By Christopher Briem, on February 16th, 2012
I was told my blog here needs more white space. I am not sure this post will be an improvement, but here are some random hits from numbers talked about over the last week and a half.
So if I were Allegheny County and I were doing my due diligence defending itself in almost any appeal of a commercial property valuation I would start with this chart which is awfully clear. Since I am pretty sure real estate is a very fixed-cost investment… a roughly 25% decline in vacancy rate has to have a much bigger percentage gain on net profits for almost every office rental in the county. It is a remarkably positive trend no matter.
One of my first posts here some years ago mentioned the likely displacement of local bingo hall revenue that will result from the then notional casino. Those stories have begun. Trib: Alle-Kiski area bingo halls feel burned.
Speaking of casinos… the Cleveland casino is now slated to open May 14th. When there will also be a casino in Lawrence County I just don’t track enough to know.
So you might read this story on the latest from the Pittsburgh pension fund and think things are good: Pittsburgh’s pension fund shows some recovery. Of course if you do the division the numbers work out to the pension fund being up by just under 3%. See the problem? Consider it was a great quarter for the markets and the Dow was up over 12% over the same period. So if my math is right and if you presume this trend continues unabated the pension fund will be fully funded in just over 4 years. That’s great. Of course it also would mean that the Dow would be hitting 70,000 or so at the same time. Hmmm….
Did you know the Pirates are setting attendance records? and h/t to Otis White for pointing out what may be required reading here from MinnPost.com on what some are computing as the “Psychic Benefit” of professional sports. Double Yoi$
obligatory mention of Marcellus Shale.. and following up on the post last week of how the government once tested atomic bombs for fracturing shale for natural gas extraction. I see that the upcoming big shale conference is at the Greenbrier. What is the Greenbrier known for? It was the fallback captial if the US congress needed to evacuate Washington and continue operations even in the event of nuclear war. Dots?
On Marcellus is an insightful article from the Towanda Daily Review about how Chesapeake recently sent a letter out explaining they are going to be taking out of royalty payments the costs of getting the gas to market.. and what will really hit the bottom line for some folks is that that they are going to do so retroactively going back more than a year. So when you couple the retroactive amount with the record low price of gas to begin with.. I am thinking some folks are not going to have any royalty payments for some time?? and you gotta love the company’s only non-comment on their letter to land-owners… it says their letter is “self-explanatory”. That PR consultant deserves a bonus.
But hey, Chesapeake has some big cash issues.. I guess it is only fair to pass some of those troubles on to the landowners. Moving on……
In a new analysis the Pittsburgh region gets an ‘A’ for the degree of white-Latino residential segregation here. Sort of..
I’m just connecting dots in my head.. but Port Authority transit cuts imminent.. Downtown office vacancy low and declining… big retail like Macy’s Downsizing. It all comes together for me in this story out of Cleveland.
and last, but not least… h/t to Bram for pointing out the WashPo’s coverage on the state of cupcakism in the US. Remember it was not long ago that we were so desparate for some ’sign’ of change in Pittsburgh that we obsessed on the metaphor of what the cupcake craze’s arrival in Pittsburgh meant. and yes, it was an obsession.
last last… and the best local economic news I read is that someone is at least thinking of saving HEMAP.
By Christopher Briem, on February 13th, 2012
So before you read further… quickly guess at what county in Southwestern Pennsylvania has the 2nd most lucrative jobs in region? Allegheny County has been #1 for some time, if not as far back as it matters.. but #2 is………..
Just a random factoid the Bureau of Economic Analysis which came out with just before the new year with data on compensaton by industry in 2010. Below is what it says for regional counties in terms of average compensation per job. Follow the link for more on the definitions of compensation, which includes more than just wages received. Also note this is compensation per job by place of work, which is different from most labor force stats you see which are complied by place of residence. That makes a big difference when you look at differences across counties within the metro region.
