A community with many facets

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

Brookhaven - "a community with unity" - is not a quick study.

This month, for instance, the big news is that on Route 352 (or Edgmont Avenue, if you prefer) a Giant and a Lowe's have been added to the 150 businesses already located in this borough of 8,006 people.

Yet Brookhaven also has an artistic side: The borough-sponsored Theater in the Park offered an updated version of Moliere's Tartuffe in the municipal gym on July 14.

Then there's its real estate side: an affordable real estate side, and if you are a first-time home buyer, you do prefer that; a good school district in Penn-Delco, which it shares with Aston and Parkside; and much lower property taxes than a lot of Delaware County communities.

Location?

"It might not be as close to Interstate 95 as Aston," says Barbara M. Mastronardo, associate broker at the Weichert Realtors office in Media, "but you are just a drive down Route 352 to the Blue Route and then 95."

"If you want 'Dining Under the Stars' in Media on Wednesday nights, it is a 10-minute ride," she says.

Many of the streets here in this newish borough - at least by area standards, having incorporated only in 1945 - are named for presidents, or, in the case of Mount Vernon Avenue, a chief executive's home.

Those streets are in Dutton Mill Estates, a neighborhood that was built in 1964 and features single-family detached homes on quarter-acre lots.

A 1,624-square-foot single listed for sale at $255,000 has four bedrooms and 11/2 baths.

Dutton Mill Estates is one of the pieces of a very small puzzle that, when completed, produces a snapshot of Brookhaven's home-buying pattern.

Many buyers - a lot of them from the southern portions of Philadelphia - come to Brookhaven looking for inexpensive homes and the school district. (Brand-new Coebourn is the borough's elementary school.)

"The least-expensive way to start is with a condo at Hilltop or Hilltop Summit," which also features townhouses, Mastronardo says.

A two-bedroom, two-bath condo at Hilltop Summit, for example, is listed at $120,301 on Zillow.

Those who are looking to finance with a Federal Housing Administration loan should be aware that units in Hilltop, the original planned community, don't qualify, Mastronardo says, because firewalls reach just the attic, not the roof.

Hilltop Summit units do qualify for FHA loans, she says, adding that both it and Hilltop have large concentrations of singles, as well as tennis courts and a swimming pool.

When buyers in Hilltop decide that they need more room - a backyard, especially - they tend to head for the townhouses of Cambridge Square or Dutton Mill Estates, she says.

"Cambridge Square is higher-end, good medium-sized houses," she says.

Brookhaven's housing inventory is aging, says Mastronardo, "but if the buyer correctly perceives the value of the property, an as-is sale that will be improved, not flipped, will become even more valuable."

"This is an older community with nothing new being built in quantity, so that means it is a prime location for first-time buyers," she says.

Currently, there are 37 active listings, ranging in price from $65,000 to $339,900, she says. Twenty-seven sales are pending, at prices from $54,900 to $280,000.

In the last six months, 80 houses have gone to settlement, with prices ranging from $28,500 for a "fixer-upper or foreclosure" to $310,000, Mastronardo says.

The average price of a home here is $180,000, she says, with an average of 75 days on the market.

Because of the 1 percent earned-income tax, "property taxes are reasonable by Delaware County standards," Mastronardo says: "A $250,000 house in the Chichester School District will have $6,000 to $7,000 a year in property taxes, while the same one in Penn-Delco will be $3,000 to $5,000."

Brookhaven has its own police force, the business district that runs along Route 352, and many active community groups, she added.

And "the borough's children and adults are involved in just about any sport you can think of."

aheavens@phillynews.com

215-854-2472@alheavens

StartText

Population: 8,006 (2010)

Median household income: $64,337 (2013)

Area: 1.7 square miles

Settlements in the last three months: 47

Homes for sale: 37

Average days on market: 75

Median sale price: $183,000

Housing stock: 3,595 units, mostly older.

School district: Penn-Delco

SOURCES: U.S. Census Bureau; Barbara M. Mastronardo, Weichert Realtors, Media; Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach RealtorsEndText