Delaware County, Pennsylvania Real Estate Law explained: what the reader usually needs first, disclosure file, and before avoidable damage starts

Real estate in DELAWARE COUNTY runs across an unusually short distance and an unusually wide spread — the tree-lined townships of Springfield, Media, and Wallingford at one end, the dense rowhouse boroughs of UPPER DARBY, DARBY, LANSDOWNE, and COLLINGDALE in the middle, and CHESTER, the county's Black-majority river city, at the other, with the MARCUS HOOK and TRAINER refinery complex anchoring the industrial waterfront. Every dispute over that property runs through the 32ND JUDICIAL DISTRICT. The DELAWARE COUNTY COURTHOUSE at 201 WEST FRONT STREET in MEDIA houses the Court of Common Pleas, where mortgage foreclosures, quiet-title actions, boundary and easement fights, and ejectment actions are filed, and where the RECORDER OF DEEDS holds the chain of title for every parcel in the county. Underneath sit the MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT COURTS spread across the county's municipalities — the venue for landlord-tenant evictions, which in Pennsylvania begin not at the county courthouse but before a magisterial district judge, sometimes within days. Knowing which court hears what is the first practical skill a Delco owner or tenant needs, because a filing in the wrong place costs weeks that a foreclosure or a lockout will not give back. And because the county's housing stock is old and its incomes uneven, the stakes are asymmetric in a specific way: the same body of law governs a new-construction settlement in Glen Mills and an eviction from an Upper Darby rowhouse apartment, but only one of those parties usually arrives with a lawyer.

Pennsylvania's framework surprises people arriving from New Jersey or Delaware. Foreclosure here is JUDICIAL — a lender must file a complaint in the Court of Common Pleas in Media, serve the homeowner, and win a judgment before the DELAWARE COUNTY SHERIFF can sell anything, which means a real courtroom and real deadlines rather than a purely administrative process. Before the complaint can even be filed, ACT 6 and ACT 91 require pre-foreclosure notices, including a 30-DAY ACT 91 NOTICE on owner-occupied mortgages that points the homeowner to HEMAP — the HOMEOWNER'S EMERGENCY MORTGAGE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM, a state loan administered by the PENNSYLVANIA HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY (PHFA) that can cure a default caused by circumstances beyond the borrower's control, something most states have no analogue for. The Act 91 window is short and requires meeting a HUD-APPROVED COUNSELING AGENCY to preserve access; miss it and the program is gone. On the rental side, the LANDLORD AND TENANT ACT OF 1951 controls: security deposits are capped at TWO MONTHS' RENT in the first year and ONE MONTH from the second year forward, deposits over $100 must be held in escrow, and interest is owed to the tenant beginning in the third year. Within THIRTY DAYS after the tenant surrenders and provides a WRITTEN FORWARDING ADDRESS, the landlord must return the deposit or send an itemized list of damages — and a landlord who fails forfeits the right to withhold anything and can owe DOUBLE the amount wrongfully kept. Evictions require notice, generally 10 days for nonpayment and longer for other grounds, but a written lease may WAIVE those notice periods, which is why reading the lease matters more here than in states where notice rights cannot be contracted away. A tenant who loses before the magisterial district judge has TEN DAYS to appeal to Common Pleas for a trial DE NOVO — a complete do-over — on a supersedeas, generally paying rent into escrow meanwhile. PENNSYLVANIA HAS NO STATE RENT CONTROL and no Delco municipality has enacted any. Overlaying all of it is the SELLER DISCLOSURE LAW (68 Pa.C.S. Chapter 73), which requires residential sellers to disclose known material defects — the document that carries most of the disputes below.

Three facts drive more Delco real estate friction than any doctrine: the age of the houses, the water that gets into them, and the industry along the river. The first is LEAD. The county's rowhouse stock in Upper Darby, Darby, Lansdowne, and Chester is overwhelmingly pre-1978, which means LEAD-BASED PAINT is presumed present, and federal law under the RESIDENTIAL LEAD-BASED PAINT HAZARD REDUCTION ACT (Title X) requires sellers and landlords of pre-1978 housing to give the EPA lead pamphlet, disclose known lead hazards, and provide a ten-day testing opportunity to buyers. In old rental stock this is not paperwork; it is the difference between a healthy child and a lifelong injury. The second fact is WATER. DARBY CREEK and CHESTER CREEK write it: the remnants of HURRICANE IDA in 2021 put water into Upper Darby basements and low-lying blocks across the county, and the legal consequences are permanent. STANDARD HOMEOWNERS POLICIES EXCLUDE FLOOD ENTIRELY — coverage comes only from the NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM (NFIP) or the private flood market; NFIP's RISK RATING 2.0 rebuilt the premium model and moved creek-adjacent premiums sharply; and flooding, drainage, and water infiltration sit squarely on the seller disclosure form. Aging basements carry a quieter problem too — buried HEATING-OIL TANKS from homes converted to gas, an environmental and insurance headache the moment they leak or an inspector finds a fill pipe. The third fact is the WATERFRONT. The MARCUS HOOK and TRAINER refineries and Chester's industrial legacy leave a landscape of soil and groundwater contamination managed under Pennsylvania's ACT 2 LAND RECYCLING PROGRAM, and buyers near the river should treat environmental history as a title question. Radon runs through the region too — Delaware County sits toward the edge of the READING PRONG behind southeastern Pennsylvania's high indoor readings, testing is routine, the EPA action level is 4 PICOCURIES PER LITER, and known results belong on the disclosure.

