I have spent my whole career selling, restoring, and arguing about houses in Northwest Philadelphia. Not a territory I picked off a map, but 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.
Upsala
The clearest version of that is Upsala, the 1798 stone house at 6430 Germantown Avenue, on the line between Germantown and Mt. Airy. It stands on ground the Battle of Germantown was fought over, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972, and it spent decades open to the public as a house museum. In 2017 I bought it from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the first time it had been in private hands in generations.
The deed carries an easement that obliges whoever owns it to allow a re-enactment of the Battle of Germantown on the front lawn once a year, as part of the Revolutionary Germantown Festival. You do not get to opt out of that. It is, I think, the best sentence in any deed I have read.
Stewarding a house under a National Trust easement teaches you something quickly: 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.
Credentials, briefly
I 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 a member of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, because everyone deserves an agent who is unambiguously on their side.
4.8 stars across 18 reviews on Zillow, 5.0 across 13 on Google. Licensed in Pennsylvania since 2013, currently with Elfant Wissahickon REALTORS® in Chestnut Hill. Read the reviews →
What this site is for
NW Philly Life is a neighborhood publication first. The weekly events calendar, the neighborhood guides, the restaurant write-ups, the trails and parks, 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.
What’s Happening This Week
If you want one thing from this site, make it the Thursday email. Every week it is a calendar of what is actually worth leaving the house for across all eight neighborhoods: markets, live music, trail days, festivals, and the block-level things that never make it onto a ticketing site.
One email, Thursday morning. No listings, no drip campaign, no selling. Past issues live on the events page.
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