Home sales strong in South Hills
Slow, steady and healthy are the three best words to describe home sales in Pittsburgh’s South Hills in 2015, according to the West Penn Multi-List, which tracks housing in the 13-county Western Pennsylvania area.
“Overall, sales in the South Hills are up 4.5 percent from a year ago,” said Helen Hanna Casey, president of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, the region’s largest residential brokerage. “More importantly, there’s the growth of new construction projects like Evergreen Village (in Peters) had 12 units (open). It is now down to four.”
Throughout the South Hills, the inventory of available houses is down. According to Jim Saxon, president of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Preferred, another of Greater Pittsburgh’s large residential companies, Bethel Park has 2.9 months of available inventory. Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair and Peters townships all have less than five months of available inventory.
“It’s definitely a seller’s market in the South Hills,” Saxon said.
Less housing inventory has also meant rising home prices throughout southern Allegheny and northern Washington counties, with the average home sale price of $172,000 for November 2014, up from $164,000 for November 2013. Overall, for the 13-county area, the average home sale price in November was $165,979 in November, up 5.5 percent from November 2013’s average sale price of $157,333.
“In the South Hills, we’re seeing a three percent appreciation in pricing,” said Saxon, who lives in Peters Township. “There is more of an increase taking place in Washington County than in Allegheny County.”
What is driving the growth in Washington County and the region as a whole is the Marcellus Shale boom, Saxon said. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pennsylvania’s increase in annual average oil and natural gas industry employment between 2007 and 2012 increased by 259.3 percent. A little fewer than 300,000 people in Pennsylvania are now either directly or indirectly employed by that industry, according to the state.
Besides location, the quality of the school districts is another reason why buyers are looking in the South Hills.
Both Casey and Saxton said the market for first-time homebuyers in the South Hills should be strong in 2015 because funds are available. But, Casey said interest rates are expected to go up sometime next year. That, in turn, should drive more first-time buyers into the housing market who want to take advantage of low interest rates before they start to climb.
“Money (for a mortgage) is available, if you have good credit,” Saxon said.
Inability to get mortgages kept buyers looking for a larger home out of the market, said Tom Hosack, president of West Penn Multi-List and president and chief executive officer of Northwood Realty. Many of these potential buyers opted to renovate and update their current home. Some of these potential buyers could be entering the market in 2015 and putting their homes up for sale – move that could make more inventory available to the first-time buyer, he said.
“I’m confident the progress made in residential real estate this year (2014) will set us up nicely for 2015,” Hosack said.
Casey said she thinks that older portions of Mt. Lebanon that were designed in the 1920s as walking neighborhoods could be a destination for many new buyers. Prices there vary anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000.
“The housing is strong there,” she said. “It is a closed-in suburb that was designed as a neighborhood of neighborhoods.”