Total Average Compensation Per Job, 2010
| Allegheny, PA |
$60,374 |
| Armstrong, PA |
$45,799 |
| Beaver, PA |
$47,757 |
| Butler, PA |
$51,208 |
| Fayette, PA |
$40,891 |
| Greene, PA |
$59,411 |
| Indiana, PA |
$46,941 |
| Lawrence, PA |
$44,567 |
| Washington, PA |
$52,585 |
| Westmoreland, PA |
$46,423 |
So what will be interesting will be to see when the next round of data comes out for 2011 is if Greene County edges past Allegheny County for the highest average compensation in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The gap between the two counties, which have been #1 and #2 in this list for the last decade, has converged quickly over the last 4 years. Lest anyone jump to conclusions thinking it is somehow all or even mostly shale gas related… if you look back over the decade in this specific data set, which goes back to 2001, you will see that even in 2001 Greene County was solidly #2 in this ranking of highest average compensation among the 10 counties in the region. So it isn’t really a new pattern at all, even if it is surprising.
and did you guess right?
By Christopher Briem, on February 6th, 2012
So I lied. I did. But don’t expect much more this week.
Anyway we are getting there.. albeit slowly. Read the PG piece today carefully please: Allegheny County reassessment favors properties with higher prices, review finds…. and the penultimate comment. :-0 Seriously though, I would concur with and beyond what the PG is observing in their ward by ward level analysis. In fact the regressivity of property assessments is a bit starker than you can see when looking ward by ward as they do. Ward by ward tend to even out what is clearly true that the new assessment values are progressively more under assessed (or is the semantics better described as regressively more) for higher valued properties. By the time you get to $300K properties it becomes undeniable yet those are some of the angriest people out there.. at least from whom I hear from directly.
BTW.. note also relevant PG letter to the editor today on topic.
This is entirely an artifact of self-selection, but it is remarkable how many home owners in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill or environs have talked to me about how their own properties were overassessed. Look at the Post Gazette numbers and you begin to see what is incontrovertible that pretty much everything valued over 150K (I would put the point lower actually) is under assessed. As you get into higher valuations the level of underassessment can be quite large. You can go back and look at my own graphing of sales value to new assessment numbers and for properties valued over 100K or so there just are very very few sales in 2010 that came in at values below new assessment values. Virtually all sales transactions are coming in above the new assessment values and far above the old assessment values.
Just a point in passing, but note the clear PG point: “properties that recently sold for between $100,000 and $150,000 were, on average, accurate.”
What the PG analysis does not get into at all is how under assessed the higher valuations are in the current assessments. I think equally incontrovertible is the observation that the base-year assessments currently in use higher valued properties are far more under assessed than in the new numbers. I wish they dug into the comparison of old assessment values to current market values which they mostly skipped in the piece today. But I suspect they will be at this for some time. I do with they did this separately for residential and commercial parcels, but that is more judgment call than anything else. Just lots of different things going on in commercial markets than residential markets in the region.
A point in there is what we should all be focusing on. There is no doubt that the county’s preferred method of ‘fixing’ assessment values though the appeals process is just not a fair way to fix more than extreme cases. If there are systematic problems you want to do it uniformly because the access to quality appeals is going to be highly self-selected with income. I hope someone tracks the appeals process to see if any value changes make the inequity issues being observed better.. or if things wind up worse in the end.
Also with appeals there is a bigger deal. One of the big problems with the political rhetoric of late is that I am speculating most school districts and municipalities are being spooked out of doing their own fiduciary responsibility and appealing the obviously low valued assessments. Just as individuals will appeal their own valuations to get a fair assessment.. if no taxing body appeals the obvious underassessments there are significant tax revenues being left on the table. But I bet the political climate prevents that routine administrative action from taking place. How big a deal could it be? Well.. just looking at the Post Gazette’s own data.. just looking at the 14th ward alone it says the average underassessment to market is 9% on an average market value of 287K. I’ll add a number that there are 10,718 parcels in the 14thWard… so you can do the multiplication of what the total value lost to tax revenues is notionally if you want. That is just one ward mind you. Someone should do the calculation of what the tax revenue lost in the current base year assessments is for the same set of properties which is going to be a much bigger number. Maybe the county should be assisting local school districts in identifying potentially over assessed parcels and assisting with those appeals. Probably not.
