A financial Web site has found a hot investment in Philadelphia: houses in the Society Hill neighborhood.
Forbes.com calculated a 184 percent increase in the median sale price of a Society Hill house between 1990 and 2006. Noting how Philadelphia real estate tends to be "some of the most stable in the country," the Web site said:
"In this otherwise affordable city, more than 10% of the homes in this neighborhood command more than $1.5 million."
(From a map on Forbes.com, it looks as if the magazine considered the boundaries of Society Hill as the area between Walnut and South streets and Seventh and Front streets.)
Matt Woolsey's full story on America's most lucrative neighborhoods also features Boston's Charlestown, Chicago's Wicker Park, downtown Minneapolis, and the Sweet Auburn/Grant Park area of Atlanta.
Woolsey writes:
The most obvious trend in the neighborhoods here: many of them weren't valuable in 1990. That's good news for those who invested.
Remember: This is a backward-looking indicator. Past performance is no guarantee of future gains.
