Philadelphia Real Estate Development Trends 2026: Rates, Permits, Pricing & Where Investors Are Moving Next

In this episode of the Be The Solution Podcast, Maria Quattrone sits down with commercial real estate expert Samantha Miller to break down what’s really happening in the Philadelphia development market heading into 2026.

From the dramatic impact of rising interest rates to the sharp decline in new construction permits, this conversation gives a real-time look into how developers, investors, and agents must adjust their strategies.

If you’re building, investing, or advising clients in today’s market, this episode will help you understand where the opportunities are—and where the risks are hiding.

Key Takeaways

📉 Development Has Slowed — Significantly

💥 Interest Rates Changed Everything

🏗️ Development Is Riskier Than Ever

🌎 Developers Are Leaving Philadelphia

💰 Land Pricing Reality Check

⏳ Decision-Making Is Slower Than Ever

📊 Math Is the Path

🔥 Best Quotes

Maria Quattrone:
“Math is the path. When you know your numbers, you know how to grow your business.” 

Samantha Miller:
“Development deals are much riskier than stabilized assets — because everything depends on what happens next.” 

Guest Contact

Samantha Miller
Commercial Real Estate Advisor
Specializing in development, land, and multifamily deals in Philadelphia

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Transcript

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Welcome And Market Setup

Maria Quattrone 0:00

Friends, welcome back to the Be The Solution podcast. And today I'm excited to talk with Samantha Miller. Samantha's been in uh the real estate game for gosh, how long is it now? 10 years, Sam? Oh what's coming up? And today we're gonna talk about the trends in development in Philadelphia in 2026. And I'm very excited to talk to Samantha. It's been a while. My quote for you today, Sam, is the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result.

Samantha Miller 0:33

I like it.

Maria Quattrone 0:34

Welcome to the show.

Samantha Miller 0:36

Thank you, Maria. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me back.

Maria Quattrone 0:39

I'm excited to talk to you about what's going on in Philadelphia market. And you do a lot of work on the listing side and development deals, land, multifamily. And so, yeah, that's a quite question. What's going on?

Samantha Miller 0:56

What is going on? Yeah. Um, so I um I'm currently an advisor at NPN Realty uh based in Center City and uh, like you mentioned, focused on development, land, multifamily deals. Uh I'd be curious to go back, and I haven't re-watched the um the last time you and I spoke and and recorded. I'm wondering how different or similar what I my thoughts are today are uh versus

The 2022 Rate Shock

Samantha Miller 1:20

then.

Maria Quattrone 1:20

I know it's been a year or a couple of years, but um it's been probably two or three.

Samantha Miller 1:27

Two or three. Wow. Okay, so hopefully it's it's uh there's there's some different things. But um so going back, I feel like I always have to start with I got into the industry in the middle of what I call the development boom. So I really didn't know of any other reality other than uh everybody was developing everything, land was being bought and sold very frequently, um, permits were being pulled to build new projects, projects were getting built, completed, refinanced, sold. Uh, this this was the state of the market upon my entry, and I didn't really know any other reality. So it was really interesting for me to witness what happened at the end of 2022 when rates um climbed as quickly as they did. Um, and obviously we all know rates fluctuate over the years, over the decades. You can look back and it's not like it's consistently the same rate all the time, but what happened in 2022 was like a doubling of the rate almost overnight, which I think um is one of the things that will always stand out to me as like my the big uh you know shock as far as my experience in the industry so far is um that had never happened before from what I had seen. If you look back at rate changes, sure, one year it was five and one year it was 11, but it didn't happen overnight. That happened gradually over years it climbed up and then over years it climbed down so people can adjust. 2022 was just double overnight. And what that does to a pro forma uh is I mean, it changes it completely. It makes them in a lot of cases. And in the space that I was in in development deals, the thing that when you buy a piece of real estate that's turnkey, that's stabilized, that's cash flowing, you know, whether it's a house that you have one renter in or a hundred unit apartment building that you have a hundred tenants in, or an office building that's full of commercial leases, office, you know, uh users, whatever it may be, if you're buying a stabilized piece of property, it's cash flowing. You you want to buy it at the right basis and make sure it's cash flowing from day one, obviously. But during the time of your ownership, as long as you're managing the building well, it doesn't really matter if the value of that property is going up or down in the background of your ownership. If you are getting the rent that you're getting every month and you're paying the bills and you're managing the building, it can go and go and go, and you could own it for 30 years, and there can be snapshots and points in time where it was worth more or worth less. That doesn't change your cash flow position, right? Unless you decide to make an exit and you make an exit in a bad climate when it's down, that's gonna hurt you. But if you just keep holding, holding, you're not really noticing those changes. Development deals, which is what I was doing, um, that's not the case. It's very, very risky. It's much riskier than buying a stabilized building. You're buying vacant land or vacant property that doesn't have any cash flow, and from day one, it's a ticking clock to get to stabilization so that you have money coming back in on the property. Um when the and you know, that's risky as it is, just because there can be time delays and cost overruns and all kinds of things can happen. But when the entire market changes overnight in the middle of your project, that's huge. Your your planned exit from purchase to stabilization to built property or to refinanced uh is is completely different. So you know, I observed a lot of properties go through this tumultuous change in the middle of the project where the way it was underwritten from day one was not at all how it looked when the end of the construction phase was reached, and they developers were stabilizing these buildings and refinancing them in a market in a in an environment where rates had doubled and the values were sort of, I don't want to say dropping. This wasn't like a great crash, it was a correction. You know, they weren't climbing into an upswing anymore now that was correcting, coming back down to normal, not not um, you know, a crash, but just kind of stabilizing in a way that they weren't expecting. So anyway, I'll pause there because that's a long, that's a long answer to one question, but that's really I I can't think of any other way to describe. And then there's the day today and the deals that I do and the deals that work and don't work, and that's all the day today, but that's really just kind of big picture what my experience has been, and and what I'm seeing today is the other side of that the stabilization, the correcting, and folks kind of now figuring out what had happened and what they can do moving forward.