Which gets to my comment in that. Property per property the underassessment of the higher valued homes has a far bigger impact on tax revenues at the end of the day. So even fixing half of that underassessment will result in millage adjustments that will in the end benefit lower valued homes that I bet are proportionally higher to lower valued parcels.
and at the end of the day we just miss the forest for the trees. Set aside the level of accuracy in the assessments, new or old, take a look at that table and the average sales value of property in Knoxville! Isn’t that the story here in the big picture.
For the folks really parsing this. I like the fact the PG looked at the most recent sales, though I wold prefer folks parse commerical and residential parcels separately. There just are some very different things going on in commercial markets here than in a lot of our residential neighborhoods. Also from what I read in the court filings the cutoff of sales data for this assessment happened early in 2011 and more reflects valuations from 2010 or before. Given there is little dispute some neighborhoods are seeing appreciation in the most recent years, it begs a situation where some folks might really want this assessment to conclude quickly. If we do this next year again those in appreciating neighborhoods may see even bigger changes than they are seeing now. At least that is what the PG’s version of this all is saying to me.
and for thos really wondering.. it’s Newark airport.. what else am I supposed to do? Those who have been here understand. Though I have to say it is a far nicer terminal than when I first flew through 30 years ago flying Peoples Express and buying the ticket on the plane. Can you imagine what TSA would say if someone tried to restart that business model?!
By Christopher Briem, on February 1st, 2012
OK.. I can’t resist this one. It’s just floating up there.
EPR has this story on County Councilman Matt Drozd upset over the valuations of 4 vacant properties he owns in the city. Their inconsistent valuation is evidence that the whole assessment is kaput. He really seems to say that his new property valuations are evidence that the reassessment of all 580 thousand properties in the county must be wrong.
So let’s see. Indeed Mr. Drozd owns 4 vacant properties on Perrysville Ave. Technically one is owned by him, and 3 others by DROZD DEVELOPMENT & CONSTRUCTION CORP. Here they are in the current assessment records.
The source of anger it seems is that all 4 properties were indeed assessed similarly at ($2000, $2100, $2,200 and $2,000) respectively. Yet the new assessments: $6200, $1000, $8000 and $8800. Egads. what is up with that? We’ll come back to the $1,000 valued parcel in a minute, but the other prices all may make a lot more sense than you think.
First off, despite what is quoted in the article, they are not identical.. at least not in the parcel record which is consistent with the maps/shapes of these parcels.. The Sq. foot of each are: 2080, 2618, 2925 and 2800 . So for the three of them, the assessment per square foot is much more consistent with the new valuations than with the old. An error?
Then…. Are these recent purchases? No, it seems. One bought in 1980. Another couple bought in 1994. So they have remained vacant land in the city for literally decades. What were they bought for? $450, $2,275, $2,275 and $4,323. So he paid very different prices on them, maybe it makes sense they have slightly different values now?
Funny thing right when you think about it. When he bought decades ago there was a land tax in the city of Pittsburgh so he likely had to pay the split tax which really hit vacant land harder than other properties. He did well when the reassessment came in and got rid of the split tax in the city at the time.
So the property listed as $1000? It is the only property listed as having no utilities and no off street parking. I don’t see how 2 of them have off street parking as it is… All seem to have some hillside issues. Maybe if the good Councilman corrects the parking data on the property cards as they have shown for the last decade on those two properties he might get a big tax break administratively… no need to go to a formal appeal even. Though what I really think is happening is that the low valued property is one that has signed away an easement for this billboard. If I am right it is another reason the parcels are not homogenous and clearly a disamenity for one of them… if I got the spot right which is unclear.
