The Berwyn Devon Business and Professional Association is helping to organize the start of First Friday events in Berwyn starting this coming Friday when various stores and restaurants will be open till 9 PM hosting special events to celebrate First Friday. As momentum builds more stores will participate.

More information can be obtained from Gina Galli of Beadeologie located on Lancaster Avenue in Berwyn telephone 610-240-7760.

Other events organized by the business and professional association can be found on their website at www.BerwynDevonBusiness.com as can details of membership and past events.

If you own a business or work for a non-profit or are a professional in the Berwyn Devon area you should know that the Berwyn Devon Business & Professional Association just laucned a new web site. Designed to keep members informed and to give the public information about the association, its members and its meetings it is still being developed. But this is a great step forward for the business community providing them another way to be in front of consumers.

Any ideas for the site can be directed to Info@BerwynDevonBusiness.com.

For the second year running John McClintick a local painter in the Berwyn Area organized a builders competition giving several local builders a chance to contribute to the Hurricane Relief in Louisiana. Last year three teams particiapated and this year that increased allowing more homes to be framed and sent down to Habitat for Humanity to use in building homes for those in need. What is great about the whole process is that it raises funds for the local Habitat for Humanity chapter as well.

The competition has gathered great support from local builders and trades suppliers as well. Times vary for the 12 man teams to frame a house from about 5 hours to just over 2 hours. But here is John Mclintick himself to tell you a little about the competiton: -

I was on my way to the local mall a few days ago and cut down a street I normally take and was amazed at an enormous FOR SALE sign in the front yard of a home in our neighborhood. We live just outside Philadelphia in Berwyn and our house prices whilst they have levelled a little have not collapsed as some markets and compared to other areas of the country our prices are quite strong. We are talking about a home priced at $585,000.

As you come along the road, do you see the mailbox in the background?

So I realize it is for sale, the phone number is still small, and you know there is no website mentioned who is this sign for, the broker or the house?

What struck me was the size of the yard sign, most agents simply place a typical push in the ground sign with their contact details on it, if the house warrants it or some agents out of preference will use a hanging sign placed by a company, these are one piece of wood with a hanging sign from the top. But this home has what amounts to a billboard in their front yard. Two pices of wood supporting a large sign between them.

This home recently was on the mareket for a mater of days priced at $925,000. can you the sign?

So what is the correct size for a yard sign?

Recently I have noticed that our local code enforcement officers have been pretty relaxed about directional for sale and open house signs. In the past this has been the case till someone in the township complains when an overzealous real estate agent has plastered them everywhere and not removed them even weeks after the sale. I can only believe that this relaxed attitude has been because of the state of the housing market and a feeling of compassion upon neighbors and those needing to sell their homes in this market.

What are you finding in your market and why if there is a change do you think it is happening?

Frankly, I think Open House signs should be taken down after an Open House is finished, it actually damages everyones chances of getting drive by visitors if you leave them out all week because no one knows if the pen House is active unless of course you add balloons. Why do agents not remove their signs? Is it because they cannot remember where they put them, or they just don't care about littering a neighborhood with signs?

What about directional signs? I think a limited number should be allowed, but if the rule is that no directionals are allowed then this rule should apply to everyone, agents and FSBO's as well.

Tuesday is our Broker's Open tour day, here on the Main Line, where as a Realtor you can get to see recently listed homes or those homes that have been on the market for a while and the agent is hoping to re-energise and remind you about. Each area has certain times when homes are open so you can plan your route and catch as many homes as possible. Over the summer these times are not always held to by the agents as there are less Realtors out working or so it seems as I see less agents out and about.

I try to view every home in the Tredyffrin and Easttown townships that comes on the market, whether I have a client for it or not. I try to do the same for Radnor as well so that if a client calls on one of these homes I have seen it. Obviously, having your own listings makes this hard to do on Broker's Open and then I make appointments for myself and my wife to go visit so we have seen the homes.

This week I was surprised by how few homes were on tour, plus how many of those on tour I had already seen before.  I ended up going to see 6 homes, from town homes to multi million dollar homes.

The town home was of particular interest as it was in a development where I recently sold a home in Chesterbrook, priced at $374,900 I thought it seemed a little high, and these thoughts were confirmed when I visited. The home was much smaller than the unit I sold and although it shows very well, it is described as a 3 bedroom unit, which it is not, it has two bedrooms plus an open loft area which can be enclosed to make a third bedroom. The unit I sold had a walk out lower level backing to open space, this had a very small yard, backing up to another unit, mine also had a wonderful large deck that wrapped around the unit as it was also an end unit. So it will be interesting to see what develops with this unit over a slow summer season.

