Ardmore's Apartment Wave Is Landing on the Condo Market
In August 2026, attached homes in the Lower Merion School District took an average of 55 days to sell. That is 87% longer than the five-year August average of 29 days. The same report put the contract ratio for attached properties at 0.44 pendings per active listing. That was down from 0.51 in July and 0.61 in August 2025, and well under the five-year August average of 0.84.
Detached homes in the same district that month sold in an average of 19 days. Both figures cover one school district, one month and one set of buyers. The gap between them comes from the apartments going up around Ardmore's train station and Suburban Square. That new rental supply competes for the same household that would otherwise buy a condo, and it barely touches the buyer pool for a four-bedroom house.
Tri-County Suburban REALTORS® publishes its monthly figures by school district. These are district-wide numbers, not an Ardmore-only count. In August 2026, the two sides of that report looked like this:
Divide active listings by one month of closings and you get a rough measure of supply. It works out to about 0.8 months for detached homes and about 2.1 months for attached homes overall. That is our arithmetic, not a figure the MLS reports.
The townhouse line explains where the extra supply sits. Townhouses had 20 listings against 19 closings, roughly a month of supply. The rest of the attached category had 48 listings against 13 closings. That remainder covers every attached unit that isn't a townhouse, which in Lower Merion mostly means condominiums. Townhouses still sold slowly in August, but their inventory isn't building up. The listings that are building up belong to the condo-style units.
The attached median fell 24.5% from July and rose 2.4% from August 2025, on just 32 sales. A sample that small can swing hard from month to month. Days on market and the contract ratio are steadier signals, and both point the same way.
Lower Merion's December 2025 Housing Needs Assessment and Action Plan, prepared for the Township by HR&A Advisors, looked at who has been moving into the township's rentals. Between 2018 and 2023, Lower Merion added 709 renter households earning more than $150,000 a year. It lost renter households in every income bracket from $35,000 to $100,000. Only 39 of the new rental units delivered in that period were priced for the over-$150,000 bracket.
"Using the 30% rule of housing cost, the income of the Township's new renters exceeds the rents of the homes being added."
That line from the plan describes a household that can afford more than it is spending on rent. Many such households could carry a modest purchase. The same plan found that condos averaged $431,000 from 2022 to 2025 and called condo fees "an additional hurdle." It estimated the income needed to afford the average condo at $204,000, assuming a $1,500 monthly fee. The household weighing a $4,000-a-month apartment against a condo with a four-figure monthly fee is the same household either way. A family that needs a yard and a fourth bedroom isn't seriously comparing those two options.
Ardmore's earlier rental buildings showed how deep that demand runs. When the plan was compiled, One Ardmore Place was 98.2% occupied, with one-bedrooms at $3,100 and two-bedrooms at $4,400. Cricket Flats was 98.7% occupied at $2,800 and $4,300. The township reported that only 0.7% of homes were vacant and available in 2023, which the plan calls one of the lowest rates in the nation.
Three projects are adding about 449 apartments to Ardmore's housing stock, most of them within walking distance of Lancaster Avenue:
The Piazza replaces two car dealerships, a shuttered IHOP and several vacant lots. It was approved in 2021. Its plans predate Lower Merion's 2019 ordinance that limited most buildings to three stories, so the five-story design was exempt. Rising interest rates also changed what the site will hold. Chris Leswing, Lower Merion's director of building and planning, told the Inquirer that a grocery store at Lancaster and Greenfield would have needed two levels of underground parking. A café-style dining option that needs less parking is planned instead.
Coulter Place's leasing terms show what the newest units face. Bozzuto is advertising 1.5 months of free base rent on select apartments. As of October 4, 2026, one listed 673-square-foot one-bedroom carried a $2,999 base rent, or $3,084.14 in total monthly leasing cost. Two-bedrooms were listed from $4,402 and three-bedrooms from $6,967 in total monthly cost. On a 12-month lease, six free weeks take about 12.5% off the year's base rent. That is the price a condo seller in the district is up against this fall, and 270 more units are on the way down the street.
Apartment supply in Ardmore can grow, because commercial land along Lancaster Avenue can be rebuilt. The supply of detached houses can't grow the same way, and nothing on the township's calendar is changing that.
The HR&A plan found that jobs in Lower Merion grew 18% from 2013 to 2022, while the housing supply grew 6.5%. Its main proposals would allow accessory dwelling units in the LDR and MDR zones, and duplexes, triplexes and small apartment buildings in LDR4 and MDR1 through MDR3. Through the Building and Planning meeting of September 23, 2026, no ordinance carrying those proposals had appeared on a Board of Commissioners or committee agenda. Under the current code, an accessory unit generally means converting a single-family house into two units, with occupancy limited to relatives, domestic partners or seniors, among other conditions.
That matters for anyone buying a house on a deep lot. The plan's own example is a Wynnewood house on an 8,276-square-foot lot that sold for $280,000 in 2023. The plan says that lot could hold one to three more homes behind the existing house "if zoning statutes around gentle density were relaxed." Until an ordinance actually moves, the extra lot depth adds no development rights to a purchase. For now, a deep Ardmore lot is a bigger yard and nothing more.
In practice, the August figures and the rental pipeline sort into three situations:
Townhouses fall in between. Their supply stayed close to one month in August even though sales took 58 days on average, so expect slow-moving listings without much extra choice.
If you're deciding between a townhouse, a condo and a house in Ardmore and want to know what each one will really cost to own, renovate or resell next to the new apartments, Collin Whelan and the Two Cols team can price it out with you, including construction estimates through Poplar Construction + Design. Schedule a Consultation.
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