I’d ask for a commission on that advice for the savings he will get.. but it just can be much. The county tax bill on each property now comes to about $9.38 per year. With the 2% for paying early, and he does pay early each year it comes down to $9.19. Works out to 76 cents per month. So 45 cents postage on the letter back to the county represents almost 5% of his entire tax bill. I guess since he works for the county part-time, he might just drop it off and save the postage.
But this is the entire point of Henry George’s land tax. Property in the city undeveloped is not supposed to happen. So sitting on 4 city parcels for decades with taxes so low that there is no incentive to either develop or sell to someone who is willing to develop is exactly what you don’t want to happen for a city parcel. Now with the new values jumping several hundred percent he might have to pay $25 in tax annually to the county. Granted a bit more to the city and school district, but still.
and since everything gets tied together in Pittsburgh. The nano-tempest over what percentage of Pittsburgh property owners who will see their taxes will go down with the reassessment?? Well, I excluded properties with previous values under $3K precisely to exclude the many parcels like these that just are not the point when you see the news interviewing long time residents worried they wont be able to pay their new tax bills. These 4 parcels showed up as 4 datapoints in the other calculation.. not mine… so implicitly weighted the same as 4 life long residents elsewhere in city. Does that make sense?
In the end though.. what looks to me like a prime example of the new assessments doing a lot better than previous values is turned on it’s head. In this case the old values sure seem to have been done a bit superficially and clearly didn’t reflect what was different about the parcels. Now that has been corrected, it is deemed to be evidence of gross error???
By Christopher Briem, on January 30th, 2012
So this is interesting and no, this isn’t really about assessments. I mean, it is about assessments, but there are so many bigger issues rolled into this new legal development.
In the new litigant a week merry-go-round in Judge Wettick’s courtroom (it really must be getting crowded), the latest is the (collective) property owner of one R.J. Casey Industrial Park who has a slew of issues.
One of many points is a contention that it is against Pennsylvania’s uniformity clause to assess commercial property differently than residential property which is indeed how it is done here and most everywhere else. Problem with that is that commercial properties across the state have been assessed different than residential properties for decades. So I will let the attorneys fight over that one, it is just one of the issues.
Then they seem to point out the dearth of information on the assessment. Here are points 16 and 17 in their filing:
16. Regarding commercial properties, the Property Record Cards available for purchase on the Third Floor of the County Office Building, do not contain any information on the New Assessments.
17. Accordingly, unlike residential property owners, commercial property owners evaluating their New Assessments have no access to any information that the County used to determine the New Assessments.
Lots of capitals in that, but to be sure I feel their pain. Though I do get a chuckle of someone really digging up (and dusting off) a property record card and expecting to find much relating to the latest machinations written down in ink. Are those things still written in cursive? For the record, the online information is just a small part of what what went into determining new residential values. I see no reduced form from any of the many regressions that were used. ‘Comps’ are at most part of the equation and many overinterpret their role in the assessment I am pretty sure. There is a funny story back from when the original 2001 Sabre numbers came out which didn’t really used comps the same way CLT did. The county web site did not list any ‘comps’ for a property, but people so expected to see them that eventually the web site was altered to show a few comparable properties that were picked ex post… though the properties listed really had no specific input into setting a particular property value becuase of the way the Sabre Systems algorithms worked. (that is a very short version of a very very long story.. but I digress).
To be fair I should go back to point 15 in the filing which is clearer and shows they did start out digitial:
15. Regarding Commercial Properties, the county provides no information online regarding the comparable sales used to determine New Assessments or even the gross square footage of an improvement on a commercial property. The County does provide this information online for residential properties.
Well, some information at least. Otherwise ditto.
Nonetheless, the motivation in the end must be to get a lower assessment and a lower tax bill. First off realize that for commercial property across the nation the standard for property assessment is not market valuation that it commonly is for residential values but “Highest and Best Use of the real property”. For a lot of properties that distinction may not be such a big deal, but for some in certain unique locations it could be a big deal.