Permits Down And Abatement Shift

Maria Quattrone 5:48

So you talk about future business and development of permits being pulled. My understanding that the last year, there's less and less over the last two years of new development happening. What are we seeing for 2026?

Samantha Miller 6:05

The same thing. Um, new permit activity is still down and going down. So um, when I say new permits, I mean so the city um and other databases will track when a developer pulls a permit to build a new building. You have to pull a zoning permit, a building permit. Um, that this is how development activity and construction pipeline is tracked. It's not a perfect prediction of what's coming to the market because someone could certainly pull a permit for a project and then never build it. Um, you know, it's not perfect, but it gives you a sense of you know the potential coming pipeline and just really developer sentiment. Um, for the past three to four years in a row, really since 2023, after you know, 2022 was when the interest rates went up, but it was towards the end of the year. So you really started to see it happen in 2023. Every year since then, including this year, the number of new construction permits that were per uh pulled or approved has come down substantially. And it's not just a little bit, it's not 5%, 10%, it's 50%, 60%. I think almost 70% down from the peak in 20, really, I think 2021 was the peak in Philadelphia, especially uh, you know, a number of factors coming together to create that development boom, but the peak was also pushed by the tax abatement expiring at the end of 2021. So we had the most permits pulled, and I think in the history of Philadelphia, if I'm not mistaken, or like a very, very high number um towards the end of December of 2021. Yep. Oh, the the this was over um the zoning office like overwhelmed um or L and I with uh applications because people were just trying to make sure they could get that 10-year tax abatement locked in before it went away.

Maria Quattrone 7:49

Um that's the people who don't know that that tax abatement went after that from the full 10 years to a step-down program, which in essence is really five years now, but over 10 years.

Samantha Miller 8:05

Correct. If you kind of just average it out, it's basically like saying you have half the amount of abatement as you did before or a five-year abatement. Um, step down by 10% every year. Um, so yeah, I mean, the there was there was certainly a peak that year, and then um every year since the interest rates went up, the the number of permits um has gone down substantially, every including

Developers Leave And New Buyers Enter

Samantha Miller 8:28

this year.

Maria Quattrone 8:28

I see, I I hear that. I hear I hear that on the street. I also hear on the street uh that a lot of developers, at least that I know and known for years, have pulled out of Philadelphia and are developing in other areas, be it New Jersey, South Jersey, the Jersey Shore, Reading, um Philadelphia suburbs outside of Philadelphia County.

Samantha Miller 8:56

Yep.

Maria Quattrone 8:57

Have you seen those trends as well?

