Monthly Archives: August 2014

Do you wonder why people like to be scared? Why haunted houses are so popular at Halloween? A friend from the Midwest tells us of a house where a notorious murder took place there about 30 years ago. The house is now a museum, a tribute to robber baron architecture.

We are circling back to our discussion about a homebuyer’s lawsuit against the seller and the seller’s real estate agent. After the sale was completed, the buyer discovered that a notorious murder had taken place in the home. She sued, claiming that the defendants had an obligation to tell her about the home’s history.

The United States wasn’t built in a day, with that being especially true of its major cities.

We talk about zoning and land use disputes all the time. A friend pointed out that those posts are generally about lawsuits or disagreements between landowners or between a landowner and the city. What we have devoted less space to are disputes between buyers and sellers. A recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling has come to the rescue.

South Jersey is doing better, and it may even be doing well. Terrific, however, is a ways off, according to a local commercial real estate broker. We are talking about office space, and research from the broker’s firm shows that Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties seem to be putting more distance between current conditions and the region’s miserable condition during the recession.

Developer Greg Ventresca purchased a few acres of land in Roxborough in 2005. The parcel was perfect for a housing development. He presented his plan to the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and met with the neighborhood association to discuss the project. The city approved the plan. The neighborhood association did not.

We are talking about the recent court ruling in Greg Ventresca’s lawsuit against the city and a councilmember. The dispute centers on Ventresca’s development plan for the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia and one concilmember’s actions to stall the plan.

We are discussing Greg Ventresca’s plan to build 48 homes on land he owns in Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood. The property is adjacent to a park, though, and the neighborhood association wanted to maintain it as green space; some nearby residents believed the land was, in fact, a park. All the developer asked was that the city improve the road running through the property so it could to support the new development.