I have spent my whole career selling, restoring, and arguing about houses in Northwest Philadelphia. Not a territory I picked off a map — a place I know block by block, and care about more than is strictly reasonable.
This site exists because I kept getting the same questions. What is Mt. Airy actually like. Is Germantown a good bet. Where should we eat on a Tuesday. What is that building on Germantown Avenue going to become. Those are neighborhood questions, not real estate questions, and nobody was answering them well. So I started writing them down.
How I got here
I started selling real estate during my junior year at NYU, which sounds more impressive than it was. What I actually had was a fixation on architecture and design and a suspicion that I would be happier around buildings than in an office. I moved to Philadelphia shortly after graduating and have been selling and developing here ever since.
The work I like best is the complicated kind: historic structures that need someone patient, properties other people have written off, and buyers who want to understand a neighborhood before they commit to it. I have spent years on historic preservation, including stewarding a property under easement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation — which teaches you fast that an old house is not a product. It was made by people, it has been through things, and it will be here after you.
That is why I would rather help someone restore a stone twin than flip it. I also hold the Green Designation for energy efficiency and sustainability in real estate, which matters more in a 130-year-old stone house than most people expect. I am also a member of NAGLREP, the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals — because everyone deserves an agent who is unambiguously on their side.
The short version
47 homes sold. 4.7 stars across 15 reviews on Zillow, 5.0 on Google. Licensed in Pennsylvania, currently with Elfant Wissahickon REALTORS® in Chestnut Hill.
What this site is for
NW Philly is a neighborhood publication first. The weekly events calendar, the neighborhood guides, the restaurant write-ups, the permit watch — all of that exists whether or not you ever need an agent. It is genuinely useful and it is free, and I would rather be the person who is useful to the neighborhood than the person who is always selling to it.
If it turns out you do want to buy or sell something up here, I would love that. But that is a second conversation, and it can wait.
Want to talk?
Email alex@nwphilly.com or call 917.691.9093. No pressure and no drip campaign — if you just want to know whether now is a reasonable time to move, I am happy to tell you it is not.
Alex Aberle, REALTOR® · PA License RS 334913