The recent flood of new apartments in Philadelphia largely consist of studio and one-bedroom units, not the larger kind that could support a family.
The Post Brothers building under construction at Broad and Washington will include 55 three-bedroom apartments, far more than most new multifamily buildings.When Leonard Bonarek sat on the zoning committee for West Philadelphia’s Garden Court Community Association, the multifamily buildings he saw developers proposing were almost entirely composed of studios and one-bedroom apartments.
Some Philadelphia developers say that the market may be shifting, as some urban dwellers look to stay in the city longer and spiking interest rates make buying homes less appealing. Larger apartments for non-students aren’t the norm, despite some signs of change. When canvassed for this article, most developers said they don’t build them and don’t plan to.
New construction is inherently more expensive than older buildings. That’s why lower-income families frequently rent antiquated rowhouses, which often need repair, and also why the Philadelphia Housing Authority’s new apartment buildings have a greater proportion of family-sized apartments than their market-rate counterparts.Three-bedroom units are “renting slow, under market,” said German Yakubov, a developer who largely works around the periphery of University City in West Philadelphia.
“We see some family size in the suburbs, but they’re very, very rare in the city,” said Brad Fouss, senior vice president for the Philadelphia area at OceanFirst bank. “There’s just not the demand for them, and I think that really is around the school system. When people start having school-aged children, they usually want to move out to the suburbs.”
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