How do I find an apartment in Philadelphia?

July 19, 2022 4:42 PM

My husband and I will be moving across the country to Philadelphia this fall and are looking to rent an apartment while we figure out what neighborhood we want to buy a house in. But we own our current house, and the last time we were apartment hunting, people used newspaper classifieds. What do we need to know?

Are some websites better than others for apartment-hunting in Philly specifically?

How tight is the housing market in Philly? Is it like NYC where we need all of our paperwork ready to go in advance and our first-born child in order to apply for an apartment?

A non-insignificant reason we’re moving is to get out of our extremely conservative current location --I would like to live in a neighborhood where I LIKE my neighbors. I’m aware that Philly has plenty of racism and problems of its own; are there any neighborhoods particularly known for racism/homophobia/fascism/general hatefulness? As much as possible, I would like to avoid living surrounded by white supremacists.

posted by emilyanemone to Grab Bag (5 answers total)

I found my Philly apartment through a facebook group called Affordable Housing: Philadelphia, but this is for people on a budget; not sure if that's the case for you. People also contact property management companies directly online, go through sites like Zillow, or look at signs posted up for rent. I haven't lived in NY but I don't think things here are at all comparable, but again, I'm sure it depends on what type of apartment you want.

As far as racism and conservatism; sure, Philly has plenty of racism. However the era of all-white neighborhoods is kind of a thing of the past. Most white people who want to only live around other white people have moved to the suburbs. Philly is an overwhelmingly liberal/leftist city, and very diverse. Convervatives tend to be in small pockets of certain neighborhoods, but there is no "conservative neighborhood" anymore... the closest might be Roxborough, maybe Port Richmond (white, working class Polish area), and a few blocks in certain parts of South Philly. But South Philly is huge and very diverse, and also filled mostly with liberal people. Generally speaking, I don't think you need to worry about this. When you look for apartments or houses, you'll see signs on yards etc espousing people's political views. There are some conservative surrounding suburbs, though.

For lespecially dense concentrations of liberals, look in Mt Airy or West Philly
posted by bearette at 5:23 PM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hi, do you know what kind of neighborhood you desire? Philly is really a city of neighborhoods, so if you can whittle down what general characteristics or location you want, that would probably be helpful to a realtor, or a filter for whatever website you search on.

There is a ton of new rental construction, so if you are anywhere near the Center City, Northern Liberties, generally on the north/south Broad Street axis terminating on the south with South Street (or perhaps stretching a bit further South along Broad Street to Washington Avenue) you should have numerous choices. Center City contains most of the live theaters and a huge swath of restaurants - Philly is a foodie's paradise, and there are wonderful restaurants in every neighborhood you'd probably consider. We're also a huge beer town, with many new breweries and microbreweries, and a very vibrant beer culture. Fairmount and Spring Garden are neighborhoods near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation that are extremely pleasant to live in (I can attest to this personally) and are Center City adjacent, maybe 10 - 15 minutes away by public transport or a reasonably close destination for walkers. West Philly is indeed overwhelmingly liberal, the home of Univ. of Penn and Drexel, but it has very tight housing and there is a lot of competition from students and junior faculty/staff at the universities for housing. There is currently a heated controversy from the surrounding minority residents who are angry about the Universities which are buying up of lower income housing to build new buildings and generally contributing to gentrification. The edges of the Universities are traditional lower-income and black and brown residents, so there is considerable resistance and painful reckoning experienced by all parties.

Mount Airy, mentioned above, is quite residential, and although I'm sure there are some rentals, I think of it more as a deeply home-owner neighborhood with a deserved reputation for decades-long acceptance of many lifestyle and family choices, a community that is proud of its open arms. Its about 20 - 25 minutes from Center City by car and is also served by commuter rail lines. This is just a taste of Philly's neighborhoods. I am also in the position of being a long-time homeowner so I can't help enormously with a method of finding a place, but I think if you can focus on a couple of neighborhoods it will help guide your search. Good luck and welcome of Philadelphia!
posted by citygirl at 6:15 PM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I can anti-recommend Andalusia or Bensalem or 19020 or something. I am not from there so maybe I'm wrong somehow. Here's what I know.

- My relatives (white, working class Polish) feel at home there. The most blatant racisms I've ever heard have come from one of them.
- The area has one of the most dangerously-designed intersections in the country, if you're into walking or biking or anything like that.
- Also I went to my family's church once and based on my distant memory, my general impression confirms that its culture was not what you're looking for.
posted by aniola at 6:28 PM on July 19, 2022

A rather startling (to me) amount of apartment hunting in Philly happens on Facebook and Craigslist, but we found ours on Apartments.com. Generally listings on the larger sites that use brokers (Zillow, Compass, etc.) are by property management companies, and smaller landlords go through less formal channels so they don't have to pay a broker fee, although we rent from an individual so it's not true across the board. Landlords/companies listing on larger sites are likely to be doing things a little more by the book, but that may also mean they're more rigid about rules. If you want to use a broker yourself, memail me, we really liked the one a coworker recommended though we didn't wind up finding our place through her. (We will use her if/when we decide to buy, though.) We did find that places moved fast, though we were also being pretty choosy/relaxed because we were searching from a distance and had a flexible timeline; two places we applied for turned out to have been rented before or just after we saw them, and another asked for a ton of extra financial info and then ghosted us. (A legit management company, not a fraud, just dicks! Although actually a shadier arrangement ghosted us too.) So I would say have your ducks in a row and don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I got some great info on neighborhoods in a similar Ask when we were moving here last year. We landed in Queen Village and I'm happy to share anything about this neighborhood or nearby ones in memail too (tl;dr I love it unreasonably). Areas to avoid for racism are the far northeast (where the cops live) and parts of deep South Philly; everywhere else I've been is pretty normal. My neighborhood is whiter than I generally prefer but has a progressive vibe.
posted by babelfish at 7:01 PM on July 19, 2022

There's an apartment agent who posts frequently on Philly Reddit that people have recommended if you need help with your search. This post is a little old, but describes what they do, https://www.reddit.com/r/Phillylist/comments/ofhytz/freefor_hire_apartmentfinding_service/ I think people message them directly to get in touch.

I have not used them, but if I were moving into Philly I would be contacting them.

Apartments are harder to come by, but you might want to look into towns in NJ along the "patco high speed line" such as haddonfield, westmont, collingswood. Patco will get you to center city quicker than you can get there from further flung neighborhoods actually in Philadelphia. And runs far more frequently than septa regional rail, used to commute from pa suburbs. Think every 5-30 minutes, as opposed to every couple hours.
posted by TheAdamist at 2:12 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]