Philly Housing Authority Buys Multifamily Portfolio for $76M

Philadelphia’s housing authority made a sizable acquisition as the city seeks to build and preserve 30,000 affordable units.

The Philadelphia Housing Authority acquired a 381-unit multifamily portfolio in Germantown for $75.9 million, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The deal for the Greene Manor Apartments Group — which spans four properties — works out to about $200,000 per unit.

PHA plans to renovate the units and earmark a majority of them for affordable housing. PHA president Kelvin Jeremiah said the acquisition cost was cheaper for the city than developing its own units.

The properties involved in the deal were the 167-unit The Vue at 6350 Greene Street, the 91-unit The Tudors at 259 West Johnson Street, the 67-unit The Fairmount at 357 West Johnson Street and the 56-unit The Gardens at 6439 Greene Street. Sellers included Greene Manor Investors, Duval Manor Associates and Fairmount Apartment Investors.

Under previous ownership, the multifamily buildings were each home exclusively to market-rate units. With the city taking over, PHA plans to make 60 percent of the units available to those using Section 8 housing vouchers or those earning up to 30 percent of the area median income. The rest of the units would remain market rate.

The authority’s recent purchases include a $51 million acquisition for a 233-unit property in West Philadelphia, as well as several other smaller buys.

It’s all in service of Mayor Cherrelle Parker’s lofty housing goals. Earlier this month, she proposed the city borrow $800 million over a five-year period to build and preserve 30,000 housing units in the city, potentially funding it with several tax increases, including raising the real estate transfer tax from 3.28 percent to 3.58 percent, and increasing a document recording fee by $3.

This week, Parker unveiled an even broader $2 billion housing initiative and revealed that some city-owned land would be turned over to the PHA to support the city’s affordable housing goals.

— Holden Walter-Warner