We Buy Houses in Pennsylvania. Get a Fair Cash Offer in 24 Hours.

Seven to fourteen days when there is a real deadline, and closer to thirty on a normal timeline. What drives it is the title work: an open estate, unpaid inheritance tax, a tax claim, or a missing satisfaction on an old mortgage can add days. Tell us the deadline on the first call and we will say honestly whether we can beat it.

Entirely through the courts. Pennsylvania has no power of sale, so your lender must file an action in the county Court of Common Pleas, obtain a judgment, and then have the sheriff sell the property. Before that, most owner-occupants receive an Act 6 notice giving 30 days before the loan can be accelerated, and an Act 91 notice opening a 33-day window to meet a state-approved housing counselor.

Sheriff’s sale notice must be served and posted at least 30 days before the sale and published once a week for three weeks. Sales can be postponed by announcement, which happens often while a workout is negotiated.

Usually not, and Pennsylvania is unusually generous here. Under 41 P.S. § 404 you can cure the default and stop the sale by paying the arrears plus reasonable costs and fees, up to one hour before bidding begins, and you may do that as many as three times in a calendar year. You are curing the arrears, not paying off the entire accelerated balance.

A cash sale that settles before the sale date accomplishes the same thing through the payoff. Call us with the sale date in hand and we will tell you straight away whether there is enough runway.

No. This is the single most important thing to understand about Pennsylvania, and it is where a lot of online guidance goes wrong. Once a mortgage foreclosure sheriff’s sale takes place, there is no right of redemption. Your statutory right ends one hour before bidding starts.

The only post-sale avenue is a petition asking the court to set the sale aside for proper cause: a defect in the sale itself, filed before the sheriff’s deed is delivered. That is a challenge to the sale’s validity, not a right to buy the property back.

You may see references to a nine-month redemption period. That belongs to tax and municipal claim sheriff’s sales in Philadelphia, and it is three months in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, a completely different process from mortgage foreclosure.

HEMAP is Pennsylvania’s Homeowner’s Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, a state loan, not a grant, that can bring a delinquent mortgage current. It is one of the few programs of its kind in the country and it has been part of Pennsylvania law since 1983.

Your Act 91 notice starts a 33-day clock to meet with an approved counselor. Apply on time and your lender cannot begin foreclosing while the application is pending. Broadly, it is aimed at owner-occupants at least 60 days behind through circumstances beyond their control who have a realistic prospect of resuming payments. Check current eligibility and funding directly with PHFA before relying on it. HEMAP is not the same thing as the federal PAHAF program, which has closed.

In most Pennsylvania counties the Tax Claim Bureau runs the process. Upset sales are held in September, and before one the Bureau must publish notice, send certified mail at least 30 days out, post the property, and, if you live there, have the sheriff personally serve you at least 10 days before the sale.

Two things worth knowing. An upset sale passes the property subject to most existing mortgages and liens; if nobody bids the upset price, the Bureau can go back to court for a judicial sale that wipes liens out. And once an actual sale happens, the statute is blunt: there is no redemption. Before the sale you can pay in full, or the Bureau may agree to stay the sale on 25% down with the balance over up to a year, but default on that agreement and you are barred from another for three years.

Usually more easily than in neighbouring states. Under 20 Pa.C.S. § 3351 the executor or administrator can generally sell estate real estate without going back to court, provided the will does not restrict it and the property was not specifically left to a named person. If it was specifically devised, that person has to join the deed.

Two traps. Pennsylvania’s small-estate procedure covers personal property up to $50,000 and expressly excludes real estate, so an inherited house always needs a full estate opening with letters. And if several heirs took title by intestacy, every one of them must sign: a single holdout stops the sale.

Almost certainly, and it catches families off guard because Pennsylvania is one of the few states that still taxes inheritances at all. The rate depends on your relationship to the person who died: nothing for a surviving spouse, 4.5% for children and other lineal descendants, 12% for siblings, and 15% for everyone else: nieces, nephews, cousins, friends, unmarried partners.

The tax attaches to the estate’s real property, so a title company will normally require it paid or escrowed at settlement. It is calculated on the date-of-death value, so selling quickly does not avoid it. There is a 5% discount if the tax is paid within three months of death, which is why some estates prepay an estimate before the house sells.

Yes. This is the most common misunderstanding we hear in Pennsylvania. The Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law applies to residential transfers and has exactly two exclusions: a fiduciary selling in the course of administering an estate, guardianship, conservatorship or trust, and qualifying new construction. Selling “as-is,” selling for cash, or being in foreclosure are not exemptions.

The good news for inherited property: an executor or administrator selling estate real estate does fall within that fiduciary exemption. Otherwise you complete the form. The statute does not require you to investigate anything, only to answer honestly and not conceal a known material defect. “Unknown” is a permitted answer.

In much of Pennsylvania the coal beneath a property was severed from the surface long ago and belongs to someone else, who may have the right to mine it even if the surface settles. Where that is the case, state law requires a specific notice in the deed and agreement of sale, and in bituminous counties an additional signed subsidence notice.

It is a title and paperwork issue rather than something you need to fix. Your settlement company handles the language, and it does not stop us from buying.

No commission and no fees from us. Pennsylvania charges 1% realty transfer tax at the state level and nearly every municipality and school district adds its own, so most sales run around 2% in total. Buyer and seller are jointly and severally liable and by custom split it, though it is negotiable. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are much higher than the rest of the state. Your settlement statement will show the exact figures.