Who is buying Philadelphia’s single-family homes?

Since 2000, Philadelphia’s housing market has been transformed by several factors, including gradual population growth after decades of decline, a property tax abatement that spurred new real estate investment, the market contraction following the 2006-08 national housing crash, and the subsequent years of low interest rates that attracted many new homebuyers.

The Pew charitable trusts analyzed over two decades of single family home sales to learn how the city’s housing market has changed in the midst of those local and national forces. The report finds that the city’s reputation of affordability—although somewhat overstated—remains largely intact, but fewer of the city’s households are able to afford housing than could at the turn of the century, and some groups are seeing increasing access to homeownership, while others have seen that access slowly slip away.