Inside 1901 Walnut: Rittenhouse Square's Unique Co-op Plaza

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I'd like to talk about the plaza at 1901 Walnut Street in East Center City, Philadelphia.
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The plaza is an interesting building because it's the only building on Rittenhouse
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Square that is a co-op and not a condominium.
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Now, in my opinion, it all boils down to that's just semantics.
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I don't think the fact that it's a co-op or not a co-op has any reflection on value.
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But anyway, the plaza was built in 1925. There are roughly 120 units.
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What's interesting is the building, if you stand in the middle of the lobby,
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you could split the building right down the middle.
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And how it was built, it was the same on the left side as the right side.
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So if you walk in the front entrance right off Walnut Street,
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there's three elevators to your left, three elevators to your right.
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The building does not have parking. It is a pet-friendly building, which is nice.
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There are limitations as far as size and number of pets you may have, but it is pet-friendly.
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Kind of the vibe, let me, you know, I've sold, I've probably sold over a dozen
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units in this building over the decades I've been in business.
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What I can tell you, the vibe, I think, is a little bit conservative.
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I think the just the doormen in general are probably some of the friendliest in town.
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I think the building's very well maintained. It's an older building.
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It's a pre-war, which means on the exterior, there may be some more maintenance
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than what we might find on a newer building.
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And to be fair, the plaza over the past 20 years has seen its share of assessments.
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Now, the upside to that is that some of the repairs or the maintenance that
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they do only needs to happen once every blue moon.
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But what I will say about the plaza is I do think that they've navigated their
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assessments almost better than anyone else in Center City.
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They've thrown that gauntlet down, maybe to, you know, some adverse reaction,
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nobody wants to pay assessments.
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They've gone through with them and they've made those improvements,
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those necessary improvements and maintenance issues that are required to keep
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a building in good shape, keep it functioning, keep the values up.
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And I think more than, again, more than most of the buildings in town,
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this building, the plaza, 1901, has navigated those assessments pretty darn well.
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And the nice thing about having a building that's had just a flurry of assessments,
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if you will, prior to you buying there, that's great.
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That's what you want. You want a building that has had assessments where the
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building has paid attention to maintenance issues, they've fixed them,
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they've collected the money for them, and you can move into a building that
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hopefully won't have those needs during your ownership.
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So anyway, the building's a popular building, Rittenhouse Square.
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I think it's a great dollar per square foot. Value is heavily influenced by
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interior condition because we will see some units in there that need a complete
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gut job, and we'll see other units come on the market that are just mind-numbingly beautiful.
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Okay. And one last comment is we won't necessarily see 8C is not necessarily the same as 16C.
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You know, even though they were originally built as the same units,
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a lot of the units here have been combined, absorbed by other units,
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cut in half and split down the middle and da-da-da-da-da.
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So a wide variety of floorplanes at the plaza. It's a great building.
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I like it. And I think it's worthy of investigation.
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If you're, if a unit like that is in, you know, the segment of the market you're
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looking at, look at the plaza. You won't be disappointed.
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Anyway, this is Mark Wade, centercitycondos.com.
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Thank you so much. Have a great day.