Why Comparing Offers Is Harder Here
Philadelphia's low entry price has produced an enormous population of small investors, many of them buying one or two properties a year. That is not a criticism. It means the buyer pool is deep and competitive, and a seller with a damaged row home will hear from a lot of people.
It also means the variation in competence is wider than in markets dominated by institutional capital. A party who has restored six row homes and one who has restored none send the same email. The three things below tell them apart, and none of them requires you to be an expert.
One: Does the Offer Account for What the Property Owes?
A Philadelphia fire property frequently carries municipal debt, and all of it clears at settlement: delinquent property tax, water and sewer charges, code violation fines, and the cost of any sealing or emergency work the city has already carried out.
That last category is the one buyers miss. Where the city has secured a building or begun demolition, the cost is billed to the owner, and the Controller's office has reported that the city recovers only around 3% of what it spends. The unrecovered balance does not disappear; it sits against the property.
Who Pays the City's Charges When I Sell?
Establish the total yourself before you take offers. It is public, it takes an afternoon, and it turns a negotiation you would otherwise lose in week three into one you control from the start.
Two: Have They Read the L&I File?
The second question is whether the buyer has looked at what Licenses and Inspections has on the property: the violations, the designation if there is one, and whether any appeal window has run.
A buyer who has read the file will ask you about it. One who has not will discover an unsafe or imminently dangerous designation later and treat it as a reason to reduce, because from their side it genuinely is new information. The difference between those two conversations is several weeks and usually several thousand dollars.
What Should I Ask a Buyer About the City File?
Three: Do They Understand What Attached Means?
The third separator is physical. Ask whether they have looked at the property as end-of-row or mid-block, and what they are assuming about the party walls.
On a mid-block row home, demolition means protecting two neighbouring structures whose floors and roofs bear on the walls being removed, frequently with access only through the property itself. That is a specialist job with a specialist price, and a buyer working from a detached-housing cost model has understated it substantially. Equally, a buyer who has not asked whether the brick shell survived has missed the single largest thing working in your favour.
Beyond those three, the usual applies. Anyone pressing you to sign before your insurer has responded is acting against your interest; Pennsylvania's bad faith remedy is on our page covering Pennsylvania disclosure, bad faith and transfer tax. Anyone vague about which entity signs the contract has told you something. And on the transfer tax, at 4.578% combined, confirm what any offer assumes about who pays — it is customarily split, but that is convention rather than law.
The Records Worth Pulling
The Department of Records. Search the buyer's exact legal entity as grantee. A firm that buys in Philadelphia has recorded deeds here, and the record shows what kind of property they buy as well as how much.
Your own property's account. Tax status, water account, and the L&I violation history. All public, and all things the buyer will look at whether or not you do.
The licence lookup. A party marketing your property to others rather than buying it themselves is engaged in brokerage and needs a licence. A principal buyer taking title does not.
Where We Fit, and Where We Do Not
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Run all three checks on us, and ask us the same three questions.
We are frequently not the right answer. On an end-of-row property where the brick shell survived, a rehabber who will actually build inside it can pay closer to finished value than a buyer pricing a clearance. Where a neighbouring owner wants the lot, they avoid the party wall problem entirely and can rationally outbid everyone. And where the shell is sound and the repair sits well below finished value, restoring and listing beats any cash offer including ours. Our written figure says so when that is what the numbers show. What happens from there is on our page about how the process actually runs.
Questions About Buyers
I Have Fifteen Offers.
Ask the three questions above. Most of a long list resolves itself in a single afternoon of phone calls, and what remains is worth checking in the recorded deeds.
An Offer Arrived the Week of the Fire.
Common here and not automatically a bad sign, though speed is not the same as substance. Apply the same three questions regardless of when the offer came.
Does a Buyer Need a Licence?
Not to buy as a principal and take title. Marketing property on behalf of others requires a Pennsylvania licence, and the state lookup will confirm whether a party holds one.