What an FHA appraiser flags in a 1920s Delco twin
The items HUD's handbook actually makes an appraiser write up on an old twin or row, who usually fixes each one before closing, and when a 203(k) is the answer instead.
Read itHomeownership First and the towns it skips
The $10,000, the income and asset limits, the counseling hours, the 27 towns where the loan is forgiven, and the three municipalities that run their own programs instead.
Read itTransfer tax in Delaware County
The 2% standard, the four municipalities that charge 2.5% or 3%, the customary 50/50 split, the family exemptions, and what the difference costs on two real Delco medians.
Read itThe 2021 reassessment and your tax bill
What the 2021 reassessment did to values and rates, why three separate bills stack, what the homestead exclusion covers, and how the appeal actually works.
Read itKnob-and-tube, fuse boxes and insurance
What knob-and-tube is, what the appraiser and the insurer each do about it, why the binder is the real gate, and how a 203(k) Limited can carry a rewire up to $75,000.
Read itSewer laterals and U&O inspections in Delco
The point-of-sale rules town by town, what each one costs, how much notice it needs, who orders it, and what Act 133 says happens when a house fails a week before settlement.
Read itWhy these guides are about old houses
Because most of Delco is one. The inner ring, from 69th Street out through Drexel Hill, Lansdowne and Clifton Heights, went up between 1900 and 1930: brick twins, porch-front rows, a stone single on the corner. They're good houses. They're also houses with knob-and-tube in the attic, a slate roof on its third patch, and a clay sewer lateral that predates the Blue Route by fifty years. None of that stops a mortgage. All of it changes which mortgage, what the appraiser writes down, and who pays for the fix.
The money guides are here for the same reason. Delaware County reassessed every property in 2021, so the millage rates look low and the bills don't. Transfer tax is 2% in most of the county, 2.5% in Radnor, Upper Darby and Chester City, and 3% in Upper Providence. Homeownership First puts up to $10,000 toward closing for buyers under its income limits, with counseling first, and skips Chester City, Haverford and Upper Darby. Every guide says the number plain and says where it came from.