By the airport's side, homes in first-timers' price range

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

You hear it at least several times an hour on the radio: an announcer giving the current temperature at Philadelphia International Airport.

You probably ask yourself: Who cares? No one lives at the airport, right?

Wrong. Well, sort of wrong. PHL may have no human full-time residents, but its international terminal, the western end of the airfield, and runways 9L/27R and 9R/27L are in Tinicum Township, Delaware County.

Tinicum - with its more familiar addresses, Essington and Lester - is home to slightly more than 4,000 people.

Real estate agents in this part of the region usually note the distance to I-95 and the airport when they are marketing houses.

No need for that in Tinicum. In fact, residents have the advantage of knowing how to use local streets to get around traffic jams on I-95. Plus, SEPTA's Airport Line is easily accessible from the township's neighborhoods.

This is not a big residential real estate market, says Barbara M. Mastronardo, associate broker at Weichert Realtors in Media, who sold her first house in Essington 25 years ago.

"It was a duplex," Mastronardo says. "The owner lived on one floor and rented out the other, which made perfect sense when the interest rates were 18 percent."

It also makes sense in a market looking to lure more millennial buyers.

At the Urban Land Institute's spring conference in Philadelphia last month, Linda Mamet, of the Tri Pointe Group in California, said that for millennials, equity and financial readiness are major concerns when buying homes.

Tri Pointe built two homes in Las Vegas designed for millennials earning $75,000 a year, with spaces that can be rented so buyers can easily afford them, Mamet said.

Tinicum has ready-made variations that don't cost in the low $300,000s. The median sale price here in the last three months is $80,500 (half the houses sold for more, half for less).

"Good housing stock for an investor-type environment," Mastronardo says - and for millennials looking for a first house.

There are single homes here, many of which have been converted to duplexes and triplexes over the years.

"Along Corinthian Avenue, there are nothing but duplexes that are well-received when they go on the market," she says. Also in the mix are rowhouses and twins.

The price range of the 11 houses that have settled in the last 90 days is $36,000 to $177,000, she says.

Pending sales (those under agreement) range from $48,000 to $750,000. The latter is a package deal with residential and commercial uses and a vacant lot, Mastronardo says.

Nine houses are for sale here, some distressed but others on nice tree-lined streets in the Westinghouse Village neighborhood, a planned community designed and built just before World War I.

A lot of places say they have it all, but Tinicum Township - founded in 1643 as the capital of New Sweden - does.

It has the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, the Philadelphia Seaplane Base, and long-term parking lots. It has industry, the long-shuttered Lazaretto quarantine hospital, Gov. Printz Park, and budget hotels for airline crews' layovers.

It has long been the place with the best access to the river for Delaware County, says Mastronardo, whose father and uncle used the Tinicum ramps for their boats.

The Corinthian Yacht Club on Second Street, founded by Philadelphia's elite in 1892, remains a fixture on the riverfront, as do the West End Boat Club and the Golden Point Marina and Yacht Club.

Still, "the economy is geared to the airport," two-thirds of which sits in Tinicum, Mastronardo says.

After litigation and negotiations, the township, Interboro School District, and the City of Philadelphia came to an agreement in 2015 on an airport expansion that had originally threatened 72 homes and a forced relocation of 300 residents. Under its terms, no one was resettled.

One of the neat things about Tinicum is the "mom and pop" restaurants, Mastronardo says: Lehman's for steaks; Mel's Diner; Big Joe's; Monaghan's Irish Pub; Kelly's Corner; McBride's Bar and Grill; and, of course, Romano's Stromboli Pizzeria, where, legend says, that inside-out "pizza with a hoagie inside," was born.

Tinicum By the Numbers:

Population: 4,091 (2010)

Median household income: $48,452

Area: 8.8 square miles

Settlements in the last three months: 11

Homes for sale: 9

Average days on market: 103

Median sale price: $80,500

Housing stock: 1,876 units; singles, rowhouses, twins, duplexes and triplexes

School district: Interboro

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; Barbara M. Mastronardo, Weichert Realtors, Media

aheavens@phillynews.com

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@alheavens