Pittsburgh’s real estate market is a complex collection of clashing worlds.
WalletHub recently named Pittsburgh the third-most affordable city for homebuyers. However, that term “affordable” is a relative term. As a July article in NEXTpittsburgh points out, the median price of homes in Cleveland, Buffalo, and Baltimore are even lower.
So, even though Pittsburgh is often praised as a “most livable” city, homeownership remains out of reach.
Complicating matters even more, large corporations have flocked to Pittsburgh with the goal of flipping cheap properties for high-value rent—building profitable investment portfolios that inflate housing prices throughout the city.
It’s an ethical minefield for real estate agents like us. We’ve built our career on ethical business practices, but we’re seeing an ever-growing portion of the local real estate industry becoming at odds with itself.
With every home that’s purchased, real estate prices rise, and the “level playing field” of Pittsburgh becomes more and more unlevel.
We’ve already seen this happen in recent years. A perfect example: Many of us still remember when Lawrenceville was a classic rustbelt neighborhood marred by poverty and dilapidated properties.
Rapid economic investments, however, have transformed Lawrenceville into one of Pittsburgh’s most celebrated neighborhoods.
But that success comes at a price. The median price for a home in Lawrenceville in the 1990s was around $30,000. Today? It’s closer to $400,000.
To put that into perspective, think about families that have lived in Lawrenceville all their lives. The consistent rise in property values and rent increases have priced some of them out of their homes and into other communities.
Like we said, the Pittsburgh real estate market is complex. Today, we’re unpacking the ethics of the real estate market and exploring ways investors and landlords can benefit their communities without disenfranchising the people who live here.
Table of Contents
Creating An Ethical Business Model for Real Estate Investors & Landlords
Our Ongoing Love Letter to Swissvale
Final Thoughts: Ethical Real Estate Investments Are Possible
Creating An Ethical Business Model for Real Estate Investors & Landlords
History has never been kind to landlords or real estate investors. And as the wealth disparity in America reaches record highs, society looks less and less favorably at traditional landlords.
We’ve even seen stickers plastered around Pittsburgh: Landlord is not a real job.
We get it. The cliché landlord is a money-hungry individual without care or regard for their tenants.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Digging Into the Landlord-Tenant Relationships
The landlord-tenant relationship is ultimately built on a business transaction; a tenant pays rent to the landlord for housing.
Here’s what we believe: Like any business relationship, a landlord-tenant agreement can actually be a fruitful engagement. In an ideal scenario, we can create a world where real estate investing is fruitful while maintaining affordability and dignified living spaces for the community.
Here’s what we envision for a better business model that’s mutually respectful to the business owner and the customer:
1. Understanding the Landlord’s Investment Goals
Some landlords are hellbent on squeezing every single drop of revenue out of their rentals. They ignore tenant complaints, delay repairs, and hide problems instead of fixing them.
We hate this business model.
Instead, we believe in landlords who understand property is a long-term investment, and a home serves everyone better—now and in the future—when it’s properly maintained.
All of this is important to discuss before signing a lease.
If you’re a renter who wants to live with dignity, lease with a landlord who’s genuinely invested in the long-term health of their properties.
2. Reaching A Mutual Understanding Around the Needs of the House
Our rental properties are incredibly liveable—but we also recognize that they’re not the Ritz-Carlton.
For every rent check we receive, we set aside a set amount for future upgrades, and we have an entire list and schedule for renovations.
None of that matters if it’s not articulated to the tenant, but they feel much happier when they realize that we’re focused on making these homes better places to live.
We also give them a little more ownership: If they want to accelerate the schedule of upgrades, that’s great! We’d love to do that—but we’d have to increase rent prices to speed up the renovation schedule.
If the tenant is comfortable with that, great! Everyone wins.
If not, we can continue down the same path we originally agreed upon—and those renovations will come eventually.
3. Provide Space And Opportunity for Tenants to Be Honest—And Stewards of Their Housing
Just as we outline the future renovations for the home, we should also be clear about what sort of standards we want to maintain within the house.
Here’s the unfortunate reality: People are scared of calling their landlord when something goes wrong. But avoiding a problem creates a cycle of decay and distrust. If a problem goes unreported, the landlord can’t fix it—and it only gets worse.
In an ideal scenario, a tenant should have basic maintenance covered in the cost of their rent, and there should be an expectation of no pets, working mechanics, and comfortable temperatures.
With that in mind, a tenant reporting a leak in the ceiling or damaged siding shouldn’t be a problem. Instead, this is a good thing: The tenant’s report empowers the landlord to provide a repair before significant damage occurs.
But this can only happen when there’s a conversation about how both parties are dedicated to maintaining the property.
Once that conversation takes place, there’s less pressure on the tenant to hide damage or avoid reporting defects.
Our Ongoing Love Letter to Swissvale
When Ted & I started our career as real estate agents in 2017, we sat down and set the vision for our company. Our goal: We wanted to make Pittsburgh’s eastern neighborhoods the absolute best place for our kids to live.
As we’ve grown and evolved over the years, we’ve consistently returned to that north star to keep ourselves on track.
Gradually, we fell in love with Swissvale, and we even decided to move here a few years ago. Swissvale offers a variety of benefits for a large family like ours—close proximity to the city, excellent access to parks, friendly neighbors, and that genuine city-life feeling.
Here, we’ve found a community of diverse individuals with different backgrounds, ethnicities, and education levels, showing our children there are many different ways to “do” life.
But we’ve started to invest in Swissvale beyond our own personal home.
One endeavor is the creation of Haven, a board game-focused third space. It’s still a pipedream at this point, but we recently started taking tangible steps forward to make it a reality.
More on topic: We’ve also started exploring purchasing our own parcel of rental properties.
This isn’t something we’ve considered haphazardly. Everything we mentioned above (and more) has been taken into consideration.
Our goal is simple: We want to preserve the genuine charm of the neighborhood while offering beautiful, affordable homes to our community.
We’re joining that energetic reinvestment in Swissvale, and we imagine a neighborhood where areas like Noble Street look much, much different.
All of this goes back to that original goal we set at our kitchen table in 2017: We want Pittsburgh’s eastern neighborhoods to become the absolute best place for our kids to live.
Final Thoughts: Ethical Real Estate Investments Are Possible
Real estate investing isn’t for everyone. It’s a complicated web of regulations, expenses, and moral issues.
But under the right circumstances, investors have the power to transform neighborhoods for good. In a perfect world, ethical landlords replace unethical landlords, creating affordable, dignified homes to members of the community.
This isn’t a pie-in-the-sky idea from a children’s storyboard; it’s something we’re striving for—and it’s a model that’s already been shown to work.
We know of one local landlord who goes above and beyond by actively supporting his tenants to become homeowners. He’ll offer support on building credit, meeting real estate agents, and share other resources to help them move out of renting and into building equity.
That’s the future we imagine.
Investing can be dignified.
Renting can be dignified.
But it’s the circumstances surrounding that landlord-tenant relationship that ultimately makes that possible.
Want to learn more? Contact us. We’d love to bring you along on the journey.