Pennsylvania Fire Damage Property Laws: Disclosure, Bad Faith & Transfer Tax

Pennsylvania Makes You Write It Down

This is where Pennsylvania parts company with several of its neighbours. Georgia requires no disclosure form. Arizona requires none. Pennsylvania requires a written seller disclosure statement on most residential transfers, completed by the seller, and the form asks directly about damage from fire.

Do I Have to Disclose Fire Damage When Selling in Pennsylvania?

Yes, in writing. Pennsylvania's seller disclosure law requires a written statement on most residential sales, and the statutory form asks specifically about damage from fire alongside structural, roof and system conditions. The duty attaches to what the seller knows rather than to what an inspection might reveal.

Two features are worth understanding on a fire file specifically.

The obligation is about knowledge rather than investigation. A seller is not required to commission surveys to discover defects they are unaware of. But a seller who has an engineer's report, an adjuster's assessment or a contractor's estimate has knowledge, and knowledge is what the form asks about.

And selling in as-is condition does not remove the requirement. As-is allocates who pays for repairs. It does not license silence about a known material defect, and a written statement that misstates what the seller knows is a different and worse problem than an awkward conversation.

The practical conclusion on a burned property is the simplest one. Attach what you have — the fire report, the engineer's letter, the scope of loss — rather than trying to summarise it. A buyer who receives the documents prices with confidence. A buyer who receives a bare form discounts for what they suspect is missing.

The Bad Faith Remedy Goes Beyond the Policy

Pennsylvania gives a policyholder something many states do not: a statutory cause of action against an insurer that acts in bad faith, sitting at 42 Pa.C.S. section 8371, separate from and additional to a claim for breach of the policy itself.

Where bad faith is established, a court may award interest on the amount of the claim, punitive damages, and court costs and attorney's fees. That combination changes the economics of a disputed claim, because a carrier facing punitive exposure and a fee award is in a different position from one facing only the amount it should have paid in the first place.

What Counts as Bad Faith by an Insurer in Pennsylvania?

Broadly, denying or delaying a claim without a reasonable basis while knowing or recklessly disregarding that no reasonable basis exists. It is a higher bar than simply getting the claim wrong. An insurer that investigated properly and reached a defensible conclusion has not acted in bad faith merely because a court later disagrees with it.

What follows practically is the same advice that works everywhere and matters more here: keep dates. When notice was given, what was sent, what came back and when. A carrier's conduct is the whole subject of a bad faith claim, and the record of that conduct is built while the claim is open rather than reconstructed afterwards.

We publish no specific day counts for Pennsylvania's claim handling deadlines. The regulations exist and are administered by the Insurance Department, but quoting a number we have not verified would be worse than useless on a subject where the number is the point. Ask the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, or a lawyer, what applies to your policy.

The Transfer Tax Depends Entirely on Where You Are

The Commonwealth levies a realty transfer tax of 1% on the value of real estate transferred, and that applies everywhere in Pennsylvania. What sits on top of it varies enormously, because municipalities and school districts may impose their own.

Across much of the state the local addition is modest, commonly around 1%, producing a combined figure near 2%. Philadelphia is the outlier by a wide margin: the city rate rose to 3.578% effective 1 July 2025, giving a combined rate of 4.578%.

Why Is the Transfer Tax So Much Higher in Philadelphia?

Because the city sets its own rate under home rule authority and has set it far above the typical Pennsylvania municipal rate. The Commonwealth's 1% is uniform statewide, but the local portion in Philadelphia is roughly three and a half times what many other municipalities charge, which makes the combined figure the highest in the state.

For a seller comparing a Philadelphia property against one in a neighbouring county, that difference is real money on an identical sale price, and it belongs in the arithmetic before anything else does.

Your Four Exits, Compared

Repair and list. Highest gross, and in Philadelphia frequently viable because the brick shell of a row home survives a contained fire well. Requires you to fund it and to satisfy any open municipal file while you do.

Sell as it stands. Lower gross, transfers the repair risk, the municipal file and the transfer tax exposure. Whether it nets more depends on the shell and on what the city has posted.

Demolish and sell the lot. Difficult on an attached property and expensive on a mid-block one, because two neighbouring structures have to be protected. Doing it yourself is nonetheless far better than letting the city do it and bill you.

List on the open market as-is. Reaches retail buyers, but a lender will not finance a structure that cannot pass inspection. The written disclosure obligation is identical either way.

How the Answer Varies Across Pennsylvania

The statutes are uniform. The municipal layer is not, and the difference is larger in Pennsylvania than in most states because both the transfer tax and the code enforcement apparatus are local.

Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, Reading, Scranton, Bethlehem, Harrisburg, Lancaster, York and Altoona each run their own inspections departments under their own adopted codes, and each sits under a different local transfer tax. A fire-damaged row home in one of those cities and one in Philadelphia are governed by the same disclosure law and the same bad faith statute, and by almost nothing else in common.

Within Philadelphia there is a single department and a single rate, so what changes between neighbourhoods is the building and the market rather than the rules. The row home belt where the shell decides everything is covered under a neighbourhood of tight two-storey rows and a South Philadelphia row home grid. Larger stock behaves differently in a belt of Victorian twins and larger houses and an area of older stone and detached housing, while a Northeast neighbourhood of newer rows and an area where municipal debt often decides the file complete the set.

The full index is on our service area index.

State-Scope Questions

Can I Refuse to Complete the Disclosure Statement?

Not on most residential transfers. Pennsylvania requires it, and the form asks about fire damage directly. Refusing is not one of the available options; answering honestly is.

Does an As-Is Clause Protect Me?

It allocates repair responsibility. It does not remove the written disclosure obligation and it does not protect a seller who misstates what they know.

My Insurer Is Stalling. What Can I Do?

Document everything with dates and take advice. Pennsylvania's bad faith statute allows interest, punitive damages and attorney's fees where an insurer denies or delays without a reasonable basis, which gives a properly evidenced complaint real weight.

Primary Sources

Pennsylvania Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law — written disclosure requirement and statutory form
42 Pa.C.S. §8371 — actions on insurance policies, bad faith remedies
Pennsylvania realty transfer tax — Commonwealth rate and municipal authority
City of Philadelphia Department of Revenue — realty transfer tax rate effective 1 July 2025
Pennsylvania Insurance Department — consumer complaints and claim handling