This Parkside may be sleepy, but homes are moving

One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in the region's communities.

There are at least three places called Parkside in the Philadelphia region.

The first two are well-known neighborhoods: one in West Philadelphia, a place filled with splendid examples of Victorian architecture; the other in Camden, near the Cooper River and home to Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center.

No. 3 is the Delaware County community that is the subject of today's foray into the real estate market.

Parkside, as Weichert Realtors' associate broker Barbara M. Mastronardo describes it, is a "sleepy little burg." That's immediately obvious from a late-summer visit to the tiny (0.2 square mile) borough abutting Chester and Chester Township on the south and southeast and Brookhaven on the north and west.

"Small but strong" is Parkside's motto, but still large enough to encompass a 7-acre open-space tract called the Wood Lot where one can zone out the world.

Parkside, which has no post office, shares a zip code with Brookhaven, 19105.

With Aston, the two also share the Penn-Delco School District, which levies a 1 percent earned-income tax split 50-50 with the municipality in which a taxpayer lives, Mastronardo says.

Parkside Elementary, within the borough's boundaries, was one of the first schools in Penn-Delco to be replaced with a new building, she notes.

"The district has a great appeal," Mastronardo says. "It is not the county's top-rated district, but it can sure hold its own. It is a nuts-and-bolts district and a real community."

Parkside has a shopping district, but "there is no real industry," Mastronardo says.

What Parkside and a portion of Brookhaven adjacent to it do have, she says, are "multiple housing units that are duplexes," offering an opportunity at private ownership and rental.

"They are still considered residential when it comes to financing considerations, and present a great opportunity for the first-time buyer," she says. Each unit in a duplex has two bedrooms and one bath, and one unit can be rented out to help first-timers defray the cost of carrying a mortgage.

In addition to duplexes, she says, "there are a lot of decent-sized singles, although the inventory is older and [there is] little new construction."

Parkside is "an investor-identified area," she says.

"Investors recognize the value of Parkside, including the value of the Penn-Delco district," she says.

There are 16 active listings here, priced from $59,000 to $188,900, Mastronardo says.

Five sales are pending, at $65,000 to $175,000, "not high end."

In the last 180 days, 21 homes have gone to settlement, from $34,000 to $245,000, and a median sale price of $157,000, "which I believe is high," Mastronardo says.

Sale price is 97.5 percent to 98 percent of last list price, she says - that means the proper price for a house is about 98 percent of what the seller finally agreed to ask for it.

"The basic rule is to price it correctly for the market," Mastronardo says, and Parkside's ratio shows that this is being done in most situations.

"There is obviously pent-up buyer demand," given the chronic shortage of suitable houses on the market, she says. "But they aren't stupid."

"It depends on the buyer's goals and objectives," says Mastronardo. "If you are planning to live in the house and fix it up, you might be willing to pay a little bit more for it."

"The best ally a real estate agent has is an educated client, one who can distinguish between fact and fiction that fills the internet," she says.

"If you are an investor, however, you will look at the bottom line, the mindset no matter where in Delaware County you are looking," she adds. "These are but investors looking to establish a portfolio."

In Delaware County, there are still a few foreclosures and short sales, in which a lender agrees to accept less than it is owed, "but these represent a stressed set of homeowners who, for a variety of reasons, couldn't keep up with mortgage payments on houses for which they might have paid too much," Mastronardo says.

Those distressed properties, however, are "not specific to the price range in Parkside or to the location," she adds.

aheavens@phillynews.com

215-854-2472@alheavens