I visited two other homes in Berwyn, one on Potter Ave. which was recently re-listed and has a lot of potential but the location leaves a little to be desired, but some work on re-habbing and curb appeal will go a long way, a low offer on the $349,900 asking price may also be needed. The other home on Midland was a new listing by a friend Linda Theuer from Prudential Fox and Roach, nice street, filled with split levels, priced well at $399,900 for a roomy home but with the summer season the timing may be against it, so price may end up dropping to get it sold.

I moved from here to Wayne visiting an old colleague Linda Lee who had just listed a very nice home on Maple Glen Road for $1,250,000, five bedrooms three and a half baths with a very open floor plan which is the result of remodelling and additions. It felt a little choppy where the dining room has been placed, but overall the home felt well looked after. The bathrooms were still a little tired and probably needed some more work on them as well. However, the home lacked a formal sitting room, which I read more and more is a wasted space as less people want it, but there was a member of the public looking at the home whilst I was there who seemed to feel this was important. I always wonder how often people use their formal living room and how much a great or family room attached to a kitchen.

From Maple Glen I went to visit some new construction town-homes on Exeter, the model was lovely but these homes were priced the same as Maple Glen and had only two bedrooms, possibly three if you used a room on the ground floor as a third bedroom. It felt a lot of money for what it was.

My final home of the day was over on the other end of Tredyffrin on Weadley, the home came on the market at the end of last week and was already under offer. This gives me a moment to discuss the new way our MLS lists homes that are under contract. We have removed the Active with Contract designation and homes are either active or pending. Lots of people are still confused by these different designations but simply put if the home can still be shown it is active, if not it is pending. What is declared is that if it is active but has an offer subject to a contingency this is shown more clearly. So a home is active if the listing has received an offer but it has a home for sale contingency attached, or a home inspection or mortgage contingency. The home showed well in the photos, in reality it seemed a little tired, with bathrooms and kitchen needing some freshening up, but was well priced at $619,000.

Sleepy Berwyn is getting a wake up call as developers give it a fresh look. As reported in The Suburban & Wayne Times this week Westrum Development Company is seeking to aquire two and half acres of the Mack Oil property. Westrum has a good reputation for taking brownfield sites, that is sites that have some pollution of soil and developing them. They were recently selected to develop the Paoli Station complex, so maybe they have their eyes on developing along the Main Line these sites that are close to stations. This plan is for 88 housing units in two separate three level buildings in place of the office, storage shed and oil delivery site. However from what I gather through the various articles opposition is growing in two townships, Tredyffrin and Easttown. So development may be a lot harder to be approved as the site falls in both townships.

Some comment has been made that the development is very close to the Berwyn Station and a campaign has been created to stop the development www.protectberwyn.com is a newly posted site that has information about meeting to oppose the development and the status of it as it moves along the process. There will be a meeting about the proposed development at the Easttown Library on the evening of April 26th beginning at 7.00 PM.

There have also been plans to develop a mixed use site in Daylesford, a mile or so further west from Berwyn on a site that has been created by a developer through purchase options of homes and commercial sites. This too is being countered by many local residents.

A question to consider though is whether these housing developments will provide affordable housing for residents who may work at local hospitals, police forces or in local government, who cannot afford currently to buy homes in the townships or close to where they work, if so would development be more acceptable? If these are planned to be super luxury developments along the lines of those in Wayne are they needed?

Let us hear your comments.

Definitely there were fewer listings to preview today. We also saw far fewer agents out and about today, maybe it was the extreme cold, this is not Florida, although I wish it was.

Anyway, we saw several homes however the one that stood out most was Spencer Road in Devon, it was priced at just over a million dollars but due to location it seemed good value, it has been on the market last year with a much higher price but this seemed right conmparing it to other homes in the area in similar price brackets.

We saw several homes in the $300-400,000 bracket in Berwyn and Paoli, a couple seemed good value and were presented well. One seemed price well but it had a mass of steps to the front door. It amazes me though how agents get a listing, enter it into the MLS and are having an open house but have no photos of the listing up for people to see. That is for another posting at another time.

We saw one home that was priced just below $600,000 that had been rehabbed, but it only had 2 bedrooms, was close to a major freeway, so a lot of noise, and for that price you can get other options close to downtown Wayne.

Speaking of downtown Wayne there was a very nice Victorian home, bathrooms were a little small but if you wanted a home with style and a sense of history this was it, yes it was on a busy road, but it was definitely walk to Wayne.

There are currently a mass of condo projects being undertaken in Wayne, prices are  not cheap and buyers generally are coming from the surrounding neighborhoods, so many of those large homes may be on the market in the near future as the condos are completed in the next few years. What will that do for values?