Samantha Miller 8:59

Yeah, absolutely. I think um same thing. This is all um, this is always is why I'm curious to hear what I would have been saying in in 2023 a few years ago, because I feel like it's been the same thing for a while now that I've been hearing um folks moving out and out of Philadelphia. And I guess it was a slow triple at first, and it just kept you know, you kept hearing more and more folks leave over the years, but going down to the Jersey Shore and building, you know, luxury beach houses, going down to um Del Rey or Tampa or somewhere else building, you know, yeah, down Florida as well. And also all other areas. I mean, I've heard people going and building in um the Carolinas or um, you know, I mean, I I think I had a client tell me that he was built going building Turks and Caicos or something. I don't know. Every day I'm turning around that I'm just hearing somebody has moved out of Philadelphia. Um I would say, you know, there's the headlines and and the buzz, the buzzy, you know, gossip of folks leaving the city, and that's all true in to some extent, you know. But I I've also seen tons of new people come in. It's not all bad. It's I I sell a lot of vacant land. And um where are they buying? They're buying in all the same places they were before, honestly. That Philadelphia still is like any other city. You have your core, you have center city, and then you have the neighborhoods that are, you know, um not quite as expensive as Center City, but still very established, you know, one step away and outside the Fairmount University City Grad Hospital. And then the further you go out, the the less expensive and the less developed those neighborhoods are or have been in their histories, but have, you know, a lot of them benefited from the development boom that I'll keep referring to of the last, you know, five, six, ten years. It's harder to develop in those areas now, but they still are those fringe areas that are less have historically been less developed and less established than the center city core. That's still where you see developers flocking to because it's hard as a new developer coming in to break into building a luxury tower in the middle of center city. Folks are still doing that, uh, and good for them if they have the resources and uh track record and connections to to break into that you know very tight market. But for folks that are, you know, just starting out, coming in, it's you're gonna listen to those fringe areas where there's less competition. Um, so I'm selling things in East Kensington, selling things in West Philadelphia, in Germantown, you know, all those areas where land can be acquired cheaper. Um so it's the same as it's always been, it's just harder, fewer and further between a lot of folks who I was selling things to in those areas may not be buying there anymore, but new folks

Land Pricing Per Door Today

Samantha Miller 11:39

are coming in.

Maria Quattrone 11:39

So there's just been changes and ebb and flow of market. Yeah, it's interesting. What can people pay for the ground these days per unit?

Samantha Miller 11:51

Yeah, I would say um, so it's a price per door is gonna be the best metric still. That really hasn't changed. Um I'm seeing price per door in those types of markets, like um, well, let's start with like a center city market, for example, because I was just underwriting a deal there in like a prime, you know, downtown um location, a piece of property that could be developed into like 100 apartments. And I walked through the underwriting in detail with the developer, like this is a fresh deal. Use all today's numbers, today's rates, today's costs, you know, tell me what you can pay. And the magic number really in this case, as well as others I've looked at recently, keeps coming out to around 35 to 40 per buildable unit for raw land in an established high-end area where the rents are, you know, mid-threes per square foot, like your top rents of Philadelphia, that it really doesn't pencil much above that like 3540 per buildable unit mark. If that property had been presented as, hey, this is completely shovel ready and all the plans and permits are done, maybe then you can start to get up to 50 mid-50s, maybe 60. I don't know, that feels a little high, but that's to put it to put a frame of reference around it, I think that's your top, top end right now. Um, so if you're looking at a piece of property in the middle of East Kensington and someone's trying to sell it to you for 50,000 a door right off the bat, you know, that's I'm gonna be that unless you can show me the numbers, it's a magically, you know, a cost-efficient build in the best, best parties Kensington, or there's something you know special about it. You've got the old 10-year tax abatement somehow, which you know, uh for a while after 2021, um I was selling a lot of projects where people had locked in the abatement, and as long as the permit hadn't expired, which those can take a couple years to expire, depending on if you like renew them, um, I was still selling land with the full 10-year tax abatement a few years after the expiration. So those were like the most coveted shovel ready parcels that were left because you couldn't get that abatement anymore. But at this point, we're so many years beyond it that nobody has the full 10-year abatement. So it would be, in other words, long story short, it would be hard for somebody to convince me that something was worth 50K or 40K a door in one of the more tertiary markets. That's kind of the top-top value for like a center city piece of land right now. And it just goes down from there. I mean, there's some stuff that just doesn't make sense above like 1015 a door if it's raw land in a established um you know area where the rents are a little bit lower, like if your rents are only two bucks a square foot max. I mean, honestly, if if the rents are that low, it's there there are some areas that are kind of financially unbuildable right now, unless you were to infuse that project with some type of um government funding or subsidy. There's just no way to squeeze any type of yield out of a project where you know that the max rent that that market can tolerate is two bucks a foot on the rent. It's it's really hard to make those work.

Maria Quattrone 14:50

So what in Germantown and in East Kensington, max $15 raw land a door?

Samantha Miller 14:57

For raw land, yeah, it's probably around $15. If it's fully shovel ready, probably $20. I sold a 48-unit um development site in Germantown for just over $20 a door that was fully shovel ready, all plans, permits, and it had the old tax abatement still. It was like one of the last ones had the old tax abatement. So if it had not had that, you know, the number might have had to come down a little bit. Um, it was still shovel ready, though. So that was a big part of that value. Um, but yeah, I would say somewhere in that 15 to 20 is where those markets are gonna pencil.

Maria Quattrone 15:31

15 to 20. And people, everybody wants in those, uh not everybody, but I've talked to many and they want 40 and 50. It's like yeah.

