Clearing the Record:

In the annual home-price survey published in The Inquirer on Sept. 23, the median price for Yeadon, Delaware County, was shown to have dropped 47 percent from 2005 to 2006. Based on our discovery of an unusual circumstance, we have recalculated sales data for Yeadon, which now shows a 15 percent increase during that same period.
Our annual survey of sales in the eight-county Philadelphia area is prepared using information obtained from the city, the suburban counties in Pennsylvania, and the State of New Jersey.
In analyzing sales in Yeadon, the numbers showed that 177 condominiums had been sold en masse in 2006, for roughly $39,000 each, lowering the median price for all homes sold there to $60,000, from $113,500 in 2005. (The median price is the middle value — half the homes sell for more, half for less.)
But it has became apparent that the sales numbers — while accurate — did not tell the whole story. It turns out that the condos sold, registered in the Delaware County data as individual transactions, were not actually condos, but rental apartments.
Yeadon Borough Manager Peter Brusco explained that about a dozen years ago, the owner of the property, an apartment complex known as Revere Crossing, had hoped to convert the rental units to condos and had the units officially designated as such. County officials confirmed the units were still on the books as condominiums.
Because we exclude apartments from our price survey, as well as anything that is an arms-length transaction — for example, a $1 transfer of a house from a mother to a son — we have recalculated Yeadon’s 2006 numbers based on 195 sales, up from 185 in 2005.
The median price was $130,000, an increase of 15 percent over 2005’s median of $113,500.
-  Joanne McLaughlin
Real Estate editor

Portents of economic doom darken the national real estate picture daily. Between subpar housing-start numbers, the subprime-mortgage debacle, and crashing prices in California, Nevada and Florida, it's hard to find good news anywhere.

Anywhere but here, it seems.

Observers of the local real estate market say the eight-county Philadelphia region has so far managed to dodge the crashing prices that have beset some other major U.S. metropolitan areas.

Clearly, the yearly double-digit price increases and same-day sales that characterized the hot market of 2000 to 2005 are over.

But an Inquirer review of home-sales data for 2006 and the first eight months of 2007 shows prices here are holding steady or rising slightly, even as sales volume drops and time on the market ticks up.

"While the market has cooled, we have yet to see any significant price declines - yet," said Kevin C. Gillen, a Wharton School research fellow and vice president of Econsult, a Philadelphia economic-consulting firm.

For sellers, that's the upside. For buyers, it's the wide selection of houses to choose from.

"This is a market you can take your time with," said Steve Storti, senior vice president for marketing with Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors. "With so much for sale, there is not an extreme sense of urgency about buying now - because you might miss out on a better house."

During the last seven quarters, the data show, median-price increases in the eight counties ranged from 0.6 percent in Bucks County to 11 percent in Chester County. That followed two years of increases ranging from 9 to 17 percent in the suburbs - levels that had not been seen since the real estate boom of the mid-1980s. (The median is the middle value: Half the houses sold for more, half for less.)

The number of days a house spends on the market before it sells continued to climb, though. Currently, the data show, the regionwide average is 66 days, up from 53 last September.

What makes the Philadelphia area less vulnerable to the huge fluctuations in home prices that other parts of the country are experiencing?

Lots of people aren't moving into the region, as they are in Las Vegas, Florida and Southern California. The result, Storti said, is that we are not trying to anticipate demand by building speculative housing, as those areas have.

This region's diverse economy is not dependent on home construction. The local staples - health care, pharmaceuticals and education - all are growing service industries.

People here tend to be conservative about how they finance home purchases. An Inquirer analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows that subprime loans are not as prevalent in the eight-county region as they are in comparable metropolitan areas.

Compared with other parts of the country, the number of foreclosures and mortgages in delinquency relative to the number of loans is low here, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosures.

No one is willing to predict how long this region can stay above the national fray, although in the 20 years The Inquirer has been analyzing home prices, the words flat and stable have been most often applied to this market.

"It will be a while before we hit the turning point," Gillen said. "There are still a number of major adjustable-rate mortgage resets coming over the next six to eight months, which will determine how long it takes the lenders to stabilize themselves.

"With national credit conditions becoming tighter" even as long-term fixed interest rates decline, he added, "this will affect local conditions here, regardless of what we can do about our own market."