Clearing the Record:
In the annual home-price survey published in The Inquirer on Sept. 23, the median price for Yeadon, Delaware County, was shown to have dropped 47 percent from 2005 to 2006. Based on our discovery of an unusual circumstance, we have recalculated sales data for Yeadon, which now shows a 15 percent increase during that same period.
Our annual survey of sales in the eight-county Philadelphia area is prepared using information obtained from the city, the suburban counties in Pennsylvania, and the State of New Jersey.
In analyzing sales in Yeadon, the numbers showed that 177 condominiums had been sold en masse in 2006, for roughly $39,000 each, lowering the median price for all homes sold there to $60,000, from $113,500 in 2005. (The median price is the middle value — half the homes sell for more, half for less.)
But it has became apparent that the sales numbers — while accurate — did not tell the whole story. It turns out that the condos sold, registered in the Delaware County data as individual transactions, were not actually condos, but rental apartments.
Yeadon Borough Manager Peter Brusco explained that about a dozen years ago, the owner of the property, an apartment complex known as Revere Crossing, had hoped to convert the rental units to condos and had the units officially designated as such. County officials confirmed the units were still on the books as condominiums.
Because we exclude apartments from our price survey, as well as anything that is an arms-length transaction — for example, a $1 transfer of a house from a mother to a son — we have recalculated Yeadon’s 2006 numbers based on 195 sales, up from 185 in 2005.
The median price was $130,000, an increase of 15 percent over 2005’s median of $113,500.
- Joanne McLaughlin
Real Estate editor