So here the property owner is upset having seen their assessment for 6 properties jump from $2.7 million to $11.3 million. A scary 340% increase in nominal value. Even with our notional revenue neutrality it works out to a potential tax increase of 280%, so more than enough to be upset. So.. is the increased assessment some gross error on the part of the assessors, or is something else going on? Could it be the highest and best use for the property has changed?
Again, like the Mt. Washington parking space, we may have found the most exceptional case out there. Is there anything unique about this property?
So where is this property? All of the properties at issue in the filing are located in the otherwise depopulated Chateau neighborhood (why we still call it a neighborhood is another issue since literally no more than 10 people live there.. likely a lot less.. unless you count folks sleeping under the slots machines I guess). The properties in question are all along the riverfront a helf mile from the edge of a property recently redeveloped and otherwise known as 777 Casino Dr. Nice new bike trail cuts through the properties in question and there are some nice marinas there it looks like.
So lets ponder the ‘old’ assessment values which everyone likes to refer to as 2011 values which they really are not. They are, again, base year assessments based on what circumtance were in 2002, if not prior. Yes, the 2002 base year assessment really means that the ‘old’ values were based on what the market would bear for a property in 2002. Back then the idea of a casino was not yet really formed, and even if it was there was no thought the casino would be placed over on the North Shore there where the Rivers Casino wound up. Remember Don Barden really came in with a somewhat unexpected bid and was clearly not expected to beat out the Penguins backed project slated for the Lower Hill District, nor the Station Square locations that everyone was focusing on. The location on the North Shore and the big empty plot of land on the North Shore there was fallow and without anyone really expecting much to be made of it anytime soon. I am pretty sure that was a big drag on all nearby real estate. Even the North Shore Connector was so far from completion, and opposition so loud, that it would not have been reasonable for it to have had any impact on real estate values at the time. Now it is on the verge of opening. Could it not have some positive impact on land values anywhere near it.
So now, 10 years later.. it is not to say there is any vast demand for land over there and I am unclear was nearby development the casino has wrought… but would it really be reasonable to think there has not been any impact on nearby property which. In this case the 5 properties in question are add up to either 5 or 10 acres (I am confued because the itemized parce 22-J-67 is listed as being owned by the URA?? even though there is no mention of the URA in the filing??) of land all effectively riverfront parcels though I am not sure if they own all the way to the river itself.
Someday when we ever really see data out of all this I will work up a map of the value per acre along all of Pittsburgh’s rivers before and after the reassessment. It might be interesting to see how the price gradient moving away from the river has changed over time. It would be an interesting factoid at least to see if any of the vast efforts to redevelop our riverfronts have had any meaningful impact capitalized into real estate values of real estate close to the riverfront. Just imagine the counterfactual if they did not and what that would mean?
So there is a bit of Henry Georgism in the highest and best use construct. It is certainly true that the parcels might not currently be ‘worth’ the new higher assessments placed on them.. but if assessments stay low, and taxes stay low, there will that much less incentive to ever fully develop those properties to the “highest value” use. There is only so much riverfront property near the Casino (and the stadia and the science center) to be had. I think that is the core reason commercial properties are assessed differently to begin with.
I’m thinking there is a future casino-annex hotel latent in the geography there. Best and highest value use?
By Christopher Briem, on January 26th, 2012
It’s like the county is giving me programming homework.
OK. All ‘new’ assessment values for City of Pittsburgh commerical parcels are in a comma delimited file online here. Just two fields, Block and lot number (one field) and the 2012 assessment. Scraped with this program if you are interested.
So the top 10 new commercial vauations in the city that I come up with are….
