Mill houses, then postwar houses
Clifton Heights was incorporated in 1885 and grew around the J. and T. Kent carpet-yarn mills, which date to 1839, on Darby Creek about five miles out from Philadelphia. Then the Clifton Precision plant arrived in the early 1950s, the population peaked at 10,268 in 1960, and the plant closed in the late 1990s. What’s left is 6,863 people on 0.63 square miles, mostly rows and twins from those two build-outs, with detached houses scattered through.
That means old wiring, old paint and old roofs, and a lender who is used to all three. Every house here predates 1978, so an FHA appraiser will call the paint and want two years of life left in the roof; the rest of the list is the same one every old Delco borough gets. Name the fix, decide who pays it, keep moving. Where the list runs long, the 203(k) puts the repairs in the loan.
The borough looks at it before you get the keys
The borough runs a resale inspection on every house that changes hands, at $100 per unit with two visits included. That is the appointment that decides your settlement date, and it is booked with the borough, not with anybody at the bank.
Get it on the calendar the week your inspection contingency starts. If the inspector writes something up, you want the repair conversation and the FHA appraiser’s list running together instead of one after the other. Two rounds of scheduling cost a week each, and nobody budgets for that. How the U&O works across the county covers the rest.
What it sells for
Thirty-seven closings in ZIP 19018 in July 2026, the middle one at $259,999, typically 24 days from listing to contract. That ZIP covers Aldan and slices of Secane along with the borough, so treat it as a neighborhood-scale figure and price the actual block.
The bill
Borough millage for 2026 is 11.234, plus a $52 local services tax. The county adds 4.609. Upper Darby School District was 26.5230 mills for 2025-26, and that’s the number to re-check with the district each summer. The county’s combined 2026 table, using the 2025-26 school rate, puts the borough at 42.366 mills, about $4,237 a year per $100,000 of assessment. A tax-data firm put the borough’s median bill at $5,091 in April 2026.
Transfer tax is the standard 2%, so $5,200 on a $260,000 house with $2,600 as the customary buyer’s half.
The money that makes the difference here
Delaware County lists Clifton Heights as a Revitalization community, so the county’s Homeownership First assistance, up to $10,000 toward down payment and closing costs at 0%, is forgiven after five years of living in the house.
The gates come off the county’s 2026 program summary (delcopa.gov), effective June 1, 2026:
- Sale price cap of $290,000.
- No home owned in the past three years.
- At least $1,000 of your own money in.
- Liquid assets of $15,000 or less.
- Eight hours of group counseling, plus one individual session.
The county rewrites that sheet each program year, so check the live one. On a $260,000 row, $10,000 covers most of a 3.5% FHA down payment.
Trains, trolleys and a low bridge
Clifton-Aldan station at 1 Springfield Rd is a Zone 2 stop on the Media/Wawa Line, in an 1880 stone building that looks like a farmhouse and mostly is one, with 110 free spaces and 32 permit spaces. The D2 trolley stops there too, on a separate fare, running under a bridge with 13 feet 4 inches of clearance and a pedestrian tunnel alongside. Box trucks find that bridge about once a season.
The borough’s own calendar is short and local. A community cleanup on May 16, 2026. Fireworks at 9:30 on July 4, 2026, shot from Clifton Field and watched from porches borough-wide, because the field itself was fenced for construction. An outdoor movie night at Memorial Wall Pocket Park on August 21, 2026.
