stats were interesting.

Speaker 2: 40:49

So Philly is pretty consistent around this. Since I started looking at this when I was years ago, before I was in real estate, we're at 22.7% poverty rate in the city and we really this sort of goes to reflect the fact that our average home price is much higher than our median home price and I'm sorry so the average is closer to four whereas median is 250. And part of that is you can get houses here. It's very neighborhood based. There are houses where you can pick up a house for under 150k that's livable, lived in, that you could also get one that needs a ton of renovations, but they are available. But then in places like I was just doing, I have a recent video on East Kensington where you can truly right now get a $690,000 house within a four minute walk of a $156,000 to $200,000 house and just sort of the vast array of housing here. That's crazy, yeah, and part of that is that our median income is lower and our poverty rate is higher.

Speaker 1: 42:09

Yeah, I looked up our statistic and I don't know this is from the most up to date since the stat. I could find that it was around 10%. But here's the thing, here's the kicker Our homeless population is astronomically high. We are, I think, the third in the country for homelessness.

Speaker 2: 42:30

And given the winters up there, that's always surprised me.

Speaker 1: 42:33

Yeah, so we have a huge homeless population in King County, so I thought that was interesting. I also wanted to throw this out here for, like, just to give you an idea for average, I use a tool called Renometer to look up averages for rents in areas. I break this down with my investors that are looking for to figure out rents and stuff. So for Seattle, right now we're looking at average rent for a Q3 of 2023, because that's the most up to date that I have right quarter three everyone. Seattle was 3,792. That's not the highest. That's not the highest. Highest is Bellevue 3,839. By the way, folks, these are for anything that's under a three-bed one-bath, so these aren't anything crazy. Some of these are two-bed one-bath single family houses or condos, splits or apartments.

Speaker 1: 43:36

So some Amish 3,500, issaquah 3,600, redmond 3,500. Tacoma here's the difference, right, because this is where we talk about affordability. This is the affordability for our area, right. Tacoma, washington 2,574. So $2,574. So I mean almost 1,000 less than like Bellevue, you know. Well, I don't have detail, I mean, I don't have great breakdowns, no, I know, I know you don't have rentometer and that's why I just pulled mine from.

Speaker 1: 44:10

Zillow, which is probably a better because you had the whole average for your Philly, which was, I thought was interesting because yours is lower than it's 1,600, right, which is why that you can still get a house right.

Speaker 2: 44:25

You can buy the median house for a payment that's equivalent to the median rent, and so it's a double-edged sword right Because you can become, if you want to invest in the area. You can pick up houses for a fraction of the cost of in Seattle, but you are also going to be looking at a median rent of 1,600. And so I don't know if the ROI, the return on investment for buyers in the different places are going to be vastly different for the amount of money spent. But the ability to get into home ownership in Philly, especially if you were to relocate or invest from Seattle, is going to be a lot higher in Philly Because your money is going to go a lot farther. Whether or not it's going to have a better return, that's going to be based upon the individual property and your numbers.

Speaker 1: 45:24

Well, I thought this was just interesting because I wanted to look it up, because the census the updated census that I could find from 2020 was just way outdated. They said the average rent for the area was at 1,081. And I was like no know what, like everyone here would be jumping for joy if they were paying that, for sure, you know. So yeah, anyways, but yeah, I thought that, I thought this was all interesting stuff.

Speaker 2: 45:55

I think we also we had touched on. We were gonna touch on taxes and sort of what it costs to yeah, definitely Beyond the price of your house taxes, and what you're gonna be paying on an ongoing basis does really impact your decision making on whether or not to buy. And so in Philly we have a sort of interesting thing, which is our property taxes are a lot lower in the city than most places, especially compared to the suburbs. So in Philly our property tax is 1.398% of the value per year, right, and that's lower than, and that's much lower than, like, the suburbs. So one of the example I usually give is Elkins Park, which is in the north of, just north of, philly.

Speaker 1: 46:47

And you have a state tax and a city tax.

