Wildwood’s million-dollar homes | Real Estate Newsletter
And renovating a Gilded Age mansion.
Wildwood has gotten fancy. Or, at least, expensive.
People looking to buy luxury Shore homes have widened their searches as prices have risen. Luxury shoppers who got priced out of Avalon and Stone Harbor turned to Sea Isle City. Once Sea Isle City home prices shot up, buyers went to North Wildwood.
Now, they’re in Wildwood. And homes there are selling for $1 million or more.
Do you think you can guess how much homes cost based on their photos and descriptions? Test your knowledge of Wildwood’s new real estate market with this quiz.
Keep scrolling for that story and more in this week’s edition:
Rolling back the clock: Take a look at the Gilded Age mansion on the Delaware River that’s getting a $3.5 million makeover.
How we got here: Look back at how St. Laurentius went from a beloved church to an empty lot as a plan moves forward to build townhouses there.
Homes with a history: See where the Philly region ranks nationally for the age of homes sold in 2024.
Cozy by the Shore: Peek inside a young couple’s first house, which they turned into their dream home.
📮What are the features of your dream home, whether you’ve got it already or hope to get it someday? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me.
— Michaelle Bond
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All types of homes are getting more expensive in Wildwood. New construction. Renovated older homes. Houses on the water. Basic beach houses.
Folks’ reactions to Wildwood’s home prices tend to depend on where they’re coming from — physically.
To someone from Philly, a non-waterfront property going for $800,000 sounds like the seller is asking for their firstborn child, Wildwood’s mayor said. Someone from North Jersey or New York will think there must be something wrong with the property, because it’s too cheap.
Those are some of the buyers who are helping to push up Wildwood’s prices.
Think you’ve got an eye for expensive homes? My colleague Amy Rosenberg is asking readers to look at a property and guess how much it sold for years ago and how much it’s going for now.
Read more about what’s happening in Wildwood and see how you do on the quiz.
When I talked to the executive director of the Glen Foerd estate in Northeast Philadelphia this week, he told me that a lot of people just know the property as a wedding venue.
But it’s more than that. The property is
🌳 an 18-acre public park
📜 a 19th-century estate that’s listed on both the national and Philadelphia registers of historic places
🌎 the site of educational, environmental, and cultural programming
🐦 a destination for tens of thousands of people each year who walk, bike, kayak, and bird-watch
🚣 the only Philadelphia estate along the Delaware River that is open to the public
And now Glen Foerd is launching what its caregivers call its most ambitious preservation project — a $3.5 million effort to restore the exterior of its Gilded Age mansion.
The building hasn’t seen any real structural renovations since the early 1900s and needs a lot of TLC.
The nonprofit that operates the property — formed in the ’80s by neighbors who fought to stop a developer from turning Glen Foerd into a condo complex — is on the hunt for funding to cover renovation costs.
Read more about the property and take a look at some of the elements of the mansion that need to be fixed.
The latest news to pay attention to
The St. Laurentius site is getting townhouses. Here’s how it went from a beloved church to an empty lot.
The Philly region had some of the oldest homes sold in 2024.
Philly homeowners can get loans for repairs through a program that just celebrated a milestone.
A developer plans to reuse an old warehouse shell to build apartments in an unexpected part of Kensington.
Lessons from the past: We look back on the proposed Crosstown Expressway, a project that would have bulldozed 6,000 homes, wiped out a historic Black community, and created a moat between Center City and South Philly.
A developer known for his key role in remaking Fishtown is planning to build a new hotel in the neighborhood.
Philly remains the nation’s sixth-largest city, but its lead over No. 7 is narrowing.
House of the week: For $409,900 in Manayunk, a three-bedroom corner condo with canal views.
Maybe this weekend’s unofficial start of summer is a coincidence, but we’re headed down the Shore again.
Or at least pretty close. Emily and Tom Matera bought a house in Linwood in 2023 to be closer to family and Ocean City, where they both grew up.
The couple purchased a 2,600-square-foot home and spent 16 months gutting and renovating it to create their dream home.
The Materas, both 27, wanted their first house to be one they could help design and build. Tom’s dad, Bob of Matera Builders, oversaw the project. The father and son did a lot of the work, along with help from family members.
The end result is something you’d see in the last minutes of an HGTV home makeover show.
Peek inside the Materas’ home and take a look at the work they did, including a project that gave Tom and his dad some trouble.
📷 Photo quiz
Do you know the location this photo shows?
📮 If you think you do, email me back. You and your memories of visiting this spot might be featured in the newsletter.
Last week’s quiz featured a photo of a yarnbomb from artist Nicole Nikolich that shows the viral moment of Jason Kelce and the Phillie Phanatic jumping up and down in celebration a few years ago.
The artwork is on a chain-link fence at the corner of East Passyunk Avenue and Wharton Street in Passyunk Square.
If you’ll be in the city for the long weekend, you may be planning to visit one of Philly’s parks. See where Philadelphia falls in a new national ranking of city parks.
And enjoy the rest of your week.
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