 | | | Thu, Nov. 5 · No. 37 | Saturday: 53°, damp |
| | The week in ten seconds ▸ Shapiro won, the suburbs moved, and Harrisburg flipped. ▸ County council asked for staff and benefits. Voters said no. ▸ The 28th Street Bridge is down to one lane until about 2030. ▸ Starting Monday, the Pulse comes twice a week. Details below. |
| Starting next week The Pulse is going twice a week. For now. Starting Monday, Nov. 9, you’ll get two emails from me a week. Monday: what’s going on in Pittsburgh this week. The news, the votes, what opened, what closed, and last week’s housing numbers. Thursday: your weekend. What to do, what the weather’s doing, and one house worth a look. Same Pulse, split in two, so neither one is a 10-minute read. It’s a trial. If two a week is too much, hit reply and tell me. If enough of you say so (or I can’t keep up), we go back to Thursdays only and pretend this never happened. |
| The election’s over. Here’s what it changed around here. | What Pittsburgh’s Talking About |  The state Capitol in Harrisburg. Photo: w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Suburbs Moved. Harrisburg Flipped. Josh Shapiro won a second term Tuesday night, and it wasn’t close. Here’s the part about us. In Allegheny County he won by 43 points, four more than in 2022 and more than double Kamala Harris’s margin here in 2024. He did better than Harris in all 130 of the county’s municipalities. He carried 38 towns Trump won, including four Trump took by more than 20 points: Liberty, Elizabeth Borough, West Deer and Jefferson Hills. Then Harrisburg flipped. Democrats won 26 of the 50 state Senate seats and kept the House, 111 of 203, per the AP. That’s both chambers for the first time since 1993. The likely new Senate president is Jay Costa, from Forest Hills. The new legislature is sworn in Jan. 5. Closer to home: Democrat Hadley Haas beat Rep. Valerie Gaydos in the 44th state House district. In Congress, Summer Lee, Chris Deluzio, Guy Reschenthaler and Mike Kelly all keep their seats. Why it matters: the bus. Democratic House bills to put more state money into transit died in the state Senate, which Republicans have run since 1994. Costa says transit money will be an early conversation. If you ride PRT, that’s the thing to watch in January. | Council Asked for Staff. Voters Said No. Allegheny County Council asked voters to let its members take benefits, hire their own staff and open district offices, the way state lawmakers do. Nearly 68% voted no. Right now the 15 members get a stipend of about $11,000 a year and share three full-time staffers. Councilman Dan Grzybek, who backed the change, took the hint: the vote “sends the clear message that people’s pocket books are stretched thin.” The county’s other two questions never got a vote. A judge struck down the one on term limits, and council pulled its own budget-cap question. Why it matters: two to one isn’t a close call. With sewer rates already set to climb about 48% over three years, nobody was in the mood to pay for more government staff. |  The 28th Street Bridge. Photo: Nick Amoscato, CC BY 2.0. The 28th Street Bridge Is Down to One Lane The 28th Street Bridge, one of the ways up to Polish Hill, lost its uphill lane Tuesday after an inspection with PennDOT. It’s one lane now: inbound, downhill only. The south sidewalk is closed too. Going up? The detour is Liberty to Bigelow, over the Bloomfield Bridge, then Paulowna Street. The 54 still runs inbound. Outbound 54D stops move to a detour on Herron Avenue. How long: the full rehab is tentatively set to start in 2028, with the bridge reopening in 2030. The city calls this a long-term setup, and it means it. Why it matters: if you cut through Polish Hill to dodge Bigelow, that shortcut just became Bigelow. | Also This WeekLarrimors is closing. The Downtown clothing store, open since 1939, started its going-out-of-business sale Wednesday at One PNC Plaza. It closes by the end of December. If you’ve been meaning to buy a good coat there, this is the winter. The freeze got the apples. Early warmth, then a late freeze. Pennsylvania’s apple crop could come in at 10% of average. Soergel Orchards in Franklin Park lost about 60% of its apples and all its peaches, and it’s picking weekends only. The state put $10 million into a freeze recovery fund, the first time it’s turned weather losses into grants. New in Squirrel Hill: YGF Malatang, a Chinese chain with nearly 7,000 locations, opens its first Pennsylvania spot Sunday on Forbes Avenue. You pick your meat, vegetables and noodles, they cook it in a spicy broth, and you pay by weight. | | Yinz Gotta See This | What stopped me about 200 S. Lexington is that it is a classic Victorian with truly unique architecture, rich woodwork, and incredible craftsmanship that doesn’t present itself to the market very often. It’s a special home in a very unique neighborhood, and homes like this simply do not come onto the market often, which is not realtor speak, but the reality. |  200 South Lexington: The House the Frick Owned It’s an 1890 Victorian in Point Breeze, directly across