- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
- | single page
Dahlia Kaminsky, sales and marketing manager for Patterson Park Community Development Corp., takes a call from a real estate agent at a Streeper Street house the group is rehabbing. (Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam / March 16, 2005) |
E-mail
Print
Last in a series
Dahlia Kaminsky was showing off Patterson Park, pointing out rehabbed houses that have emerged from under their old Formstone, when a real estate agent called her cell phone to ask if one could be had for $120,000 or less.
Her answer would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
"Oh gosh - there'd be nothing in that price range," said Kaminsky, sales and marketing manager for the Patterson Park Community Development Corp., whose homes are being purchased for triple their 1999 average. "We couldn't even come close."
It's a turnaround neighborhood in a turning-around city, though the comeback is not by any means complete.
Home values in Baltimore - battered in the 1990s by drugs, violent crime, real estate scams, population drain and recession - are seeing a resurgence that surprises even the housing experts. The average sale price of a city home rose 59 percent from 1999 through last year, 18 percentage points above the national average and nearly equal to the region as a whole, according to real estate agent data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
The city is developing a spine - an uninterrupted swath of ZIP codes with at least 60 percent price appreciation that runs from the waterfront to North Baltimore via the Jones Falls Expressway.
But fast appreciation in hot neighborhoods is helping to hide trouble on the blighted east and west ends of the city. If you add in for-sale-by-owner homes, average prices dropped in two city ZIP codes, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University found. And it's even worse when the effects of inflation are calculated.
Widening gap
Baltimore has some of the region's fastest-appreciating enclaves. It also has the slowest. And the gap between flourishing and decaying areas is widening.
But at the same time, far more neighborhoods are improving than once did. Since 2002, according to MRIS, the average price of a home in Baltimore has risen faster than in its suburbs - at a time when the number of city home sales jumped by a fifth.
"We've always known Baltimore City life was a great deal," said Tracy Gosson, executive director of Live Baltimore, an independent nonprofit organization founded in 1997 to market the city. "Now we can say it's a great value. ... I don't care how much somebody loves a neighborhood; if they think they're going to lose money, they're not going to buy."
Baltimore in the 1990s was caught in the throes of what housing advocate Charlie Duff called its worst real estate decade since the Depression. Even five years ago, the city had only islands of prosperity. Now housing experts see a significant and hopeful change.
"The good neighborhoods are starting to grow together," said Duff, president of Jubilee Baltimore Inc., a nonprofit housing and community development organization.
Key trends
A Sun analysis of MRIS home sales data found several key trends:
Waterfront property propelled the boom, but it wasn't the only engine.
The ZIP codes that saw the biggest jumps in price between 1999 and last year were clustered around the harbor - the ones that include Fells Point and Canton. Both areas are up more than 140 percent, not including the parts that reach beyond the city. But the neighborhoods next-door, with no water in sight, are feeling considerable ripple effects - Patterson Park being just one example.
"The areas further away are becoming very attractive to people who ... have a lot of money," said Barry R. Glazer, a broker for Century 21 Downtown.
Hampden is hot, hon.
Dahlia Kaminsky was showing off Patterson Park, pointing out rehabbed houses that have emerged from under their old Formstone, when a real estate agent called her cell phone to ask if one could be had for $120,000 or less.
Her answer would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
"Oh gosh - there'd be nothing in that price range," said Kaminsky, sales and marketing manager for the Patterson Park Community Development Corp., whose homes are being purchased for triple their 1999 average. "We couldn't even come close."
It's a turnaround neighborhood in a turning-around city, though the comeback is not by any means complete.
Home values in Baltimore - battered in the 1990s by drugs, violent crime, real estate scams, population drain and recession - are seeing a resurgence that surprises even the housing experts. The average sale price of a city home rose 59 percent from 1999 through last year, 18 percentage points above the national average and nearly equal to the region as a whole, according to real estate agent data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
The city is developing a spine - an uninterrupted swath of ZIP codes with at least 60 percent price appreciation that runs from the waterfront to North Baltimore via the Jones Falls Expressway.
But fast appreciation in hot neighborhoods is helping to hide trouble on the blighted east and west ends of the city. If you add in for-sale-by-owner homes, average prices dropped in two city ZIP codes, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University found. And it's even worse when the effects of inflation are calculated.
But at the same time, far more neighborhoods are improving than once did. Since 2002, according to MRIS, the average price of a home in Baltimore has risen faster than in its suburbs - at a time when the number of city home sales jumped by a fifth.
"We've always known Baltimore City life was a great deal," said Tracy Gosson, executive director of Live Baltimore, an independent nonprofit organization founded in 1997 to market the city. "Now we can say it's a great value. ... I don't care how much somebody loves a neighborhood; if they think they're going to lose money, they're not going to buy."
Baltimore in the 1990s was caught in the throes of what housing advocate Charlie Duff called its worst real estate decade since the Depression. Even five years ago, the city had only islands of prosperity. Now housing experts see a significant and hopeful change.
"The good neighborhoods are starting to grow together," said Duff, president of Jubilee Baltimore Inc., a nonprofit housing and community development organization.
The ZIP codes that saw the biggest jumps in price between 1999 and last year were clustered around the harbor - the ones that include Fells Point and Canton. Both areas are up more than 140 percent, not including the parts that reach beyond the city. But the neighborhoods next-door, with no water in sight, are feeling considerable ripple effects - Patterson Park being just one example.
"The areas further away are becoming very attractive to people who ... have a lot of money," said Barry R. Glazer, a broker for Century 21 Downtown.
Digg
Twitter
Facebook
StumbleUpon
