Countless Vacant City Parcels Just Sitting There, Will Philly Land Bank Finally Sell Them For Affordable Housing?

Hapco Philadelphia and its partners with the Rental Coalition have been pushing the City for years to start selling vacant parcels of city-owned land for affordable rental housing development.

Philly’s new mayor is now promising to make the Land Bank into the savior for affordable housing development it should’ve been all along.


NY Revives 1950s Plan To Build More Affordable Housing. When Will Philly Do Something?

Governor Hochul stands at a lectern in front of a room of people, flanked by other officials sitting at a dais. She wears a royal blue suit that matches the color of a screen behind her that says “Our New York, Our Future.”

While Philadelphia City Council dithers over how to fix the affordable rental housing crisis, New York State continues to try different remedies to get more housing built.


See Where Philly Ranks In List Of Hottest Rental Markets

 

Hapco Philadelphia constantly brings rental property owners the latest research on our industry.

This is latest survey is from our friends at RentCafe.com.

At the start of 2024, Suburban Philadelphia emerged as the nation’s 19th most competitive rental market in the U.S. with three-quarters of its renters staying put. Conversely, Philadelphia ranks at #40, with an average of six applicants vying for each vacant apartment.

The RentCafe report highlights the hottest renting spots at the start of 2024. To clearly determine the competitiveness of each market, we used five key indicators and subsequently calculated an RCI (Rental Competitivity Index) score. Read more about our methodology at the end of this mail.*

Here are the highlights for Suburban Philadelphia:  

  • With 7 prospective renters competing for each vacant unit, apartments in this area get snatched in 45 days. 
  • Finding a rental here remains challenging due to a high occupancy rate of 94.4% (surpassing the national average of 93%) and 75.3% lease renewal rate among renters.
  • Adding fuel to the fire, newly constructed apartments contributed a mere 0.24% to Suburban Philadelphia’s supply of housingclearly not enough to meet the growing demand. 

And what about Philadelphia?

  • Six renters compete for each vacant unit in Philly, with apartments typically being filled within 45 days.
  • The occupancy rate stands at 92%, fueled by a 66.1% lease renewal rate (well above the national benchmark of 61.5%).
  • What’s more, the share of newly built apartments in Philadelphia only accounts for 0.50% of the local inventory, widening the gap between supply and demand even further. 

With an RCI score of 78.2 out of 100, Suburban Philadelphia’s rental market is highly competitive during the early months of 2024. At the same time, Philadelphia’s RCI score is slightly lower at 71.4 (below the national average RCI of 73.4)but its rental market is still competitive.

The big picture: The Midwest gained more appeal in the early months of 2024, securing seven spots among the nation’s top 20 hottest rental markets. Quite far behind, the Northeast and Florida each made their mark with four entries in the top 20. The other Northeastern markets that made it to the top 20 hottest markets are North Jersey (#3), BridgeportNew Haven (#7) and Brooklyn (#12).

*To identify the hottest rental areas at the start of this rental season, we analyzed Yardi Systems apartment data for 139 U.S. markets based on occupancy rates, the number of renters applying for an available unit, vacancy days, the percentage of renewed leases and the share of new apartments. Based on these metrics, we calculated a Rental Competitivity Index (RCI), which shows how competitive the rental market is this season.