On The House: SEPTA Rail Lines Boost Suburban Home Prices, Study Finds

SEPTA logo with text (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Transit-oriented development is not new, especially to older metropolitan areas such as Philadelphia.

Whether in anticipation of the arrival of public transit or in its wake, homes and commercial enterprises have sprung up near rail stations, trolley stops, and subway entrances since 1858, with the advent of horse-car service on Fifth and Sixth Streets between Southwark and Kensington.

The first steam train began running from Philadelphia to Germantown in 1832, igniting a mass-transit boom that would dictate how and where the region would grow.

As rickety as public transit sometimes seems, this region still has an infrastructure that cities such as Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; and Atlanta have spent billions trying to replicate to ease their dependence on the automobile.

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Philadelphia’s Queen Village, A Neighborhood Of Reinvention

English: Map of Philadelphia County highlighting planning districts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Way back when, Queen Village was the place to buy a house if you couldn’t afford Society Hill.

Joseph P. Fanelli Jr., who moved from the suburbs in 1985, readily acknowledges that Queen Village was his second choice.

“But looking at it today,” says Fanelli, president and CEO of Quaker City Manufacturing Co., the new townhouse in the 100 block of Catharine Street he bought 28 years ago for $175,000 “was a great buy.”

It was a lot of money in 1985, especially when you could buy what veteran real estate agent and Queen Village native Kathy Conway calls “a grandmom house” for $50,000.

Twenty years later, Fanelli sold the townhouse and its two secure parking spaces for $575,000. (He moved to a house on Bainbridge Street that his new wife, Katie, an IBM executive, bought when she transferred to Philadelphia.)

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