After almost two years of focusing this column solely on the housing crisis, I thought I'd turn my attention to some of the positives in today's real estate market.
It's not all bad, and hasn't ever been, really. Even the data on which my Business section reporting heavily depends are often upbeat one day and downbeat the next.
One harbinger of recovery that has appeared as we wait for that all-important spring sales market to bloom - or wilt - is the first-time buyer.
Spurred into action by visions of tax credits, this buyer is critical to the health of every market - especially markets in need of a boost, as this one is. But to be accurate, Leslie Davis says she became a first-time homeowner because "my parents' financial adviser recommended it."
Davis, 29, a Delaware County native, has a bachelor's degree in English from West Chester University and has just begun a paralegal course at Delaware County Community College.
Until July, she had been in the military - Air Force intelligence - for 51/2 years. Thanks to the housing allowance in the new G.I. Bill, veterans who attend school full time can get their rent or mortgage paid in full.
"There is no way I could have done this without" the housing allowance, she says.
Price and location were important to Davis, although the latter was more about being able to get to school and shopping easily, and to have a place to walk her dogs.
She began her search in October, first in the Bella Vista neighborhood of South Philadelphia, where she found prices much higher than she expected and most of what was affordable not to her liking.
"The trinities, I mean, closets with stairs in the middle," she says, describing the tiny rowhouses that line the narrow streets of some older city neighborhoods.
Then the hunt moved closer to home in Delaware County. On a quiet street of twin houses in Aldan, Davis found a Cape Cod-style single with three bedrooms, two full baths, and a basement, for $173,300.
"I really wanted a single, and this is a really nice neighborhood with lots of dogs and close enough to everything that I can walk," she says. Plus, "my little brother is starting college, and he's going to live here with me."
By that point, the original tax credit - $8,000 for qualified first-time buyers - was heading toward a Nov. 30 expiration deadline, and an extension was being debated in Congress.
Davis' agent, Dave Gambardella, was with Weichert Realtors, and one option was to obtain a home loan through the company's mortgage arm.
