Town by Town: A place of history
From the moment you step - well, drive - over the line into West Bradford Township from Downingtown or West Chester, you have a sense that just a couple hours poking around isn't doing justice to the place.
One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in the region's communities.
From the moment you step - well, drive - over the line into West Bradford Township from Downingtown or West Chester, you have a sense that just a couple hours poking around isn't doing justice to the place.
Parts of it are very old. Marshallton is filled with more than five dozen buildings, many dating from the 18th century, and is sometimes called West Bradford's first shopping center.
Other parts are as new as Tom Bentley's Saranac community of 34 homes on Crestmont Road.
This blend of old and new is not unique to West Bradford - just about every Chester County municipality drips with history. But there are actually 20 pages of historical information - and a quiz or two - in the "Did You Know" section of West Bradford's website.
The new is not as extensive as in other townships, says Kit Anstey, an associate broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach Realtors in West Chester, just three miles away on Route 322.
"West Bradford is primarily older construction on smaller lots," says Anstey, who fondly recalls his days working as a waiter at the venerable Marshalton Inn in 1966.
The township "really hasn't changed much" in the years since, he says.
"The older single-family houses are mostly bi-levels and split-levels. There are some neighborhoods 35 years [old] or more where the houses are selling from $190,000 to $235,000."
The median sale price so far this year is $304,800 (half the houses sold for more, half for less). There are 34 active listings, 33 of which are single-family detached homes. Forty sold in the last three months; 28 are pending.
The homes in the Saranac development have been selling in the high $400,000s, he says.
The "highly rated" Downingtown Area School District attracts a lot of buyers who are unable to afford West Chester, which is still experiencing rising sale prices and for-sale and rental construction in every nook and cranny that looks developable.
"Newer construction that sells for $675,000 in West Bradford will go for $1 million or more in West Chester," which also benefits from being the Chester County seat, Anstey says.
One of West Bradford's biggest drawbacks is the distance to shopping.
"You have to drive everywhere," he says, again comparing it with West Chester, which is attracting buyers because of its walkability, and to a lesser extent Downingtown, which is experiencing a measure of growth but is not as desirable.
West Bradford "is sort of in the middle of nowhere," says Anstey, who does sell a lot of houses here. "The closest Wawa, I believe, is six miles away, and you need to drive seven or eight miles to get to the Wegmans," near the Exton Bypass of Route 30.
Other than Bentley's Saranac, he says, new construction dates pretty much from the housing-boom years. (The population here grew by nearly 2,000 from 2000 to 2010.)
Toll Bros. built Chestnut Ridge Estates off Romansville Road in 2006: houses of 3,900 square feet on half-acre lots, with four to five bedrooms, 21/2 to 31/2 baths, basements, and three-car attached garages.
Bradford Pointe, off Stouff Road, features 5,000-square-foot houses on half-acre lots.
Tattersall - homes surrounding what is now Broad Run Golfer's Club - were constructed by various builders about 2005. They average 4,200 square feet and are on half-acre lots.
"It had been a single farm," Anstey says, noting that the golf club was sold three times in the last seven or eight years.
During the prolonged real estate downturn, prices of homes fell 10 percent to 25 percent from what they had been at their peak, Anstey says. "New construction that sold for $750,000 to $900,000 during the boom sells for $575,000 to $600,000 now."
One issue that West Bradford is having to deal with is the old Embreeville psychiatric hospital site, closed by the state in 2010 and purchased in 2012 by developers proposing 1,100 housing units and shopping over 25 years.
Many residents are opposed to the plan for the land, most of which is in West Bradford and holds township athletic fields.
Their opposition is expressed on signs reading "No Urban Sprawl" on many lawns in the neighborhood.
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