Samantha Miller 15:41

I mean, by all means, put it out on the market, and I'd love to see something trade for that type of number. I'm not here to, it's funny, like you know, obviously, I'm not here to make something less valuable the more it sells for. You and I are both salespeople. We get paid a commission on a sale. I'd love for something to sell for double what it's worth because we would make more on the sale. Uh, it's just a matter of being realistic about what a buyer is willing to pay in a given

Pricing Discipline And Listing Strategy

Samantha Miller 16:07

market.

Maria Quattrone 16:07

Yeah, and the thing is, it's like people will say, well, you can just put it on the market and see what happens. It doesn't really work like that. You know, as brokers, we if we have a listing and we're required to answer questions on the listing and field questions all day long about an unsellable property, yeah, it's a waste of our time.

Samantha Miller 16:28

It's it's challenging. It can your buyer pool off to trusting you in the deals that you put out, and then that's not helping you know your future seller clients if you're you know constantly putting things out that um you know are just not being received well by the market. I mean, there's an art of science to it. I think, you know, I some it's on the seller situation. I sometimes have sellers who say, look, I understand what you're saying, I understand it's not worth X, um, but here's the deal. I really don't need to sell this. I'm just kind of curious. You know, if that's that's kind of step one, is like I don't I don't go to a seller who is really depending on me to get this sold in a certain period of time and then tell them I'm gonna sell it for a price I can't sell for. That's you know, I'm not gonna do that. But if this is a, you know, I don't need to sell this and I'm curious to test the market, you know, that's kind of step one. I still hesitate to put things out there that I don't think make any sense. Um, but you know, it sometimes I'll take things as a quiet listing and just sort of circulate and get some early feedback from like a small set of buyers, and you know, maybe maybe something in the market, maybe somebody out there is willing to pay a little bit more. I'm usually not gonna be, and I'm sure you aren't either too far off from your initial assumptions, you're you're usually gonna be about right for where the value is gonna fall, but I I'm also always open to be proven wrong. I I you know assess value based on the most recent data that we have, but things are changing all the time. So, you know, I'm always happy to be proven wrong.

Maria Quattrone 17:58

It's a tough line to walk sometimes.

Samantha Miller 18:00

It is.

Maria Quattrone 18:01

Because, you know, the only thing that we have is time.

Samantha Miller 18:05

Yes.

Maria Quattrone 18:06

And if we in my experience anyway, I'm like really looking at everything very um critically, I guess is a good word. But if and I patterns like this where you know, people want to know about it and they ask about it, and then you know, you answer 50 people about this property and or more. That's time away from something that we can be doing that's more productive and more um income generating, you know.

Samantha Miller 18:42

So that's definitely good to be selective about listings. Um the the only that I'll add to that is that I have um, and obviously I know you do this as well, that when you get new leads in on a listing and it doesn't work out, it's not the right fit for them. The question is, okay, is there something else I can show you? Um and it's a balance to your we don't as much as it's easy to say on paper, I don't know, why don't you just take every phone call of everybody that ever calls you and show them a million listings and then get a million deals done? You and I both would never sleep because how many phone calls do you get in a day and like emails and inquiries do you get on your listing? We we cannot possibly work and nurture every single lead that we get. It's all um, but that being said, you know, I try to balance that out and you know, um vet people for potential to shift to other listings. Some some of my best deals have been done by you know someone from out of town catching a listing I had on LoopNet, taking a look, being like, yeah, this just doesn't make any sense, and then me being able to pivot them somewhere else that they weren't, you know, to didn't see and then get a deal done. That definitely does happen, of course. Um, but but again, it's a balance because you know that uh that's a story. But if I get a hundred inquiries in a day, like I can't do that with a hundred people. I only have so much time and I like to sleep and eat and go on vacation every once in a while.

Maria Quattrone 20:04

Yeah, I understand.

Neighborhood Demand And Hot Corridors

Maria Quattrone 20:06

So what do you think the hot spots are? Like somebody like where should I want to develop, want to buy, or I want to stabilize building, but not in I call it the blue chip, not real estate, yeah, but somewhere where I can get some cash flow.