Speaker 2: 46:50

So we have a state and a city, right, so-.

Speaker 1: 46:52

And we don't have a state level tax. It's broken down by county.

Speaker 2: 46:57

Right. So and then we have the. We have a high transfer tax, which I think is part of what stops major investors from coming in. That's one of my theories, because you are automatically gonna be paying it's 4.27% transfer tax and that's 1% to the state and the rest of the city and that's traditionally split between the buyer and seller equally.

Speaker 2: 47:25

And then the other thing we have here is Philly has a wage tax, and so for some people at a certain income to property point, they start looking as to whether or not it makes sense to live in the city and own in the city, or if it makes sense to live and own in the suburbs, and that partly depends upon where their employer is based. So, like a suburb based employer, I can tell somebody hey, if you come and live in the city, you're going to pay automatically, you're gonna pay all this wage tax, but your property taxes are gonna be lower. And so we start looking at. There's a certain inflection point where we start saying do you wanna buy in the like? Are your taxes? Does the taxes mean that you should live in the suburbs at a higher house cost, at a higher property tax, or does it make sense to pay the wage tax and live in the city, and then it just comes down to personal preference after that.

Speaker 1: 48:19

Right, yeah, and so for us we don't really we don't have a wage tax, but we do have a sales tax. So in King County it's about 10% of the value of the purchase. So certain things are not included, like foods not, neither is health related purchases.

Speaker 2: 48:37

And that's a local. It's not even a state.

Speaker 1: 48:39

Yeah, that's King County. Yeah, that's a per county. Now our property taxes, they're approximately 1% of the value of the property assessed by the county, so it's like 1.09%. And then what we have like what would be basically like your transfer tax, is like our excise tax, so that's paid by the seller and it's a graduated tax, like kind of like income tax, you know, like a graduated system.

Speaker 1: 49:11

So basically anyone that's equal or less than 525,000, it's at 1.10%, and then like 525,000.01, up to one mill, 525, it's 1.28. And then it keeps going above. Like there's the highest bracket is anything that's above like 3,000,000.01. I don't know why we have these.01s but 3%. So yeah, and that's not like a buyer and seller, but we still over here we do have like buyer and sellers have their own closing costs. You know that they take on when they buy. Yeah, I thought it was also interesting because before we had a nice discussion about how closing works, which is a little bit different too. You know, like you have closing the same day as when people sign their final docs, versus here typically it's done like sellers sometimes do it days before it's closed and then usually buyers are doing it at least like the day before or sometimes the day of, like you know, the morning of if it's rushed. So here.

Speaker 2: 50:22

Definitely you can. Sometimes you can sign this. You can sometimes sign before title company is gonna tell you and it does vary If you have a mortgage in Pennsylvania in the area. If you're doing a mortgage you have to have a wet signature which is necessary.

Speaker 2: 50:40

I think that might be being updated. Shelley is on the live as well, might be able to comment on that. But and then we often do closing the same day so everyone like truly it can be everyone at the same table. Traditionally, agents are there. A lot of the time we're not really needed. And yeah, shelley says hybrids are becoming more common and so that's where some people are remote, some people are in person, but you own the house when you sign and then the deed gets recorded.

Speaker 2: 51:13

The deed recording in Philly can take a long time, so you get like the temporary. It's basically like when you're I'm gonna give a bad comparison here but basically kind of like when you have the temporary registration you own the house Even to the deed being recorded. Now, could that lead to problems? Yeah, if somebody else was like messing with the situation, you could have. But that's what title insurance is for. So the you are gonna go, you're gonna do your final walkthrough, you're gonna go to closing, you're gonna sign and you're gonna own the house and then you're gonna go for assuming there's no lease back, you're gonna go from the closing to the house that you now own Like I've driven. I've driven with people back to their houses now that are now theirs, so the closing day is pretty fast and Awesome yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:03

Yeah, definitely A few other things, because I know you have a hard stop soonish. So I kind of wanna like make sure we kind of wrapped up some of our fun stuff. Obviously, everyone knows we're kind of like a tech corridor up here. You know we got like Met, microsoft and Amazon. You know we've got some like Google satellite offices, metasatellites, facebook, meta. You know Expedia, starbucks, t-mobile, I don't know who. Do you have a cell phone coverage over there, by the way?

