New Report: Greater Center City Housing: 2021, Building on Resiliency

Posted by Center City District on May 11, 2021

Greater Center City housing markets showed extraordinary resilience in the last year. While the pandemic impaired many parts of Philadelphia’s economy, the housing sector recovered quickly citywide, buoyed by historically low interest rates and continued interest in city living.

While the pandemic impaired many parts of Philadelphia’s economy, both Greater Center City and citywide housing markets showed extraordinary resilience in the last year, buoyed by historically low interest rates and continued interest in city living. Construction, sales and leasing plummeted from March to June 2020 but after local government permitted construction to resume in late spring, as the first wave of the pandemic slowed, leasing and sales quickly rebounded. In Greater Center City and immediately adjacent areas, there were more new units under construction at the end of 2020 than the end of 2019, driven by local population growth and the movement of people from other metro areas into Philadelphia.

This Center City District/Central Philadelphia Development Corporation (CCD/CPDC) report, Greater Center City Housing 2021: Building on Resiliency, documents the location for new developments, tracks sales and leasing patterns over the last decade and examines the demographic and economic trends that create the growing demand for housing in Philadelphia. The report also benchmarks Philadelphia against other northeast cities and highlights the challenge of affordability in many of Philadelphia’s lower income neighborhoods.

Read more and download report.