Samantha Miller 20:26

What are where um I I've seen a lot of activity in Man Young recently. I've sold a lot there. Um, multifamily seems to be doing well there. Everything is with a caveat that you know the market's gone through a shift. So every even the market or any market that I look at that I'm saying, hey, that I'm seeing some silver linings there and some successes, there's challenges there too. Every market's been flooded with new inventory, you know, vacancy went up a little for a while, rents were coming, rents were stabilizing, or you know, rent growth was decelerating for a while. So every market in all of Philadelphia, every neighborhood in Philly has had challenges. Every major metro in the entire US has had challenges. But holding that aside, as okay, that's you know, equal everywhere. Um, I still see a lot of renter demand in Many Yunk. It's a desirable area. The rents there are still lower compared to Center City. Um, and Manyunk really expands to, you know, that that renter demand expands a little bit into Roxboro, a little bit into East Falls, but just that kind of general northwest section where you have, you know, as a person or young couple, 20s, 30s, young professionals, to be able to live in an area like that where you have restaurants, cafes, plenty of things to do along the main street there, um, and you're a short distance to Center City, um, or your short distance to King of Prussia or Malvern. There, those are you know two big job pubs that are what 30 minutes um commute, but you don't have to pay the rents in the for those areas. Exactly. So an area like that, it makes a lot of sense for that rare pool, um, if that's what you're aiming for. Um, I also still have a ton of progress and development into the East Kensington market, the further. Um uh front north if you look at North Front Street from like the where it's in Fishtown and Northern Liberties and and kind of climbs up now at the the Burke station, I'm still seeing a ton of not only multifamily development um infill and climb up that way, but if if you get to this and you haven't walked up the uh North Front Street corridor in a couple of years, like 1900 block, 2000 block, go take a walk because there are like I don't know, half a dozen new five-star restaurants just opened up there in the last six months to a year.

Maria Quattrone 22:29

It's crazy.

Samantha Miller 22:30

It's insane. Like I and I was living there recently. I just recently moved, but I was living in um Fishtown for about a year. And just in the time that I was there, walking around, um, because I walk everywhere, so I like to observe things and I and was shocked myself. And I'm someone who I have sold a lot of development sites there, so I should know that there's a lot of progress, but it was a different thing to actually be living there and walking down the street and seeing like, did that coffee shop just open up this morning? Like I've never seen that before. Or did that restaurant, like, look at that place? That's like an insanely beautiful restaurant that looks like it belongs in center city that's all of a sudden on the 1900 block of North Front Street. So, yeah, I mean, there's still areas of the city that are that happening, you know, despite the headlines and the challenges. That it's it's you know, the boots on the ground knowledge, I think, is where um it is helpful to see those things.

2026 Outlook And Buyers Market

Maria Quattrone 23:20

It definitely is helpful. So you have a crystal ball. I heard you had a crystal ball, Samantha. Predictions for predictions for 2026. Bullish or bearish?

Samantha Miller 23:32

Really, neither, um, more bearish.

Maria Quattrone 23:34

Neither.

Samantha Miller 23:36

I uh I see wanting to take risks and go out there and do things, but but um skepticism, it's it's somewhere in between. I mean, the the store the word me is uh like equilibrium or stabilization. Everything's kind of just falling back into a predictable, sort of stable norm. The rates aren't spiking, rents aren't dropping, you know, there's nothing crazy happening one way or the other. There's a ton of pent-up buyer demand of folks that are you know calling and looking and making offers on things. There's activity, but it's slow because sellers don't want to meet them where they are. And so there's this kind of like tension on either side. There's some bullish folks and some bearish folks, and then there's like what's happening in the middle, which is just kind of a you know, the market finding its footing after so much volatility. So yeah, I guess more bearish, but I feel like it's I feel like it's just kind of finding its place in the middle there.

Maria Quattrone 24:29

Yeah, I think we're definitely moved full force, at least in Philadelphia, into a buyer's market.

Samantha Miller 24:38

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone 24:38

Um, yeah, definitely.

Samantha Miller 24:41

A buyer's market, but a challenging one at that because the you know, um buyer's market, but the sellers haven't come to terms with it yet. Yes, and and buyers are dealing with higher interest rates and and you know higher costs. And um, and to your point, that gets corrected by sellers dropping the price to accommodate those things, and that's only like kind of in the middle of happening, but hasn't like perfectly corrected.

Maria Quattrone 25:03

No, and that's what makes the market so challenging because you have buyers that will buy and you have sellers that want to sell, but not at the price that the buyers want to pay. So yeah, and and in you know, every year is different in real estate. You have years that you know deals just come together, and you have years that you have to may take months for a deal to come together.

Samantha Miller 25:26

Yes, yeah, there's a longer, longer time market, longer uh more deals falling through for sure. Like I'm sure you've seen this as well, where I feel like there's just more chances of a deal going under contract, falling out and having to go back. That that always has happened, but more more recently, I see more deals, you know, fail to actually get to closing and then have to go back on market. Um, yeah, so it's just different, it's just a different rhythm.

Maria Quattrone 25:50

It's a different rhythm. And then also you look at um, you know, what's happening in the world does affect it happens in real estate. Yeah, because people are human and they have emotions, and even though development generally isn't emotional, it's the least emotional uh part of real estate, it's not like a regular somebody buying a house or selling a house, but still those people still have feelings and uh they're very real.

Samantha Miller 26:22

Yes, yeah, but still um investors are still human beings with money that they are trying to protect and families they're trying to build their wealth for, and they uh certainly would get emotional if things were not going well or um you know they were facing challenges. So, yeah, you're right. There's still we're all human, there's still emotions in every every sector.

