Market Value Analysis: Philadelphia

In 2023, Reinvestment Fund completed the 7th update to its Philadelphia Market Value Analysis (MVA). Since the first Philadelphia MVA in 2001, Reinvestment Fund has periodically reevaluated changes in market data, tracking the effects of investment in specific neighborhoods. The updated MVAs have helped public and private investors understand changes in neighborhoods over time, allowing them to assess and refine their targeted investment strategies.

The first MVA was part of a huge effort by the City of Philadelphia to address decades of decline in the city. Known as the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), the program was designed to renew and strengthen Philadelphia’s urban neighborhoods through specific public action. To guide NTI’s strategy, the City contracted with Reinvestment Fund to conduct an in-depth analysis of the city’s neighborhoods and their market value. With this project, Reinvestment Fund applied its innovative MVA for the first time. The ground-breaking data analysis was revolutionary in its design and detail and its results were noted in a variety of national journals and magazines including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The Philadelphia MVA was designed to discover whether there were indeed areas of the city that share common housing market and population characteristics. The picture that emerged served as a framework for the City’s plan of action. The Philadelphia MVA was able to reduce a vast amount of data on hundreds of thousands of properties and hundreds of areas down to a manageable, meaningful typology that helped Philadelphia’s government deliver area-appropriate programs and make informed decisions regarding the allocation of resources. The Philadelphia NTI program directed $275 million in bond proceeds into its neighborhoods; the MVA was the investment framework through which these funds were allocated.