Point Breeze called one of the ‘best bad neighborhoods’ for purchasing a home
Point Breeze has been seeing changes in recent years, with more development and some new businesses attempting to revive the neighborhood.
A recent real estate study has named Point Breeze as number 7 on a list of 35 “best bad neighborhoods” to buy homes. The study shows that house flipping in this area results in an average 138% return on investement.
From Philadelphia Business Journal:
To make the final cut of “Top 35 Best Bad Neighborhoods to Buy a Home,” ZIP codes had to have a population of at least 2,500, an increase in the number of construction loans over the past 12 months, an average home flipping gross return of at least 60 percent, with millennials (born between 1984 and 2000) representing at least 25 percent of the total population and increasing in share of population from 2013 to 2014.
Additionally, the ZIP code’s highest scoring elementary school needed to be below the state average in 2015, and the share of underwater homes in the ZIP code needed to be at least 15 percent — above the national average.
It is disgusting to treat a neighborhood as a financial market instead of as a community of people, and it is disgusting to treat the prevalence of underwater mortgages as an opportunity and not as the tragic and entirely preventable result of predatory lending in predominantly black communities. Point Breeze doesn’t need house flippers; it needs good schools, healthy and affordable grocery stores, and rent stabilization to ensure that its long-term residents who have been spending the last 20 years sweeping their sidewalks and spending their weekends in the local parks, at the local churches, and hosting block party cookouts are not priced out of their long-term communities. And, as far as buyers go, it needs long-term residents who want to build that community and invest in the people and infrastructure that make the neighborhood, not “investors” who want to drive up local real estate prices, fill their pockets at the expense of long-term renters who have never been able to afford to own, and move on to the next available target.
No one besides me has swept the sidewalk on my block in two years (that I’ve seen but I’m nosy and the trash is pretty obvious; you notice when someone sweeps.) And when there are cookouts people leave meat skewers all over the place, which are a danger to every dog in the neighborhood (some might call that disgusting.) We should invest in schools 100% and get better grocery options but let’s not pretend that this neighborhood is largely well cared for.
I’m sorry you may have some bad neighbors, Bruce, but it is not accurate or just to characterize a whole neighborhood from a few bad actors. My neighbors sweep, take care of each other and the neighborhood. They deserve not to have it commoditized into an opportunity for outside investors. It belongs to them, and to anybody who wants to join as a neighbor, as part of the community – not to those who just seek financial gain. I absolutely agree with Kate.