There is something odd, somewhat inexplicable actually, about the Greater Johnstown housing market.
We speak not of subsidized public housing here, the ongoing Philadelphia story that has gotten such wide play in recent months, nor even the more recent forced relocation of residents of Prospect public housing, their 30-day notice to get out that is being described as NOT an eviction notice. Nice semantics.
The focus of this blog entry is the backbone of real-estate, the single-family dwelling. It is here that Greater Johnstown seems to be able to defy the laws of economics.
It was not all that long ago that housing listings proliferated in our area. I know because over the past 10 years or so I have spent countless hours on various real estate internet sites, most often realtor.com. First, it was because my son was looking to return to the area and so was house hunting.
Since then, it has been shared duty as we both seek options that provide more land and thereby more buffer zone between ourselves and neighbors who believe the Earth revolves around them and therefore are not bound by codes of common courtesy.
There was a time not all the long back, when options were many, with nearly 400 listings in the 15905 zip code alone. Hop on realtor.com as I write this Wednesday evening, and the site claims just 68 homes listed in 15905.
Observations I made through years of combing through listings include the reality that houses in the Westmont Hilltop School District (15905 extends beyond that to Greater Johnstown and Conemaugh Township schools) had to be marked down in price to account for exorbitant tax rates. After all, eventually one pays off the mortgage on the house – presuming it was not a cash purchase – while the taxes go on forever.
But there have been periods when such things were ignored. On my street, I’ve witnessed influxes of out-of-towners from high-cost areas, many of them military types reassigned here as part of the political pork game, who didn’t blink at high asking prices. The houses here were deemed extremely inexpensive due to comparative costs in San Diego, or suburban Washington, D.C. and the like.
They arrived flush with funds from their equity in overpriced real estate there and paid up gladly.
The problem came when they were assigned elsewhere, to provide pork for some other influential member of Congress, and tried to sell their Johnstown holdings. They couldn’t take them with them!
A member of the military down the street never could manage to sell in timely fashion, instead resigning himself to renting. And that experience provided problems for him in the way of less-than-stellar tenants.
But things apparently have changed. A house three doors down went up for sale recently and sold quickly for a relatively large price. Similar results have been observed in recent months and years on this and other nearby streets.
Just this week, a house on our block with which I am somewhat familiar, was listed at a $129,900 asking price. Earlier in our tenure on our street, this house was owned and inhabited by an elderly neighbor, someone my wife would look in on periodically, drive her to appointments and the like.
After that woman died, the house was bought and renovated by a man looking to move his mother into the area, from Pittsburgh I believe. This went back and forth for some time and she never did move into the house.
There were renters along the way, allegedly with unfavorable results. I know one renter had the police beating a path to her door, either check-on-the-welfare calls, or domestic violence. A little internet sleuthing produced some drug history. They, thankfully, are long-gone.
But here’s the dollars and sense point of this particular house. It was sold in 2001 for $66,000. It was listed – but not sold – in 2018 for $74,900. About three years ago, March 18, 2020, it sold for $64,900.
It again is on the market, for two-plus days, with the aforementioned asking price of $129,900. A double in three years, now that’s investing!
I would suspect it soon will have a “pending” or “contingent” listing on realtor.com, to be followed by it being moved to the sold category.
And I wonder, who is buying these houses in this area of a slack economy, at a time of mortgage rates that have about doubled to the high 6-percent range for traditional 30-year fixed rate examples?
Yes, there are job openings in the area, but not a lot that offer the kind of salaries that comfortably would carry a mortgage of $100,000-plus, even if both members of a couple were working.
If we’re getting a steady inflow of relatively high-paying pork-related jobs, I’m unaware of this.
Sure, some low-priced homes in need of work, get sold to flesh out the portfolios of Section 8 housing gurus.
But what about all these other houses that are being sold? In Moxham, where “shots fired” is the police scanner motto, houses that formerly had to be all but given away, are selling now, for higher prices than just a few years back.
It’s true in other areas with less-than-desirable reputations, too.
I understand houses selling briskly in the Richland School District. The crime rate there is relatively low. The tax rate is absolutely low. You are close to centers of commerce and entertainment there. Highways are handy.
How to explain brisk sales elsewhere, like Oakhurst, Hornerstown, Walnut Grove, or the land of confiscatory real estate tax levels that is the Westmont school district?
I would suspect, in the event of the sort of economic calamity that current banking system distress hints is in our nation’s future, this real estate market is going to end in tears, putting a lot more people on the streets than just those displaced Prospect residents.
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