500 Grant St. $242 million
Rivers Casino $242 million
1 PPG Place $238 million
600 Grant St. (aka Steel Tower) $233 Million
301 Grant St. $167 million
1001 Liberty $149 million
500 Ross St. $102 million
210 6th St. $98 million
401 Liberty $93 million
625 Liberty $92 million
So yes, I am sure they will all appeal and some may be overassessed. But it begs some questions on others. Look at the Steel Building (or Steel Tower or 600 Grant St. or whatever its moniker is these days). $233 million dollar assessment, but it is reported to have sold for $250 million last year all while it paid no real estate transfer tax on the deal. In past years the City of School District might have appealed against the assessment, but I suspect the political climate precludes that happening this year. This is speculation, but that steel building sale may be setting the market in the valuations.
Likewise the casino valuation will be appealed (again?), but realize that since it’s base year assessment value set all sort of things have happened. The law changed allowing them to engage in the much more profitable table games was enacted and in a sense that would impact what the property is worth. For an establishment reportedly set up with $800 million in investment, you think it might be worth a third of that in the assessment valuation?
I have an idea.. they would need to change some laws for this to happen, but for anyone really balking at their assessment valuation then the fallback could be to use replacement cost.
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By Christopher Briem, on January 25th, 2012
OK… listen up. Nabobs especially. Latest job counts are out and for December we again have a peak in terms of the highest December job count for the Pittsburgh region ever.
Only May and June of 2001 showed a higher job count than the 1,164,000 raw number just out. So the middle of construction season then when I think there were a few big constuction projects pushing up the data (and before USAirways employment imploded of course). Seasonally adjusted the first part of 2001 had some slightly higher numbers.
So we will call it the post-USAirways peak.
and yes.. just a side story to that number may be the warm weather permitting more construction than is typical to continue through the season.
By Christopher Briem, on January 6th, 2012
I said recently that it would soon be All Assessment All the Time for much of the 2012. It was no joke. Think I could get away with writing on something else today? Guess not. Some quick hits:
PG talks about possible contempt of court outcomes in the latest develoments. Truth is I am quite sure the county (the county itself, or its apparachiki in their official capacities) has most certanly been past the point of possible contempt citations many times in the past in all of this. The problem is, as I am sure Judge has pondered, what exactly does that mean? Does the Judge really want to be in the situation of holding a County Executive in contempt. Then what? Put his top functionaries in jail or fine them? Seems pretty unfair to do it to the underlings, but just impractical to do much to the top dog. Fine the county $ per day for noncompliance? Well then, who is going to collect from the county if they prove to be continuingly uber beligerient? Would county sheriff go around serving the county executive or otherwise enforce the judge’s rulings. All becomes painfully more complex than even it is now and I suspect Judge Wettick has considered all that in detail. Likely would get other common pleas court judges involved in related rulings that could themselves be inconsistent in the end. Not good.
So if it is true that commerical values went up by 71% in the city of Pittsburgh, then to follow up on my post yesterday on the distribution of changes in assessment values, and the winners and losers that result, here some back of the envelope calculations. Roughly I think 60% of city property tax revenue is from residential and 40% from commerical property. If you don’t believe commercial is that much of total revenues then remember this graphic which shows a huge, almost entirely commerical, Downtown impact all by itself. So if residential values went up on average 46% and commercial went up by 71%, it means the overall average is more like 56%. The article says it is 57.89% (there are some significant digits for you). Now go back to the distribution I put up there yesterday. If millage is adjusted based on that calculation even roughly, then it is more lopsided and OVER 2/3rds of all city residents would see their property tax revenues go down resulting from the new assessment, yet people are univerally livid. At the same time barely any public anger over the county’s recent 20% property tax rate increase. I am missing something.
