According to the latest Zillow Real Estate Market Reports, home values in Philadelphia increased 1.7% in the second quarter of 2009, compared to the second quarter of 2008. Nationally, home values decreased 12.1% during this same period.

I rent out a few apartments in Philadelphia. Each year around the holidays I try and do something to show appreciation to the tenants. They could have selected other properties, but they chose mine. They have treated the apartments with respect and have made them good homes. I am grateful.

This year I went to the movie theater and picked up tickets. It’s a simple gesture. A way to say thanks. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

She’s proud of not being late on the rent for sixteen years and is one of those ideal persons you would want to have as a neighbor. She’s become a wonderful character in my wife’s and my lives.

We lived downstairs from her while we renovated an apartment there, and out of the blue she left a can of salmon treats for our cat. The next month we reciprocated by giving her a large gift basket close to Christmas. I give all my tenants gifts of some sort around Christmas – usually movie tickets – but she doesn’t get out much and something for home was better.

When we came home the next day there were bottles of sake and raspberry brandy at the door. She wasn’t sure what kind of alcohol we’d like, so she hedged and covered as much culture as she could with two bottles.

She called a couple weeks ago about a leaky faucet in the bathroom. She’s consistently worried about bothering us when she calls and often apologizes for doing so at the end of the call.

I’ve been working some intense projects at Ingram Digital, so my first opportunity to visit was today to see what I could do about the sink. She explained that professionals who tried to fix it over the years had described the faucet as not fixable.

The plumbers and contractors were right. The faucet can not be repaired, and replacement of only the faucet requires replacement of the sink, too. To correct the problem requires disconnecting the faucet fittings and the drain, removing the sink from the wall, installation of a new pedestal sink, installation of a new faucet, and then reconnection of the fittings and drain. Bummer!

Tomorrow I’m installing a new sink and faucet. I hope she likes it.

UPDATE: paragraphs of sugarcoated fluff snipped/removed from this post

Today we went for some property tours close to Center City in the Callowhill area (between Spring Garden and the Vine Street Expressway and between Broad and Columbus).

If you think rents and purchase prices are tumbling everywhere, you might be mistaken. Philadelphia is still a good buy and has great rent vs. buy ratios (coming from my Californian perspective).

A video tour of a property…

431 N. 7th Street – Incredible views and close proximity to Market Street East. Clean and attractive lobby. Shared location with The Electric Factory.

If you haven’t been to National Mechanics, you need to go. In fact, you should go this Thursday at 7:00pm so you can join the Philadelphia Geek Dinner first meetup (RSVP on Upcoming). I got to spend some time hanging with Jason, an owner of the place, and I’m stoked this is the kick-off location.

For starters, Jason isn’t a restaurateur by trade. He’s a developer and entrepreneur who has helped build WebLinc. While you’re here you’re right under a star Philadelphia company.

When I dropped by, Philadelphia’s Fox News was filming a 1-year follow-up to National Mechanics winning the “Trendiest Bar” award.

• Facebook Group
• Upcoming
• National Mechanics
• @natmechanics
• Review of National Mechanics
• Google Map

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on real estate – Lately been hearing a lot of people talking on the subject of short-sales, and I’m trying to digest some of the numbers. The NAR (National Association of Realtors) is describing 18% of homes on the market as being upside down (the owner owes more on the property than he or she could sell it for). I feel for the those in this situation.

A big curiosity is how the upside down sales are distributed. 18% is the average, which means there are big swings around the country. Along the Central Coast of California (San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, Morro Bay, etc), it’s roughly 50%… But in many locations that are still undervalued, prices still rise.

This is what I’ve been thinking and talking to people about when the topic of real estate comes up. Not many dinner conversations go by without hitting on this topic.

Anyway, the reason I’m on the topic of real estate in this post is because I spent all weekend remodeling… Well, thinking about Facebook applications, Google Social, and other apps while remodeling… Phew!

We gutted the 2nd bedroom of our apartment. First we tore it down to the studs, and then tore out the studs themselves. The plan was to leave a beautiful exposed brick wall.

Unfortunately, the bricks are starting to powder up and refinishing them would have involved amounts of muriatic acid I don’t want to think about (my wife had to run and dive out a window to escape the fumes last time – aweful stuff!)

The decision for covering the bricks was made easier by being able to shrink our heating and cooling bill with some rolls of insulation. So I framed away.

I should note that Galina and I are nearly drooling at the thought of being done with the remodel. Having Summer weekends free for outdoor (and computing) activities will be heaven on earth.

By the time the sun was setting, we called it a day and went for nice walk (some decent sunset pics).

After a long time off I’m finally back to running. My wife gave me a Nike+ at Christmas and it’s been gathering dust for the most part.

Why? We’ve been remodeling and we’re finally wrapping things up (photo stream on Flickr). I can feel the all-our-spare-time-sucked-out-of-us-and-put-in-to-construction-duties coming back like the warmth of Spring. Now there will be time for visiting family, coding, and running.

I’ll be adding a static about page to solyoung.com and a Nike+ badge will be a small part of it. The Philadelphia Broad Street 10-miler is coming up in May and I’ve got to get back in runners shape. One huge advantage of working at iofy is our office is right at the finish line. It’s going to be a great, great run!

This weekend my wife and I got an early start Friday to finish off our bathroom’s tile. I’ve been photo-blogging it to Flickr and periodically putting up notes on Twitter. The last couple weekends have been similar, doing plumbing, floor tile, prep work, etc.

Though there is so much to do (more blog posts, tons of iofy priorities, and building in a certain web service), this is still satisfying work… Something everyone 1/2 interested in real estate should do at least once. I’m a software engineer and dev team manager because I love to build things. I think other developers should feel this way too.

More pics after the jump…

A video on the sub-prime meltdown…

My wife and I spent the weekend getting rid of the old tub and installing the new one. The goal was to get through the couple days and have a working shower before Monday AM. So much for that… But at least we’re close enough to be done tomorrow (with the tub anyway).

It’s photoblogged on Flickr and I’ll continue adding photos of the remodel to this set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/solyoung/sets/72157604033311207/

What we did, this weekend, in a nutshell…

• Killed the water to the apt, disconnected all bathroom plumbing.
• Removed old 300lb cast iron behemoth.
• Removed the toilet and vanity.
• Cleaned the old floor and hit Home Depot for propane and equipment.
• Added new shutoff valves for bathroom and various features of the bathroom.
• Got a ticket for putting the old toilet and vanity on the sidewalk before 7pm.
• Installed new subfloor (1/2″ ply) over the top of old floor.
• Picked up all the fixings for finishing the project.
• Put tub in place.
• Cut out floor for new drain.

So, what’s next? Hooking that tub drain up and building a wall to house the new shower faucet.

Or maybe we hire a plumber…