Stone twins, and where the rows start
Drexel Hill had 12,384 housing units at the 2020 count and 29,181 residents, over a third of Upper Darby Township. The signature house is the stone twin: two-and-a-half stories, front porch, slate or architectural shingle, a shared wall and a driveway somebody has been negotiating over since the Truman administration. Nearer Stonehurst and Bywood the brick rows take over. The township as a whole is 43% attached with a median build year of 1948, and Drexel Hill is the older, leafier end of that arithmetic. Collen Brook Farm dates to about 1710 and the Lower Swedish Cabin is older than the county’s paperwork.
Lending treats a twin as a single-family house, so FHA at 3.5% down and conventional at 3% to 5% are both on the table. The 2026 FHA limit of $630,200 is nowhere near a constraint here. The appraisal is what needs planning, because every one of these houses predates 1978 and the appraiser’s list starts with the paint and the roof.
Old houses, and what they need
A 1920s stone twin generally needs three things and they are all known quantities: paint that has stopped holding on the porch and the garage, a roof somewhere in its second or third life, and wiring that grew by accretion. Name the fix, decide who pays, move on. Where the list gets long, the 203(k) rolls repairs into the loan, and since November 2024 the limited version covers up to $75,000 of work with nine months to finish it.
The two inspections before settlement
The township’s use-and-occupancy inspection has been interior as well as exterior since July 1, 2024, at $110 for a single family and $135 for a duplex including one reinspection. Then the sewer lateral: a township-approved contractor certifies it, the certificate is good for 90 days, and the township decides pass or fail.
Both of those want lead time. Scope the lateral before the appraiser comes, so any paint, rail or roof item and any pipe item land in the same repair conversation. Two conversations cost a week each.
What it sells for
Ninety-five houses closed here in July 2026, three more than the same month last year. The middle one went for $341,450 (Movoto). Twenty-seven days was the typical run to a contract, a week and a half slower than 2025. Ninety-five closings is a real sample, deep enough to price off.
It also runs roughly $125,000 above the 19082 side of the same township, on exactly the same tax rate. Stone twins on bigger lots are most of that difference, and it’s also why the county’s assistance math misses here.
The bill, which is a township bill
Everything on the tax side is Upper Darby Township’s. Millage for 2026 is 14.02, plus $280 per unit for sewer and $325 for trash. County adds 4.609. Upper Darby School District was at 26.5230 mills for 2025-26; get the current year’s rate from the district before you lock an escrow figure. The township’s 1% earned income tax started January 1, 2026 and applies to residents and to people who work in the township.
Transfer tax is 2.5%, one of only four rates in Delco above the standard 2%. On a $341,450 twin that’s $8,536 total, about $4,268 as the customary buyer’s half. The full township breakdown, including how the U&O gets scheduled, sits on the Upper Darby page.
What’s happening here
Upper Darby Summer Stage moved its 51st season to Haverford High School for summer 2026 only, with shows from the week of July 6, because a capital project at the Upper Darby High School campus made the campus unsafe for daily operations. The performing arts center on that campus normally runs 200 to 400 events a year in an 1,800-seat house, and the high school itself, founded 1895, is the oldest in the county.
The township’s own fireworks went off July 2, 2026 at dusk on North Lansdowne Avenue, which is in Drexel Hill despite what the street name suggests to everybody from outside. Parking that night is a contact sport, same as every year.