Delco got built in waves
You can read the whole county from the passenger seat. Upper Darby and the boroughs under it went up between 1900 and 1930, in brick and stone. The township is 43% attached houses with a median build year of 1948. Darby Borough runs 60% attached, with a third of its houses standing before 1940. Springfield filled in after the war, 61% of it between 1940 and 1959 and 87% detached. Wallingford is 71% detached. Swarthmore’s Victorians run right through the 1920s.
That’s the loan, right there. A twin or a row is a single-family house to a lender, so FHA at 3.5% down and conventional at 3% to 5% both work on the same block. What changes with the build year is the appraisal, and on a pre-1978 house the paint, the roof and the mechanicals are the three things it stops on. The whole list is in the appraisal guide, because it’s the same short list in every town. That’s it. It’s fine, it’s fixable, and the 203(k) exists for the ones that need real work.
Your township looks at the house before the deed moves
This is the part that catches nearly everybody, and it has nothing to do with the bank. Nearly every municipality in Delco inspects a house before it changes hands. Fees on this site run from $75 in Springfield Township to $250 in Chester Township, and a dozen municipalities want the sewer lateral scoped on top of that.
Act 133 of 2016 sets what the township can hand you. A full certificate. A temporary one that lets you move in while you fix ordinary items. Or a temporary access certificate, which keeps everybody out until a substantial violation is cured.
Lead time is the thing. Some towns want two weeks, some want thirty days, and the inspector’s calendar in April is not the inspector’s calendar in November. Book it the week the contingency starts, scope the lateral in the same call, and the township stops being the reason your settlement moves. How the U&O and the lateral actually work is a page of its own.
The 2021 reassessment, and why low millage is not a low bill
A judge ordered the reassessment in 2017, Tyler Technologies worked through more than 200,000 parcels, and the new values took effect for tax year 2021. The old base year had been 1998. When the new roll landed, the county’s own calculated rate fell to 3.112 mills from 5.461 (county FY2021 budget presentation, December 2020).
For 2026 the county is at 4.609 mills, adopted December 10, 2025, which the county calls a 19% revenue increase and about $185 a year more for the average homeowner. Add the municipality and the school district and you get anything from roughly 30 mills in Aston to 55 in Darby Borough. On a $200,000 assessment, that spread is about $5,000 a year.
So ask for the actual bill on the actual parcel. The escrow line in a loan estimate is only as good as the tax figure someone typed into it.
Assessments can be appealed. The Board of Assessment sits on the ground floor of the Government Center, 201 W. Front St in Media, 610-891-4273. Forms go out for the following tax year. Mail them with a postmark or hand them in with an original signature. A court appeal runs within 30 days of the Board’s decision, through the Office of Judicial Support. Call them for the current filing deadline before you plan around it. The homestead exclusion is separate: it cuts the assessed value used for school tax only, it’s free, and you apply through your school district between December 15 and March 1.
Transfer tax changes at the township line
Two percent almost everywhere in Delco, one point state and one point local, split by custom between buyer and seller. Four places deviate: Radnor, Upper Darby Township and the City of Chester at 2.5%, and Upper Providence Township at 3%. On a $300,000 house that’s $6,000, $7,500 or $9,000 total. Cross one street in Upper Darby and your closing sheet moves $1,500.
The county’s $10,000, and the three places it skips
Homeownership First gives up to $10,000 toward the down payment and closing costs as a 0% loan, repaid when you sell or transfer (delcopa.gov, read August 2026). In the county’s Revitalization communities, which is most of the row-and-twin belt, it’s forgiven after five years of living there.
Every gate below is off Delaware County’s own 2026 Homeownership First program summary (delcopa.gov), effective June 1, 2026:
- Sale price $290,000 or under.
- No home owned in the past three years.
- At least $1,000 of your own money in the deal.
- Liquid assets of $15,000 or less, at application and again after settlement.
- Eight hours of group counseling plus one individual session.
- Income limits of $68,750 for one person, $98,150 for four, $129,600 for eight.
The county resets that sheet every program year, so read the current one off the county’s page or off your counseling agency before you plan around it. Funds are finite too. Apply early in the cycle.
Properties paying property tax to Chester City, Haverford Township or Upper Darby Township are out. Those three get their own federal grants and run their own programs.
The federal ceilings sit above all of that. The published 2026 FHA limits for the Philadelphia MSA, which Delco shares, are $630,200 on a one-unit house, $806,750 on a two-unit, $975,200 on a three-unit and $1,211,950 on a four-unit; the conforming limit is $832,750 (FHFA county file, November 2025). Both run well above the national floor most of Pennsylvania gets. The lender confirms the FHA figure on your case number.