The institutional map is where Delco's own facts take over. Pennsylvania never reassesses on a schedule — each county sets a base year and lets it drift — and Delaware County went more than two decades before a court-ordered COUNTYWIDE REASSESSMENT took effect for the 2021 tax year, its first since 2000. That reval reset every parcel and set off an APPEAL WAVE. The bridge between an old assessment and current value is the COMMON LEVEL RATIO (CLR) from the STATE TAX EQUALIZATION BOARD: divide your assessment by the current CLR for the market value the county is effectively taxing you on, and if that exceeds what the house would sell for, an appeal to the DELAWARE COUNTY BOARD OF ASSESSMENT APPEALS has merit — its annual deadline is a hard summer date, generally August 1 for the following tax year, so confirm it with the board. The traffic runs both ways: school districts appeal recently sold properties upward, a practice the Pennsylvania Supreme Court limited in VALLEY FORGE TOWERS v. UPPER MERION AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT (2017), though sale-price appeals continue. CHESTER carries a distinct layer: the city entered state RECEIVERSHIP and in 2022 became the first Pennsylvania municipality to file for Chapter 9 BANKRUPTCY, and its fiscal distress sharpens the UPSET and JUDICIAL TAX SALES under the REAL ESTATE TAX SALE LAW that sweep up tangled-title rowhouses. Where a municipality's own negligence damages private property — a failed storm sewer, a collapsed street — the POLITICAL SUBDIVISION TORT CLAIMS ACT immunizes local agencies except in nine narrow categories, including real property, streets, sidewalks, and utility service facilities, caps recovery at $500,000 IN THE AGGREGATE, and demands WRITTEN NOTICE WITHIN SIX MONTHS. That six-month notice is Pennsylvania's trap, not any other state's. Home-repair work runs under the HOME IMPROVEMENT CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT — contractors must register with the ATTORNEY GENERAL, written contracts are required above a low threshold, and homeowners get a three-day right to cancel — and newer western-township developments fall under the UNIFORM PLANNED COMMUNITY ACT.

The playbook. LEGAL AID OF SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA serves income-eligible Delaware County residents from its MEDIA office and handles tenant defense, foreclosure, and housing matters — the first call for anyone holding a magisterial district court eviction notice or an Act 91 letter. The DELAWARE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION runs a lawyer referral service for everyone else, and HUD-APPROVED HOUSING COUNSELING AGENCIES are the mandatory gateway to HEMAP and loss mitigation. For homeowners: when an Act 91 notice arrives, call a counselor that week, and never let a default judgment enter in Media — most foreclosures end not because there was no defense but because nobody answered. For tenants: photograph everything at move-in and move-out, deliver your forwarding address IN WRITING at surrender because the 30-day itemization clock and the double-damages remedy both depend on it, read the lease for a notice waiver first, and use municipal CODE ENFORCEMENT and the RENT WITHHOLDING ACT rather than simply stopping payment when a rowhouse unit is unsafe. For buyers: in this housing stock get a full inspection, a LEAD assessment on anything pre-1978 where children will live, a radon test, and answers on any buried oil tank; pull the FEMA map and a real NFIP quote for anything near Darby or Chester Creek before the mortgage contingency expires; ask in writing about ACT 2 environmental history near the refineries and the river; and buy TITLE INSURANCE without exception. For heirs: CHESTER and the older boroughs carry the TANGLED TITLE pattern of any old industrial community — houses passed informally through families, nobody probated an estate, and the taxpayer is not the person on the deed — and clearing title through the ORPHANS' COURT is what keeps a home out of a tax sale. And for anyone taxed on a reval number that overshot the market: run the CLR math and calendar the Board of Assessment Appeals deadline now — the appeal that saves years of overpayment takes an afternoon to file.