Speaker 2: 52:33

Oh, so we are split AT&T and Verizon pretty equally split throughout the city. You're gonna get Verizon or Comcast. It's gonna be your internet service provider and in fact, comcast you know our Comcast center is one of the more iconic buildings in center city Comcast one and two, and then you have the. They're also one of the larger employers in the area. So our biggest employer is Penn. You know the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, which is so our big industry. I mean we have food, we have biomed medical, we have like 53 area colleges. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1: 53:18

Yeah, you've got a lot I was looking up the stats, I was like man, I'm kind of like we, you got a lot more going on for colleges.

Speaker 2: 53:24

We have a lot of academic institutions. It's actually why what brought me back to Philly was undergrad and then stayed for grad school and loved and then was like, oh, I love this city and I can afford to live here and I can get a job here. That's a win, win, win. And yeah, living here is so we have tons. If you're in the medical space, the academic space, the research space, philly is a great place. We don't have. We have some tech, but it's mostly in the biotech area and medical research. Then we and the largest employers are still the school district and government and we also have a lot of tourism. People do come here. I mean, we are, and it's something. It's funny that I forget this because I live here and like I will just randomly go to, like, yeah, I'm walking past Independence Hall, right, but we have a really cool history city and going to see where it all started is fun and you can go, even go visit the Mint, which is fun.

Speaker 1: 54:37

That's fun, yeah. So obviously techs here, medicals here. You've got some Boeing factories, blue Origin, jeff Bezos, rockets. I have my brother-in-law actually works at Blue Origin LinkedIn satellite offices I love LinkedIn platform, by the way. So but yeah, we also have JBLM, which is Joint Base List Record. I thought I'd mention this, I'm gonna like mention this, anna. So in Pierce County, which is south of King County, so that's so. It holds Tacoma right, largest military base on the West Coast with over 25,000 active duty soldiers. Naval station in Everett, which is North, it's in Snorhomish, so that's north of Seattle. And then a Naval air station on Whidbey Island. That's actually where my folks lived, it's kind of island. Even more north, like adjacent to Skagit County, kitsap Peninsula, part of the Seattle and is home to a Naval base Kitsap, which includes the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton and Naval submarine base Bangor, site of the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, with more than 1,100 warheads of submarines. I forgot this stat and when I looked it up I was terrified again.

Speaker 2: 56:04

Well, remember the geography kind of makes sense for that right I know.

Speaker 1: 56:09

I know I'm like ah, I forgot, Because every time I like I'm always like looking up like on YouTube, like I'm big like science buff and like into, like you know, like nuclear technology and like fusion nuclear fusion and science and all that good stuff, but I always forget, like I'm like oh, we're not any, we're like near silos and stuff, but then I'm always like forgetting. I'm like wait a minute, the subs you know anyways, yeah, so we have some active duty, but we are much smaller.

Speaker 2: 56:39

It's not a. There is a presence here, but it is not a. I would say it is not part of our daily experience for many of us in Philadelphia, although occasionally you get the helicopters flying over towards Valley Forge. So the last thing I'll say is Philly is great. We got great restaurants. We have great culture, we have exceptionally good at not quite getting their sports teams, but we do have the best mascots in my opinion. And the other thing I'll say is living here is manageable. Right, we have pretty good public transit. It's not like living in New York, but SEPTA really does get you around from this. Like it's great for commuters in the suburbs and then great in Center City and our bus routes. So you can people really can live here without a car. It's also great to have a car, but the commutes are generally not they're not notoriously bad. People like, oh, I don't want to do that, but I can't say enough good about moving here and investing in here and living here. That's great.

