Town By Town: Bucolic Beverly an intimate, affordable community on the upswing

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

Real estate agent Tomeki J. McDuffie calls Beverly "the itty-bitty city."

Perhaps that's because cities are usually much larger than this Burlington County community hugging the Delaware River between Delanco and Edgewater Park.

With a population of about 2,600, Beverly also is physically one of New Jersey's smallest cities - 502 acres, about the size of your typical Philadelphia-area borough, which it was until 1857.

Beverly National Cemetery, the burial ground for Union soldiers who had died from their wounds at an Army hospital in Beverly City, actually is almost entirely in Edgewater Park Township.

As with neighboring towns such as Riverton and Burlington City, Beverly's largest houses are along the river, with an unobstructed view of Neshaminy State Park on the Pennsylvania side.

These homes often sell for $500,000 to $600,000, says Howard Lipton, a broker associate with Weichert Realtors in Burlington.

"Some of those are 100 years old and older," Lipton says, adding that the housing in the rest of Beverly is in 40-year-old-plus developments and costs about $150,000.

"Most of the houses are definitely affordable," he says. The market is "steady overall."

At the Five Points (the intersection of Warren, Cooper and Bridge Streets) are located several businesses: a pizzeria, a liquor store, a Chinese takeout, an auto-body shop, and a gas station, as well as the post office. McDuffie and Lipton said a Family Dollar store is being built on the site of a former Beneficial Bank building on Cooper Street.

On Pennsylvania Avenue, the stop for the River Line linking Trenton and Camden serves both Beverly and Edgewater Park.

"It is a cute little place," McDuffie says of Beverly, where, as a result of the prolonged real estate downturn and South Jersey's bumper crop of distressed housing, prices have been in decline for a few years.

"There are some beautiful historic houses in Beverly, but a lot of homes have been neglected in the last few years," says McDuffie, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach Realtors in Mount Laurel.

There are just 21 houses for sale, and "they tend to spend a lot of time on the market," she says.

Thirteen properties went to settlement in the second quarter of 2015, compared with six in the same period of 2014, ranging in price from $31,000 to $164,000, Lipton says.

"A rancher in top condition can sell for as much as $199,000," he says.

Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach's HomExpert Market Report says that it took an average of 159 days in second quarter 2015 to sell a house in Beverly, compared with 60 days in the same period of 2014.

In a comparison with surrounding towns, Beverly's second-quarter median price of $135,000 was the same as in Edgewater Park and Delanco - and the latter community has some newer housing stock. Riverton has the highest median price at $248,000; Burlington City's $99,000 is the lowest.

As with many communities, distressed housing has been an issue in Beverly. But lately, Lipton says, there has been movement to get those properties back into circulation.

"The houses with the lowest prices are foreclosures," he says, averaging $31,000 to $70,000, but lately investors have been coming into Beverly, fixing up houses, and either selling or renting them.

"Getting two or three of them redone and back on the market is a good thing for the neighborhoods they are in," Lipton says.

McDuffie currently is listing a distressed property that is being purchased by a company that specializes in tax foreclosures.

The list price is $109,000, "but it needs a ton of work," she says. "I turned down a lot of offers from investors for $15,000."

As with all South Jersey communities, property taxes tend to be high, and tend not to come down when property values decline, McDuffie says.

Still, both she and Lipton believe that Beverly has potential.

"As foreclosures sell, the situation will become more stable," he says.

Lipton is seeing more of what he calls "the retail user" availing themselves of the Federal Housing Administration's 203K mortgage program to buy houses, fix them up, and live in them.

"That is a positive sign," he says.

aheavens@phillynews.com

215-854-2472@alheavens

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Population: 2,577 (2010)

Median household income: $52,919 (2013)

Area: 502 acres

Settlements in the last three months: 13

Houses for sale: 21

Average days on market: 159

Median sale price: $135,000

Housing stock: 1,086 units, the newest about 40 years old.

School district: Beverly K-8; Palmyra High School

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach Realtors HomExpert Market ReportEndText