Slower Decisions And More Fallthroughs

Maria Quattrone 26:42

Always, always, always that um well, not think. I know that the decision making of people is we're so much further away than usual. Like if it took somebody, for example, let's just say a month before to make a decision about something, it sounded like double or triple.

Samantha Miller 27:03

Oh, yes. Yeah, it's really hearing you say that because that's one of those things where I think as agents, a lot of us, even if you're you know in an office with a team, we still kind of operate independently in a lot of ways, and you can start to think you're crazy if you don't talk with other folks in your fields and um with peers, because I I've seen that as well. And I've wondered, you you wonder what is happening? Am I missing something? Um, but it it's just how much volatility we've all experienced in so many ways the last couple of years, it's just harder for people to make decisions with confidence. So I think um, you know, for any number of reasons, I'm seeing the same this the the oh, I'll get back to you in a couple weeks is really I'll get back to you in six months. You know, it's uh it's in yeah.

Maria Quattrone 27:47

I have in my office, I made the back wall where I used to have like this balloon that's not there anymore. I had a a whiteboard across the entire wall. And so I write on there, I have all different things written up there. Like uh one of the things I do though is I have all the listings that I'm working on and on my board, and this and that that's was from January. So Friday, because I wasn't in yesterday, I didn't go to the office yesterday. So there's about 60 some 64 addresses there. Yeah, and either I they either have green dots, which means they're signed and they're either on the market, they may be sold now, or they're in the process of getting ready to go to the market, but their the clients have signed contract, listing contract, or they have a black line through it, meaning I'm not taking the listing or it's not sellable or whatever. And then there's about 35 that are dangling and that are I'm gonna say this, but torturing me, not torturing me. I there's a the follow-up, the follow-up, the follow-up. Like I have contracts out and right now, a bunch of them. And I'm like, Are you gonna sign it? Like, you asked me. You said, how do we move forward? I said, I have to send you. I'm sending you a listing contract. It was a week ago, it's not selling. I said, Are you gonna sign it? Because today's our listing meeting day. We meet every Tuesday to go over all the listings, and that's when we plan for you know, in residential open houses, blah blah, whatever. So I we're planning March. Like, are you signing this thing? Like, I'm I have questions. I have questions on it.

Samantha Miller 29:46

I'm like, yeah, and that's uh I I've seen that, and of course, like there's there's always two possibilities is oh, maybe they're they're speaking with other agents, and that's always the case. We're all we're all uh pitching our services over others to maybe competing with, but I don't I I have a similar system where I have my my deals and buckets in um uh that's like a to your whiteboard. Um in our office we use build out, so we have these categories of deals that it it's it's mostly just four categories um pitching. So if it's a and this sounds like it's the category that's like the ones in the gray space on your whiteboard where I'm talking to the person, I've made my I've given them my opinion, they're probably sent a contract, and they're kind of just waiting to figure out what's next. And then there's the sourcing category, which is like on the market or the contract is signed and we're getting ready to put it on the market. Then there's uh transacting if it's under contract and then closed. So those are the four categories. The the category I have most addresses in is, and it kind of makes sense because it's a funnel, but I certainly have the most in pitching. And I if I looked at the list, a lot of them are deals where the ball is in that person's court. Like I've I've given the opinion value, I've given the listing, you know. Um, and I, you know, on a few of them, I might get the sense that okay, they might be speaking with other groups, that's fine. That's you know, you're always gonna have that. But I think a lot of them, the the holdup is really uh I'm just not sure if I want to sell for that price, or I'm not really sure that it's that it's that hesitancy, affirm decision that that's always there. Um deciding to sell a property is a decision. Um, and I never expect that to be like an easy, quick conversation, but at the same time, I've I've definitely seen it in the amount of time that it takes and the number of folks that I have to talk to to get, you know, uh to the point of okay, we've decided to put this on the market.

Daily Touch Goals And Boundaries

Maria Quattrone 31:30

Just the do you have a number of people you aim to talk to every day?

Samantha Miller 31:34

So in the back of my mind, um, this goes back to like my day one in the industry that I had an interesting entry into the industry in which I was like on the phone talking to sellers doing cold calls for an investment group. Um, and the goal that I always had there was to talk to 50 people a day. Uh, I don't do that now, but um how I tracked that was just tally marks on a paper. And it really, to me, it was just about 50. It wasn't about like overly detailed categorization. I I did keep a lot in you know organized lead information, but I would just have tally marks on a paper of how many people I sort of did this on, whether it was a call, a text, an email, like some type of touch, and 50 was always the number. Um, as I'd moved into commercial, which is just a um there's not as high of a volume of deals, it's it's larger deals that less frequently and there's less of them. I think in my mind at some point along the way, I changed that to like 20-ish. So I think that's my new like norm. If I'm honest, most days I just open my inbox and just have to address everything that's in my inbox in my voicemail, and that kind of gets me my touches in the day before I even really think about outbound outreach. But somewhere in the back of my mind is that like 2025 number.