the street from The Frick Pittsburgh. And from 2002 to 2013, the Frick itself owned it. You walk in to that foyer: stained glass in the front doors and up on the landing, carved columns, and a staircase that sweeps up to the second floor. Outside there’s a turret, a covered porch and stone terraces. Inside there are fireplaces all over the house. The back half is a different house. A big kitchen with an island opens into a two-story family room with a brick fireplace and tall windows looking out at the trees. Frick Park is a short walk. The real flex: a level lawn and a detached two-car garage, in Point Breeze, across from a museum. Go see the whole house. | | See 200 S. Lexington Listed by Emily Fraser, Piatt Sotheby’s International Realty. | | Sports | Cleveland Never Found the End ZoneSteelers (6–2): beat the Browns 27–6 Sunday. Cleveland didn’t score a touchdown, and the defense sacked them eight times. Bye this week. Next: at Cincinnati, Sunday, Nov. 15, 8:20 p.m., NBC. Pitt: off this week, then Florida State at Acrisure Stadium on Friday, Nov. 13. | | What Changed This Week | 30-yr fixed was 7.35% | 599 Homes sold was 515 | 620 New listings was 601 |
Past 7 days, residential. “Was” is last week’s issue. | What we’re seeing Sales jumped, from 515 to 599 in a week. New listings ticked up for the first time in four weeks: 793, 719, 601, now 620. Price cuts eased off, from 821 to 711, but more sellers still cut their price than put a new home on the market. | What it means More homes sold. More sellers gave up, too. The 30-year fixed dropped again, from 7.35% to 7.22%. That’s about a third of a point lower than a month ago. The deal pipeline thinned a little: 639 homes are contingent or under contract, down from 671. The number that jumped is the 473 listings that were withdrawn or expired, up from 337. That’s late fall. Homes that didn’t sell come off the market before the holidays. |
| Why you’d care | Selling 599 sales in a week says the buyers are out there. 473 listings came off without selling, and the difference is usually price. If you list before the holidays, price it for this market on day one. |
| Buying On a $300,000 loan, 7.22% is about $2,040 a month in principal and interest, $27 less than last week. And 711 price cuts in a week is still real room to negotiate. |
| | Run Your Numbers at 7.22% | Meanwhile, in the neighborhood group chat Did you see what houses on our street are going for?? No. How much?? It’s in the Housing Brief 👀 Be the neighbor who knows. The Pittsburgh Housing Brief is my other newsletter. Once a month: what sold, what sat, and what it means for your street. Only real estate, from the guy who sells it. Free. No form. One tap and you’re on the list. |
| | Pittsburgh IRL |  A house on Larimer Avenue, May 2026. Not the record-setter. Photo: Cbaile19, CC0. Larimer Just Set a Record A house at 32 Mayflower Street in Larimer sold for $600,000 in August. Before that, no home in the neighborhood had ever sold for more than $295,000. The first sale over $100,000 didn’t happen until 2015. The buyer is a real estate company from Utah. Some context: Larimer had 9,400 people in 1960 and 2,600 in 2000, when about 30% of its homes sat empty. The neighbors have thoughts. Longtime resident Michael Berardini called it a “groundbreaker”: “Instead of fleeing out of the neighborhood, people are coming back.” Homeowner Lena Gainer has a line I’d put on a T-shirt: “Larimer does not need to become Lawrenceville. It does not need to become East Liberty.” I live in Lawrenceville. She’s not wrong. Mayor Corey O’Connor was scheduled to visit Thursday to talk up the affordable homes the city wants built on Mayflower Street. | | What To Do | Pick of the weekend · Saturday Veterans Day is Wednesday. Pittsburgh’s parade is Saturday morning, down Grant Street and the Boulevard of the Allies. It’s the coldest, dampest day of the weekend, so bring a coat and a thank-you. |
| Friday, Nov. 6 · 63°, rain late | Saturday, Nov. 7 · 53°, light rain possible★ 🇺🇸 Veterans Day Parade, Downtown · 10:30 a.m. | Sunday, Nov. 8 · 57°, mostly sunny | All weekend: the Three Rivers Film Festival runs through Nov. 15. Coming up: Kennywood Holiday Lights opens Friday, Nov. 13, and Light Up Night is Saturday, Nov. 21. | Got something happening? Send me your event. The good ones get featured in What To Do, and the best one gets the spotlight. |
| Open HousesSaturday’s the wet one. Go Sunday. No Steelers game to rush home for. Every listing on the market, open houses sorted to the top. |
|  | Meet the Writer Hi, I’m Tim. |
I grew up in Lower Burrell and did the reverse migration to the city when my wife went to law school here. We lived in Bloomfield for years, and now we’re in Lawrenceville. I’m passionate about Pittsburgh and our future here. I love writing about what’s happening: the fun events, the people, and even the stuff that goes unnoticed. And yes, selling homes is my day job. When you or somebody you know is ready to buy or sell, I’d love to be the call. |
| | — Tim |
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