With dozens of these properties, Wylie made no improvements and sold them for amounts that were sometimes more than 20 times its original investment. (Wylie would only agree to answer questions for this story by email.) “There were few, if any, other interested buyers, and it was a risky business strategy that involved buying hundreds of small properties with hopes of spurring revitalization in the long run.” “We saw potential where others didn’t,” wrote Wylie business manager Joe Edelstein in an email to CP. Some properties it remodeled and sold within a couple of years, making hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit, while creating homes Wylie is proud of. Since then, Wylie has bought and sold hundreds of properties.

Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It purchased lots and homes, sometimes for only a few hundred dollars, through private estate sales and from the city of Pittsburgh and the U.S. Starting about 20 years ago, in a small office on Butler Street, Wylie began scooping up properties for cheap, mostly in Lawrenceville. “What it obviously does, is it raises the stakes of the people in the community that are trying stay.” “The community has no leverage, either legal or moral, that it can use to stop that from happening,” says Swartz. Rick Swartz, of the community-development organization Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., says residents who are concerned with rising home prices and rents have little ability to keep their neighborhood affordable. But what does this mean for the neighborhoods it works in? Financially, Wylie has become wildly successful, cashing in on the rapidly changing housing market in Lawrenceville and beyond. And while Wylie has won more than 30 awards for preserving historic buildings, some community-oriented developers say Wylie’s development tactics also help to spur gentrification and, at times, can hold properties hostage in the name of earning profits. While Wylie’s management team of Joe Edelstein and Ron King have been a force in helping Lawrenceville’s Butler Street transform from grubby streetscape to Pittsburgh’s hippest business district, their record as landlords has drawn strong criticism from tenants. Free-market proponents say it’s the benefit of entering a risky market early critics say the tactic can inhibit the equitable, community-minded development neighborhoods try to achieve.įor Wylie, land speculation is just one part of a mixed real-estate portfolio. The process of buying a property cheaply, waiting and making no improvements, and then selling high is known as land speculation.

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