Apartmental rental prices in Philly

I don't know Philly at all.

The only people I know here are a couple of doctors and a young professional who's doing pretty well. But looking at the apartment prices here and their quality, and the way the virus is realigning the economy geographically and jobwise, things are not looking good for the city's rental market. People are either very confused or straight-up deluded about what their places will go for. This is a buyer's market and people are asking 1500 bucks for a trash single-bedroom apartment that would be nice only in cities in  Boston or New York. In the same market that has amazing apartments come into the market for fifty/hundred bucks less. This is not sustainable, someone's in for rude awakening, I don't know what.

Speaking of which, apartment prices in Boston have fallen apparently particularly for multi-tenant apartments because it makes sense, students aren't coming in anymore no one's coming for their first job right out of college, no more internships and the people who can afford to live only in such places have to reduce their expenses because their jobs are up in the air. Which means apparently single bedroom and studios aren't seeing that much of a drop. Fine fine. Makes sense for Boston. In a city that lives by trashy student apartments the students are not going to be as eager to make a comeback and thus the market is cratering.

It's not the same for Philly. If I had to make a guess a large portion of the professional crowd who lived in these crappy single bedrooms lived because they had no other option even though they could do their jobs remotely. Now that they have some flexibility for at least another half year, they're going to wait and see much like I'm doing. There is no point in living in shit conditions if you don't have to be near your job, the concept of being near your job won't even make sense in times like these.

But there's a price for everything, there's a right price which could bring people back. There's a right amount of upgrades, at a higher price point, which could get new people in, folks like me. There doesn't seem to be much investment in that yet though.

Philly is a noisy annoying city always some loud noise always police cars rowdy bikers homeless singing. The apartments here don't have double glazing. Nothing, nada. You feel like you're out in the streets even when you are five, six floors high. Life must be hell for those who live closer to the ground. As people realize what a shitty tradeoff they were making, they might decide they've had enough either the prices need to come down, the quality of the apartments needs to go up, or it's sayonara baby, to the 'burbs.

If things are nicer, and reasonably affordable, Philly could be the next big city. This could be the Philly moment, the chance to pull in people from Boston NYC DC all over, to create an affordable harmonious society of mostly remote workers. Or they could bungle it badly. I'm not putting my money on things going the right way up.