Yuriy 0:00

Here is the number for you, 65 days. That's the current citywide average to find a tenant and get a lease signed in Philadelphia. If your mortgage is $1,500 a month, that is over $3,000 gone. No income, no relief, just carrying cost while you're scrolling down the Zillow and wondering why your phone isn't ringing. Now there is a different number, 41 days. That's what 19149 zip code, which is Mayfair and Oxford Circle in Northeast, is averaging right now. That's nearly four weeks faster than the city in general, and today I will tell you why. But that's not even the biggest news today because while we were focusing on the vacancy rates City Hall was busy as usual, and the Safe Healthy Home Act has been passed and signed into law by Mayor Cherelle Parker, and it's signed on May 7th. And it is now the law in Philadelphia, which will take in effect November 1st, 2026. This law is going to change how all of us, every single landlords in the city of Philadelphia operates, and I'm going to break down some major points of it for you today what it actually means for you in plain language, not legal jargon not political spin, just the real-world impact onto your portfolio. Let's get into it.

Speaker 3 1:36

We're here to share insights and experiences, not legal or accounting advice. Be sure to talk to your attorney, accountant or professional advisor before making any decisions. Everyone's situation is different. Get the help that is right for you.

Yuriy 1:52

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Philly Landlord Guy, the show where we cut through the noise and give you real-world data-driven information on what's happening here in Philadelphia rental market neighborhood by neighborhood without any fluff. I'm your host, Yuriy Skripnichenko, the guy with the impossible last name. Just think of me as Philly Landlord Guy. I'm a licensed real estate broker and certified property manager here in city of Philadelphia, and I've been doing this for a while in the city to know the difference between a trend and a blip. Before we get into the numbers, I want to give a quick thank to our sponsor, TrustArt Realty. If you're a landlord in Philadelphia right now, especially with everything happening at City Hall, you need a professional eye on your operations. TrustArt Realty is offering a free rental analysis or management consultation sessions to all of our listeners. Stop guessing what your rent should be in this market. Stop wondering if your paperwork is compliant. Send an email to trustartrealty@phillylandlordguy.com, or go to trustartrealty.com and schedule that call. It takes a couple minutes and could save you thousands in your business. Now to the numbers. Let's set the table where Philadelphia as the whole stands right now. In April 2026, there were 2,542 New rental units listed across the Philadelphia County. Total end of the month inventory sat at 4,283 units. As of right now, in May, that number has already climbed to 4,400 units. Supply is growing. Even though we're getting into a busier season, it's not getting busier with the rentals. The months of supply index, which tells you how long it takes to absorb all current inventory at the current renting price, is sitting at 3.4 months. That's a balanced to soft market. We are not in a landlord's market anymore citywide. The average days on the market is 65 days. The median listed price was $1,950, but the median sold price what leases actually closed at, was $1,768. That nearly $200 gap between what landlords are asking and what they are actually getting tells you everything. Landlords are still pricing like it's 2023. The math is simple. Supply is outpacing demand citywide. Now, the citywide number is important context, but like I always say on the show, Philadelphia is not one market. It's a city of neighborhoods, and it goes zip code by zip code or neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block. We have 40 different neighborhoods with 40 different stories to tell, and that's exactly why I do this zip code deep dives. Let me tell you about 19149 because this ZIP code deserves more attention than it gets. 19149 covers two distinct but connected communities, Mayfair to the north and Oxford Circle to the south. Both are classic Northeast Philadelphia row home neighborhoods. We're talking brick, three-bedroom homes, front stoops, small yards, built primarily in 1940s, solid constructions. These are not disposable buildings, and they are not going anywhere. This is a working-f-class, family-oriented community. The median household income is around $54,000, which tells you a lot about who your tenant pool is, working families, essential workers, people who take pride in their block, and that literally. In Mayfair and Oxford Circle, people know their neighborhoods. They maintain their steps. High-quality tenants live in neighborhoods like this because they have community roots, and they want to stay. The ZIP code has an extremely large population density relative to its land area, meaning demand for housing is structural. Here is a stat that gets overlooked the most. 19149 has one of the lowest vacancies rates in Philadelphia or in Northeast. Ownership is high, rental turnover is low. That's exactly what you want as a buy-and-hold investor. One more thing about the tenant profile here. 19149 uses public transit at a much higher rate than most areas. Your tenants are riding the bus along Roosevelt Boulevard, Castor Avenue. A unit near transit line is going to outperform one that isn't. So you know you need to know your blocks. Now, the April 2026 MLS data straight from the report. In April, there were four units listed and five units sold. More units sold than listed. That is a 1.25:1 absorption ratio. There is no bloat here, no oversupply. This ZIP code is absorbing everything that comes into the market, unlike Center City or neighborhoods where thousands of new luxury units are sitting. The months of supply index for 19149 is just two, well below the city 3.4. That means if nothing new hit the market tomorrow, current inventory would be gone in two months. That's