Maria Quattrone 32:50

Yeah. I I always suggest that to have a good thriving business, it's gonna be 20.

Samantha Miller 32:59

Yeah, I think that's that's yeah, and then it just depends. Obviously, like if I'm talking to 20 warm leads that are like re like clients that I've teed up, that's a different, that's a different quality 20 than if I did 20 cold outreach. I think at the beginning, you know, starting out, you just have to do more because you don't have as high of a quality of course and then you can break down over time.

Maria Quattrone 33:20

But if I had if I'm people that may want to do something, I have a lot of work to do. Yes, and I actually can't keep I keep up. So, you know, I don't actually talk to 20 people a day anymore because it's not time. It's not possible. I mean, it would I guess if I was until like 10 or 11 p.m., it would be possible, but I don't choose to do that, so yeah.

Samantha Miller 33:46

I think I already work 80 hours a week as it is, and there's got to be a cutoff point. I mean, I'm the I'm the friend travel and go on vacation that you always see me off on the side, disappearing on a phone call. Like I was in Japan in a different time zone taking phone calls at three in the morning. This is a very this this industry can do to you, and you you do it a little bit because you love it. Uh part of it's just default. You you just have all the inbounds to deal with, but you really have to cut yourself off at a certain point. I just I can't work drumming up every single lean and nurturing like we were talking about before. Um, you know, where I've had some some success rerouting buyers that didn't work out on a deal, like that's all great, but I can't do hundreds of those per day. You just you're you're human. You go to the gym and you know, go see my friends and family.

The 100 Appointment Focus Sprint

Maria Quattrone 34:28

And yeah, so that so I I last year uh this I would say a contest, but it's not really the right word. I did a challenge of how many appointments can I book. And when I say appointment, it's a listing, it's a listing appointment. So it doesn't mean a person. That means somebody raised their hand and said, I'd like to know how much one how much of one, two, three, main street. Yeah. So I I'm I'm calling, just I mean, calls my data in my database, my pipeline. If I say database, there's a difference, like database or pipeline, my pipeline of business. Because I have I don't know, maybe a couple thousand sellers in there. I I don't know, there's a lot of people. Yeah, and so I made this on average, I was doing 42 appointments, listing appointments a month. And I said, Okay, there's a challenge. It was last March. I'm doing it again next starting next week. I said, How many can I do? So I asked my husband. I already had a number. And he said the same number 100.

Samantha Miller 35:42

All right, so that's the number then.

Maria Quattrone 35:44

So I was like, oh my god, it scared me. Like I was scared. Yes, but I know that for every hour I talk, I for every hour I'm calling, I can set an appointment. So all I had to do, because I know my numbers, like I know basically for every 4.5 people I talk to, I can set an appointment. My conversions are very high because of my it's my pipeline of business. I've been religiously doing this work for 23 years. You know what works for you, you know your numbers, you know, and I think that's really important. I tell everybody this in the industry math is the path, knowing your numbers. So it happened. What ended up happening was so the appointments came from me calling the pipeline or somebody calling into the office from my marketing. So whether that's whatever, direct mail, Google, whatever. So that's how the appointments came. And each address was an appointment. So if somebody said they had three, that was an appointment because I had to do three sets of comps. So if I had to do, that's how I measured it. So by end of week three, I hit 100. That's amazing. And I ended up doing 132. But what happened, I don't I do not say to do this, I just definitely suggest you don't do it unless you have like just a five assistants around you to do all the work.

Samantha Miller 37:10

Yeah, I was gonna say, how much coffee did you need to drink to get it?

Maria Quattrone 37:14

You know it was really interesting, Sam, because what happened was I was able to see what was really I was capable of.

Samantha Miller 37:24

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone 37:26

And that 20% of my effort was done in the month of March last year. That's awesome. Because I looked at how many people I dialed that month and then I looked at the year, and 20% was done that month, and that month catapult me from 160 listings in 2024 to 192 in 2025.

Samantha Miller 37:52

Wow, that's awesome.

Maria Quattrone 37:54

So it's there's something about just like and I call it um a season of focus. So, like if we want to do more, we can. Just how do we want to do it? How do we want to do it? And you know, the other part of it is who do we want to do it with?

Samantha Miller 38:10

Yes.

Maria Quattrone 38:11

Because that's something I learned too.

Samantha Miller 38:13

Yeah, you still have to get through every single day, day to day, and some fun and some stories in between. So, yeah, the the who you do the yeah matters, but I love

Next Up Germantown To Brewerytown

Samantha Miller 38:23

it.