Speaker 1: 57:49

Yeah, and I'd say just for time sake because I don't want to hold you hostage but it transportation here is pretty good too, even though we're really really, really, really gridlocked with just like two highway or, like you know, two major freeways, because we're just crushed between water and a mountain, you know, or mountain range. But if any of you want to know more about how good our transportation system is, call me, have it, go through our and have you know, reach out to me through that way, make that connection there. I wrote down real quick just for us, just to let you know our food scene, depending on who you talk to, right, because this is just. I'm not going to represent everyone here, because Seattle is a melting pot of cultures, you know, but we got a lot of great Asian and seafood here. I would say we have a lot of good steak and all American and meats and stuff, and we have a lot of good vegetarian and vegan options here as well, and people who are like gluten intolerant and dairy and all that good stuff. And then coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. But all the food's very expensive. I watched your video about DoorDash and, yes, super expensive, like to do, like to do DoorDash over here or anything, we're just buying the grocery store.

Speaker 1: 59:06

And then also the vibe here. Like the Seattle vibe is like you've heard of the Seattle freeze, like people are kind of clicky here in. Like in certain areas you have to work harder at developing friendships and as you go further out from the major cities I think it's easier to maybe find those friendships. But then like we have a lot of different. Again, it's a melting pot of cultures and ideas and religions and I think you just have to find those people that you vibe with the most. You know, and it's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 59:47

Like I live in Covington, which is South King County, which is kind of right stop, smack dab in the middle between Kent and Maple Valley, and that's like in South King County and Kent's more. It's suburban, but like that's more, I would say, leaning, like more liberal than like you've got like Maple Valley, which is actually like closer to rural, like waning, more right leaning, you know, and so like Covington is just kind of this like small city right in the middle as like a buffer zone, so like it's just you got this whole melting pot of ideas and cultures and I love it here. But yeah, you've got that kind of like Seattle freeze going on, where you just kind of have to work at finding your tribe here.

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

Yeah, I think I. Just I found that not only does every neighborhood here have a different sort of feel, yes, yes, by the suburbs, yeah they're very much going to find your community here.

Speaker 2: 1:00:43

Yeah no matter what you I mean truly no matter what you're into. We got that. Having said that, I would say that this is maybe something that's going to ring true to people right now. I think Jason Kelsey sort of very much represents the Philly vibe in a lot of ways, which is just like yep, why am I wearing flip flops to the bus? Because why wouldn't I wear flip flops to the bus? Right? What are we like? Yeah, I'm going to take off my shirt and try to be with the fans, but I'm also going to show up and put in the hard work and be consistent and be there and be committed and love the city. And you know, very, very sure there are people here who will show houses in suits, but we are. You know, I'm about to go to a showing. I'm wearing a polo, I'm going to have jeans on. That's what I'm going in, right? We are a city that has very little pretense, in my opinion, and well, you know, not everyone is going to be friendly. Everyone's going to help you out, right?

Speaker 1: 1:01:47

That's great, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:01:49

Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1: 1:01:51

Well, ari, I've really enjoyed having you on. This is awesome. I'm glad that you were like my first guest host. I've been wanting to figure out a perfect time to make this happen, so I think that went off without a hitch, besides my echoing for the first 30 seconds. So thanks, joe for pointing that out. That was a super solid Other than that. So we'll do my. We'll sign this off Again. Final reminder everyone for watching everywhere else because LinkedIn or TikTok you know how this works since you're watching from RX platform. But again, I'm Aaron Maro. This is Ari Davidson in the comment section. Everywhere else LinkedIn, youtube, facebook, twitter, clapper, instagram you have all of our contact info from both of us. Again, philly Rolter, greater Seattle, rolter, we're here to help you with your home buying and selling goals and needs. Go watch our content, reach out to us with any questions you have, and we'll probably collab in the future sometime soon. So thank you for having me. This has been great.

Speaker 1: 1:02:57

Yeah, of course, definitely All right. See you guys next time.