The buyer: Heather Ong, 38, accountant
The house: a 2,219-square-foot townhouse with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in Wynnefield.
The price: listed for $499,000; purchased for $499,000.
The agent: Nora DeCristofano, Compass
The ask: Heather Ong did not move back to Philadelphia expecting to live with her parents for two years. The plan was to stay with them temporarily — six months at most — just long enough to save money and buy a house.
“What started as a six-month search turned into a two-year search,” she said.
Ong wanted to be in the city but not downtown. She was open to any place that was quiet and had outdoor space for her dog. She also wanted something move-in ready with three bedrooms and at least two bathrooms, and she wanted it for less than $600,000. That combination turned out to be hard to find.
The search: Ong started looking seriously in October 2023. She looked everywhere except Center City. In Point Breeze and Brewerytown, she kept running into the same problem. The houses were expensive, and many still needed work. “I refused to spend $600,000 on a home that I’d have to fix up,” she said.
Housing inventory was low at the time. Very few of the listings she saw on Zillow met her criteria, so eventually she stopped checking the site. She did deep dives on local Reddit real estate threads instead. That’s where she saw a link to an Inquirer article about a new development near City Avenue.
The location was close to where she wanted to be, and the price was close to what she wanted to spend, so she e-mailed the developer. She visited the site, but the townhouses were still under construction. She walked through a few model homes that were almost done to get a feel for the space.
The appeal: The house she saw was a “typical Philly townhome,” Ong said. It had 10-foot ceilings and a roof deck. She liked that it had three full bathrooms and that it was close to I-76 and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. “Location-wise, it’s very convenient,” Ong said.
And while she didn’t think the neighborhood was very exciting, she saw potential.
“I feel like there are a lot of changes coming to the area,” she said.
Plus, the house offered her more space than she could find elsewhere for the price.
”I got a bigger bang for my buck out here,” she said.
The deal: The home was listed for $499,000, which is what Ong offered. There wasn’t much to negotiate. The builder was firm on price and told her she couldn’t customize any part of the house. “They said, ‘What you see is what you get,’” Ong recalled.
She did, however, get the builder to agree to a mortgage contingency so that if they didn’t finish the house as promised, she could back out.
Ong hired an independent inspector, who she said was incredibly thorough. “He came back with 100 things that needed to be fixed,” Ong said. The builder addressed all of them. He also installed larger vanities in the bathrooms per her request. The original ones were “barely larger than airplane bathroom sinks,” Ong said.
The money: Ong put 10% down. Between the down payment and closing costs, she spent about $70,000. That included $4,000 to buy down her interest rate from 7% to 6%.
The $70,000 came from her personal savings. She was able to put away a lot of money when she lived with her parents. She also had stock from her job at Zoom Info Technologies, which had vested by the time she was buying. It was worth about $25,000. Without it, she would not have been able to buy.
“If that didn’t happen, I would still be stuck,” Ong said.
The move: Ong closed on May 1, 2025, and moved in on May 22, a rainy, thunderous day. The move itself was quick — most of her things were in storage. But settling in took months. The development was so new that Google Maps didn’t recognize her address yet, so her deliveries kept getting lost.
“That was a nightmare,” she said.
She also didn’t have internet for the first month.
Life after close: After a year in the house, Ong has learned that new construction can still come with plenty of repairs.
There have been nail pops, cracks, leaks, electricity issues, a microwave that keeps breaking, and a brand-new dryer that did not work. The constant repairs have made it harder for Ong to enjoy the house. Still, she does not regret buying it.
“These are first-world problems that I’m dealing with,” she said.
Did you recently buy a home in the Philadelphia area or South Jersey? Share the story of how you did it. Email Inquirer real estate reporters at properties@inquirer.com.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the name of Ong’s employer and the specifics of her down payment.