Maria Quattrone 38:23

It does matter, it does, it does matter, and you know, in regards to I seen development in Philadelphia. I mean, I was like one of the people this graduate hospital area and Francisville, who sold a ton of inventory here over the years, and it was exciting to watch. Do you see there's any neighborhoods like that again?

Samantha Miller 38:47

Like neighborhoods that are kind of in the path of progress.

Maria Quattrone 38:51

That progress that uh and the gentrification that we had that happened in Francesville, in graduate hospital, in Fishtown. Are they are we done or no?

Samantha Miller 39:03

There's definitely still areas. I would say you know what I'm saying, like yeah, that haven't that haven't really full uh development cycle potential yet.

Speaker 2 39:12

Um what are you saying?

Samantha Miller 39:13

Germantown, certainly. Um there's still there's still infill parcels available there. That the challenge in um you know, the more the more the center city, there's just less what can you buy and and turn over? Everything's done. Um, but Germantown still has a lot of land and also just vacant properties left. Um also East Kensington, again, that stretch of North Front that I was talking about. If you continue, you know, it the progress is already made its way to the Burke station, but there's still the York station. You know, there's still, if you still pick up the L, there's still a pocket where, you know, if you literally walk that walk starting in Northern Liberties and go up, you'll see it. You'll see all the large buildings and development and the um the retail and then see it start to die off. And I think that's what you're looking for is like where's that next kind of area that's right next door to where all the progress has been. So East Kensey Ton, Port Richmond as well, um, Germantown, and then also um West Philly, but it it's particular parts of West Philly. I see a lot of development in that um south of Parkside, like Mantua area along Lancaster Ave. I see a lot there as well. I also am pretty partially town right now. I'm not sure if I fully understand what's happening in Brewery Town at the moment, but it's it's I'm intrigued. And I've the reason I say that is because um those those areas that I mentioned, I feel like they they would, they have like they haven't been overly developed yet. There's been development in all those areas, but it there's just still a lot of infill left. Brewery town had a ton, like a lot of like I would you would have one of those areas that I thought had already been overdone, but in the last couple of years when sort of um that what what's the the word in the for like you know um the the the boom sort of then we got to see what what areas really were holding up after um after all the rent increases we were getting year over year. Brewery town is is one of those where I think it was um there was too much speculation there, and then it sort of had a harder fall than other areas I noticed. There's a lot of there's low foreclosure of properties, there's still there's still some and vacant properties left, but there's also been a lot of development. It's it's this weird area in my mind that's just been left in a strange.

Maria Quattrone 41:28

So there's a lot of there's like smaller, especially smaller parcels there that just didn't get developed. I mean, in fact, I have there's a couple that you know we're selling that the bank took back. Um, and there's also like this weird area, not weird, but along the park. Yes, uh yes, yeah. I just sold, I had a client made four condos there. Nice one 33rd, the 1600 block, and we sold two of them. The other two, his partner decided to keep them, they were beautiful, but that was interesting. I sold a studio for a studio for 130,000.

Samantha Miller 42:13

That's awesome. It's like I think that's 400 square feet. See, I find that fascinating because there probably was never a condo market in Brewery Town before. And the fact that there is, even though it's you know, from the outside looking in, you're you're not thinking 130,000. No, it's not a large price point, but there wasn't any condo in the first outside of like the auto on the park, like the the big that you know, there's like one or two large complexes or more traditional condo buildings, but like those small ones you're talking about, that's very unique and very interesting.

Maria Quattrone 42:43

And here's what's funny we had guests from I was at the open house. Um, I had a there was four units, so I had two people on my, you know, my agent stamp there, and I came in to make sure, you know, I want them, I don't usually do that, but sometimes I do like I pop into places, they nobody knows I'm coming. Yeah. But I had we had in our open house from Otto. Oh, nice. And I thought the whole thing was fascinating. You know, originally he was gonna sell it as one building, and I'm like, why not condo this?

Samantha Miller 43:16

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone 43:16

And let's sell them like that.

Samantha Miller 43:18

That's that's very interesting. I can't even tell you like recently I was thinking about that because I'm I've been because of how I've been looking at brewery town recently, and I think that was literally a thought that I had was like, is a lot of his inventory gonna get condoed out because you know, we could have a whole other podcast about just brewery town and what's been happening there. With that, yeah, I found that really, really interesting.

Closing Thoughts And Thanks

Maria Quattrone 43:39

It's great, great. Well, it's a pleasure, Sam Tamantha, to have you on the Be the Solution podcast. Always love uh seeing you and talking with you. So thank you for your valuable input on the Philadelphia development trends in 2026. And let's go have a fantastic year.

Samantha Miller 43:59

Thank you, Maria. It was great to be here. Thanks again.