a tight sub-market. Days on the market, 41 days. Let me put that in perspective. The city average is 65 days. 19149 is renting in 41 days. That is 24 days faster, nearly a full month. If you own in Mayfair and you're sitting vacant for 65 days, something is wrong, and I'll tell you exactly what in a minute. The median listed price in 19149 in April was $1,875. The median sold price, what leases actually closed at was $1,600. The average sold price was $1,556. That is a $275 to $319 gap between asking price and the close price. That is landlords systematically overpricing their units. Here's what it means. If you're listing at $1,875, you are fishing at the wrong pond. The tenants who can afford $1,875 rent may have other options, nicer units, or maybe different neighborhoods. The tenants who actually searching in Mayfair know the market, and they know that $1,600 is the number. If you want that 41-day turnaround price at 1,600, if you want to get your 1,875 just because this is the number that you need to cash flow, you're going to join the 65-day citywide average or maybe worse. The market does not care about your mortgage. It only cares about the value. I often have people telling me that I cannot get less than this number for my unit or for my property because my m- mortgage is X dollars, my insurance is X dollars, and so forth. It doesn't matter how much your mortgage is or how much you pay for insurance or updates or anything else. What matters is what market supply is and how much your tenants can afford or how much tenants are willing to pay for your unit. One more data point worth noting, current May 2026 inventory in 19149 is 10 units at a median list price of $1,450, down from $1,523 last month. All right, let's talk about what is now officially a new law in city of Philadelphia. Mayor Parker Signed the Safe Healthy Home Act on May 7th, 2026. It takes effect November 1st. You have roughly five months to get your operations in order. I want to be upfront on how I want to frame this. I was thinking about it for a while, and I didn't want it to sound doom and gloom the same way how you would hear from other sources or other landlords in the city. Yes, this is not the best law for all of us. Yes, it will put a strain on our operations and will make it a little bit more complicated for us. And look, there are things that generally make your job harder and more expensive. I'm noi-not going to pretend otherwise. But I'm also going to give you an honest picture because if you're already running a professional compliant operation, a lot of this isn't as scary as the headlines make it sound. And for good landlords part of this law actually level the playing field against the slum lords who are dragging down your neighborhood and your property values. At the same time, it may be a little bit more expensive for you to run under this law. I was talking about these bills in the previous pieces how they were going through the city council and how they were introduced. But in general the legislation was introduced by city council and passed 16 to one. That is veto-proof. Mayor Parker signed it. I told you about the lawsuit that a couple of Philadelphia landlords have against city council, because of the way how they were passing these bills through the city council and that they violated Pennsylvania Sunshine Act. That is still going on, but we have these bills passed and already signed into new law. So plan accordingly. Now let me break down what the Safe Healthy Home Act actually does. The law has two major components. The first part is about licensing and accountability. Think of it as a compliance side. It's about documentation, timelines, and the consequences when you f-fall out of the line. So your rental license now is effective from the date it's approved, not from the date when you apply for it. There can be a gap between when you submit your paperwork and when it's actually processed by L&I. Don't assume that you're covered from the day you file. Once you receive your new rental license, you have seven days to get a copy to your tenants, e-either by posting the license in common area or delivering it directly to the tenant. And if you receive a violation notice for unsafe or unfit condition, you have to share that with your tenants with-within twenty-four hours of the correction deadline. That is tight window, no sitting on it. Here's the one that will catch people off guard. You can now no longer file for eviction without attaching a certificate of rental suitability that was issued within thirty days of the filing. If your paperwork is out of date when you try to file, the eviction gets rejected, full stop. Tenants also now have the right to request a certificate of rental suitability at any time during the lease, once every ninety days. You have ten days to provide it. If you don't, you're legally barred from collecting rent until you do. The penalty structure is real. Non-compliance means thousand dollars per violations or actual damages, whichever is higher, plus attorney's fees. A few violations stack up fast. And the big long-term item, the city is now authorized to create a proactive inspection program for all rental properties by July twenty-thirties. Again, it's something that I spoke about before, but now no more honor system. L&I can inspect your property on a regular cycle without waiting for a complaint. If you have deferred maintenance, the clock is ticking. Don't wait. Fix it now. Now here's the piece that most people aren't talking about. The law includes a safe harbor provision if you're penalized because of a delay caused by the city, their backlog, the processing time, you have a defense. You're not automatically on the hook for bureaucratic slowdowns that are outside of your control. That is important protection for compliant landlords. However, I do not know yet how exactly that's going to work, and I can imagine that it's not going to be easy to prove to the city that it was not your fault. The second part changes the rules of the landlord-tenant relationship itself. This is the bigger philosophical shift. Good