Real NEastate: Tacony vs Mayfair

Q: I am selling my house in Tacony but I was told that Mayfair is a more desirable description for the neighborhood. Clearly, anyone who lives in Tacony knows it’s just as good as Mayfair, but maybe prospective buyers would prefer the “desirability” of the Mayfair name, don’t you think?

A: Buyers are savvier than you think. And it’s not like their agents don’t see homes mis-categorized in the name of trying to obtain a higher sale price — or just plain stupidity — but any buyer’s agent worth a salt knows the difference between Mayfair and Tacony and will tell their buyers. After all, the area’s comparable properties don’t lie

There are differences between these two neighborhoods and those differences are clearly reflected in the sold prices. Tacony’s average sold price in the last four months was $81,000 compared to Mayfair’s average sold price of $114,000. Mayfair, East Mayfair and West Mayfair show their own price differences as well.

To be fair, Tacony makes up only a small area of residential sales in the Northeast. Mayfair, by contrast, is very large and makes up a large portion of the residential sales. In the Multiple Listing Service, there are 309 active listings described as Mayfair, lumping East and West Mayfair together, and only 55 homes for sale described as Tacony.

Don’t mislead your buyers. If your home is located in Tacony and you know this, don’t make the mistake of selling a different neighborhood to your buyer in your listing description.

Stacey McCarthy is a real estate agent with the McCarthy Group of Keller Williams. Her Real NEastate column appears every Wednesday on NEastPhilly.com. See others here. Read other NEast Philly columns here.