Further it means it is now far less than 5 percent who would expect to see taxes go up by 100 percent or more. More like 3.5 percent now. I really need to see if I can calculate a total estimated savings in $$ from all the homes that lose out if there really is going to be no assesment. Must be some dollar amount to all of that,
For school districts or other municipalities worried about a month delay in getting their property tax revenues through the door… realize that short term municipal paper is yielding close to 1% or less (at an annual rate) interest these days. What does that work out to for a month or so? So all I have to say is: Tax Anticipation Bond. Done all the time in lots of places quite routinely for precisely the same reason as may be needed here (without the soap opera of course). What is routinely dealt with as a matter of routine elsewhere is some inconceivable trauma for us. Can be said for more than assessments of course as well.
and yes.. there will always be assessment mysteries. The Casino which supposedly had well over $400 million in construction costs, something like an $800 million total cost, is still appealing it’s $199 million dollar assessment.. an assessment which I think was set before they got their approval for table games which would impact an income based assessment.
The old RET and older Alcoa building is upset over an assessment increase from 10 to 30 million. This is for an entire skyscraper. Scrap aluminum is pretty expensive these days. Might be 3-4 million in aluminum value alone in there, let alone the value of the XPlorion. That cost a million to install I bet at one point. Whether it counts in the cost of the building these days would not even be a rhetorical question.
On this notion that canceling (I am struggling with the correct verb to describe what actually happened yesterday) a new property assessment will help property values in the county.. what will be the impact of the years of uncertaintly and confusion this is going to have on property values in the future? High taxes are one thing, but not really knowing what taxes will be is another thing altogether. Sometimes the devil you know…
Crystal ball. Barring some quick resolution. If no reassessment I suspect there will be strong patterns in the new (’old new’?, or ‘new, now old’?) assessment numbers that correlate with race in some way which will prompt some sort of filing in Federal court on this and I suspect the Federal bench in town are collectively Wettick supporters. Just a guess.
and just from the archives. October 19, 2009: “We’re here because of the Supreme Court’s mandate to me,” Indeed ……….Ditto
By Christopher Briem, on January 3rd, 2012
Lest we forget some of the bigger stories in all of this. The other day I played with the housing data for the trends across metro areas since 1991. I have renormalized the data to show changes over just the last 5 years. Just fun with numbers, but this is what you get:
So we can quibble over what the Pittsburgh time series means in itself, but clearly some awful awful times in a lot of, if not most, other real estate markets over what is now a half of a decade. So we are not merely talking about a bad month, quarter or even year. Some markets out there are stabilizing, but not all are and by most opining I see projects more pain elsewhere. All while
Anecdotal I know it is.. but if this is not a sign of something weird in local real estate markets I don’t know what is. It is almost done, but there is not one, but THREE new townhomes being squeezed onto this triangle plot of land (below) in Lawrenceville that I thought for sure was undevelopable.It really is kind of remarkable.
View Larger Map
I honestly had imagined a drill of some kind going in on that site. A bit too small I know. Just so Wiz does not feel forgotten: Look at those parcels. Lawrenceville was one of the first parts of the city where the Landmen started to buy up leasing rights for Marcellus shale production within the city of Pittsburgh. By all acounts they have given up for now on city development, but why they started with the densist part of the city is just a bit confusing.
By Christopher Briem, on December 29th, 2011
I really do suspect one could blog/comment/opine daily on assessments in Allegheny from now until… some undefined date long in the future, but who wants to endure that. So to connect a bit the assessment crescendo just beginning with the bigger picture, and for a good end of the year post… just what is going on with Pittsburgh real estate?
Some benchmarking of data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency is below. I should add a note that this is their Purchase Only index of housing prices among the 25 largest MSAs in the nation. This is an index normalized to the beginning of 1991, so the graph is showing relative changes, not actual dollar values in any sense.
Pittsburgh is in fact the current median in that dataset which they label as the 25 largest MSAs, but includes some Metropolitan Divisions as well. Nonetheless, if you bought real estate in Pittsburgh in 1990 it would on average have been a better investment than in half of the other regions. I suspect some here will just refuse to believe that.
It is all unctuous bafflegab I tell you. Über unctuous maybe.. or is it Über bafflegab?
and for the curious, the region tracing out the north face of the Eiger is Miami.
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