cause eviction is now required to terminate any lease, regardless of the length. If it was before only for a lease under a year, now it doesn't matter how long your lease is. Now it covers everything. Non-payment, documented lease violations, you moving back into the property. These are still valid causes. But deciding not to renew a lease simply to set a higher rent is going to require justification. This is a real change. Retaliation protections are now much broader. It is explicitly illegal to refuse to lease, restrict access to common areas, or take any adverse action against a tenant because they organized with other tenants, filed a code to violation complaint, or communicated with government officials about conditions. The law also specifically calls out using immigration-related threats as retaliation. That's now explicitly illegal. Tenants have a formal right to organize, including allowing outside organizer access to your property to meet with tenants. And you now have a legal obligation to confer in good faith with tenant organizations about lease terms and property conditions. Rent abatement for habitability breaches is now codified. If a code violation is issued against your property and the correction deadline passes there is a legal presumption that you breached the warranty of habitability. The tenant can claim rent relief, and the burden is on you to prove otherwise. The statute of limitation is expanded to four years. Tenants have a much longer window to bring claims now. Something that happened in twenty twenty-four still be actionable in twenty twenty-eight. Your record-keeping needs to reflect that. And willful violations can trigger triple damages, plus attorney's fees, plus potential license suspension. So what does all of this actually mean for you? Here's my take. If you're already running clean, compliant properties, licensed, inspected maintained properly, a lot of the Safe Healthy Home Act formalizes things that you should already be doing. The thousand dollars per violation penalty isn't targeting you. It is targeting the landlord who has had the violation for six months and keeps cashing rent checks while somebody is living on the property with a leaking roof. I think that this law will mostly hurt landlords who are not compliant or do not want to do any repairs to their property. And the neighborhoods like 19149, where tenants are selective and block-by-block quality drives your property value, getting bad operators out of the market is actually good for serious investors. On the other hand, I think that this law may push out a lot of mom-and-pop investors out of our market, and bigger investors may come, which is not good for local economy. It's not good for you and I or any smaller landlords. So the only way to know what's gonna happen and how it will play out is by waiting, and time will tell. But what you need to do right now before November 1st here are a few steps. One, audit every rental license you hold. Is it current? When it expires, do you know the exact approval date? Make sure to put a list of all of your rental licenses and have some kind of reminders to renew your rental license a month before it ends. Two, know where your certificates of rental suitabilities are for every property. Can you pull one within ten days on demand? If you have to think about, the answer is probably no. Make sure you know the process, how to pull it, and have a process how you can share it within ten days with your tenants on a request. Three, fix deferred maintenance now. If you have known L&I violations or issues you've been putting off, they just became urgent. The proactive inspection program is coming, and you never know if your property will be one of those that they will hit first. Four, extend your record-keeping further. Within a four-year statute of limitation, you need documentation going back to 2022 minimum as of now. Make sure that you have all the communications, all the documents that were signed, and everything that you have for every specific tenant saved somewhere in your file, so you can provide it if it's needed. Five, get a Philadelphia landlord-tenant attorney to review your current lease and operations. I'm not an attorney, and the specifics of how this law will be enforced are still being worked out. Get a professional advice specific to your portfolio. I will be doing a deeper dive on this in the future episodes, and maybe we will break it down one by one and speak to somebody about specific parts of this law and how we will be affected by it and what needs to be done to make sure that you are protected. But here is where we landed today. One nine one four nine is one of the strongest Northeast Philly sub-market, tight inventory, forty-one days average on the market stable tenant base, but you have to price for the actual market, sixteen hundred, not eighteen seventy-five. And you have to maintain your property to the standard my fair tenant expect, clean, functional, fresh paint in unit, washer and dryer if you can swing it. Do that, and you will be rewarded with low turnover and tenants who stay for years. On the legislative side, the Safe Healthy Home Act is real, it's signed, and November 1st is closer than it feels. Use these five months to get your compliance house in order. Don't wait until October. And remember, good landlords should not be afraid of accountability. The landlords who need to be nervous are the ones who collect and rent on properties with open violations. If that's not you, focus on your systems, on your paperwork, and make sure that you keep your records straight. The law is not your enemy if you're running a professional operation. If you want to know what your property is actually worth on this market or you have any operational question about your rental property in Philadelphia reach out to TrustArt Realty, email at trustartrealty@phillylandlordguy.com, or go to trustartrealty.com and schedule that call. Free analysis, no pressure. If this episode was useful, leave us a review, share it with another landlord who needs to hear this, and I'll see you on the next one.