Homeowners desperate for help | Real Estate Newsletter

Homeowners who need some help can’t catch a break.

In early July, I wrote about how Pennsylvanians who applied for assistance to pay their mortgages, utility bills, and property taxes were facing foreclosure as they waited for an agency to review their applications.

Now, an investigation shows that the Pennsylvania Homeowner Assistance Fund’s problems are bigger than state officials originally thought.

Keep scrolling for that story and to see how local investors say they were scammed by real estate influencers, learn what the region’s home prices are doing, and peek into a “near-perfect” custom-built retirement home in Kennett Square.

📮 What’s a fun/quirky/unusual home feature you’ve had or would like to have? (My former landlord took down the swing that was in the living room of my apartment before my lease started. I would have liked to keep it.) For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me.

— Michaelle Bond

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Earlier this summer, housing advocates were desperate to spread the word: homeowners who applied for up to $50,000 in assistance and had been waiting to hear back for months had to re-register because of problems with the mortgage relief program.

Thousands hadn’t gotten the message as they anxiously hoped for a piece of the $350 million in pandemic assistance that the federal government gave Pennsylvania to help homeowners.

Now many homeowners aren’t any closer to getting help than they were at the beginning of the year.

An investigation found:

Read on for more details and homeowners’ stories of facing down foreclosure and going months without water in this investigation into Pennsylvania’s mortgage assistance program.

Greg Parker Jr. tells a story about hustling in his North Philly neighborhood as a teen, then buying his first Philly property in 2005 for about $5,000, and flipping rowhouses until he was making $150,000 a month.

It’s a story the personal finance influencer told to get people to invest in properties and pay to attend his seminars. And hundreds of aspiring investors got swept up in the inspirational message.

Now, many are saying Parker, known online as Big Bizzneesss, scammed them.

Observers say a growing online scam ecosystem preys on low-income, first-time investors.

Some of the people who say they were scammed by Parker and his wife, Danielle, include:

Read on for more details in this report by my colleagues Samantha Melamed and Ryan W. Briggs about how these Philly real estate influencers operate.

You can’t see Carol and Richard Lee’s 2,700-square-foot ranch house from the road.

On the four-acre property in Kennett Square, “you see more wildlife than you do people,” Richard said. And that’s how they like it.

The retired scientists especially enjoy watching birds at the feeders outside their study’s window.

Carol calls their house “the near-perfect retirement home.”

The couple broke ground on their two-bedroom, 2½-bath home in March 2022 and moved in last fall.

Elements of the Tuscan architectural style that Carol has always liked pop up throughout the home. Their son-in-law’s mother was their interior designer.

The kitchen duplicates the layout of Richard’s father’s now-closed Chinatown restaurant, where Richard worked as a kid.

Peek into the couple’s home and see how their grandchildren were key to the house’s design.

Two sisters have made the biggest ever donation to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. The money will help permanently preserve a 24-acre wooded property in Philly’s Upper Roxborough neighborhood.

Question: How much did the sisters donate?

A) $1 million

B) $3 million

C) $5 million

D) $10 million

This story has the answer.

The Philly-area housing market hasn’t completely wilted in the heat. It’s still competitive. Mostly because there’s not a lot out there for buyers.

Homes sold the fastest last month in Chester, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, where the typical property went off the market in less than a week, according to the multiple listing service Bright MLS.

The lack of homes for sale also is propping up prices. Sales prices rose in every county in the Philadelphia metro in July. That includes Philly, where home prices had dipped earlier this year.

🔺 The region’s median sales price in July was $369,000, up a little more than 5% compared to last July.

🔺 The median sales price in Camden County rose more than 12% — the fastest price growth in our area.

🔻 The number of active home listings in the Philly region — 9,155 — was down more than 20% compared to last July.

Higher home prices and mortgage rates haven’t scared off as many buyers as you might think. We’ll see what the end of summer and the fall bring.

Do you know the location this photo shows?

📮 If you think you do, email me back. You and your memories of visiting this spot might be featured in the newsletter.

The Washington Square West condo in last week’s newsletter is under contract for $519,000. Shout out to David T., who came closest in his guess. He’s an appraiser, so he had a leg up on most of you.

I can’t be the only one who’s seen a for-sale sign and been way off when I guessed how much the home was going for when I looked it up online. Maybe together, we’ll get better at guessing.

Enjoy the rest of your week.