Get An Offer Today, Sell In A Matter Of Days
We buy houses for cash in Jenkintown — as-is, no fees, no commissions, no repairs, and a closing date you pick. This page starts somewhere unusual, though, because the borough has a resale requirement most sellers don’t hear about until a title company mentions it three weeks before settlement.
First: is your house actually in Jenkintown Borough?
This is the most useful question a 19046 seller can answer, and plenty of people get it wrong. Jenkintown Borough is tiny — about six-tenths of a square mile, carved out of roughly 248 acres of Abington Township when it incorporated in 1874. The 19046 ZIP code is much larger than that, spilling into Abington Township, Rockledge, Glenside and Lower Moreland. A “Jenkintown, PA 19046” mailing address does not mean the property is inside the borough line.
It matters because the municipality — not the ZIP code, not the post office — decides what you have to do before you can sell. Borough Hall at 700 Summit Avenue will confirm your address in a minute at (215) 885-0700. Do that first; everything below applies to houses inside the line.
The Jenkintown resale hurdle: the sewer lateral video
Under Ordinance #2017-5, adopted May 27, 2017, a residential sale in Jenkintown requires a Residential Use & Occupancy Certification, and the inspection happens at the time of sale. Four things get checked:
- A notarized affidavit that working smoke detectors are in place
- Curb and sidewalk compliance
- Four-inch property address numbers on the house
- A videotaped inspection of the sanitary sewer lateral — the private line running from your house out to the main
Three of those are cheap. The fourth is the one that reprices deals. The borough’s fee schedule lists $300 for the Residential Use & Occupancy application, or $50 for a condo or similar configuration with no sewer lateral to inspect. Hire a NASSCO-certified plumbing technician to shoot the video yourself and the application fee drops to $100 — the technician still has to turn in the video and the report. Defects found in any of the four areas have to be resolved before the permanent certificate is issued.
Why this hits Jenkintown houses harder than most
Most of the borough’s residential building happened between 1900 and 1940 — Queen Anne Victorians, twins, small rows, and the apartment stock that filled in afterward. That is the exact era of vitrified clay and terracotta laterals with mortared joints, and a century later those joints are where tree roots get in. The mature street trees that make Jenkintown look the way it does sit directly over those lines. A camera goes down, finds a belly, an offset joint or a root mass, and now you’re looking at a repair that can mean opening the street, a right-of-way permit and a five-figure number — two weeks before a closing you already planned your life around.
Notice the word permanent in the borough’s own wording. That phrasing usually signals a temporary or conditional certificate exists, which in many municipalities is how a sale closes with the open item assigned to the buyer. Confirm the current process with the borough — but that path is exactly where a cash buyer earns their place. We take the lateral on as our problem instead of making you fix it before you’re allowed to sell.
What a cash sale in Jenkintown looks like
You call or fill in the form, we look at the house, and you get a fair cash offer — usually within 24 hours. No repairs, no cleanout, no showings. No agent commissions or company fees come out of the price, and we typically cover the standard seller-side closing costs specified in our agreement. Mortgage payoffs, liens, taxes and agreed prorations still come out of the proceeds at settlement, the same as in any sale. You pick the date.
With no lender in the deal, the timeline isn’t hostage to an appraisal or an underwriter. The trade is price for certainty and speed — make that call with real numbers: cash offer vs. listing with an agent lays out the comparison, and how much cash home buyers actually pay shows where the number comes from.
The rest of the Jenkintown closing math
One piece of good news: you’re in Montgomery County, not Philadelphia. Realty transfer tax here runs 2% total — 1% to the Commonwealth and 1% local — collected through the Montgomery County Recorder of Deeds at 610-278-3000. Sellers a few miles south inside the city are dealing with 4.578%. Philadelphia’s ordinances don’t cross the line either: no Doors and Windows Ordinance, no Philadelphia rental licensing, no Philadelphia wholesaler registration. Jenkintown runs its own code enforcement out of Borough Hall, and Jenkintown School District — one of the smallest districts in Pennsylvania — sets its millage separately from Abington’s.
Demand here is real, too — the borough sits on the Old York Road (Route 611) corridor ten miles north of Center City, and Jenkintown–Wyncote station at Greenwood and West Avenues is one of SEPTA’s busiest Regional Rail stops. None of which helps you if the sale stalls on a lateral.
Situations we buy in around Jenkintown
- A failed sewer lateral video, or a U&O item you can’t afford to clear
- Inherited or estate property, including houses still in probate
- Deferred maintenance on an older house — knob-and-tube, slate roofs, buried oil tanks
- Landlords who are done, occupied or vacant
- Behind on taxes, facing foreclosure, or moving on a hard date
If the repair list is the real problem, we go deeper on selling a house that needs major repairs, and the full step-by-step is in our complete guide to selling a house fast. Selling in a different Montgomery County municipality? Norristown runs its own pre-sale inspection process worth reading first. Cheltenham Township, just south of the borough, takes a different approach again — it certifies whether your property’s use complies and hands that to your buyer. Abington Township, next door, sits at the other end of that range: no resale permit and no walk-through, just detectors and one affidavit before settlement.
Get a cash offer on your Jenkintown house
Tell us the address and a little about the situation. You’ll get a straight answer, a fair cash offer, and no pressure to take it. Get your cash offer today or call Liberty Pathway Homes at (215) 515-7799.
This page is general information about local processes — not legal, tax, or financial advice. Ordinances, fees and procedures change; confirm current requirements with Jenkintown Borough at (215) 885-0700, and talk to your own attorney or accountant about your situation.
Jenkintown Seller FAQ
Do I really need a Use & Occupancy certificate to sell a house in Jenkintown?
Yes. Jenkintown Borough requires a Residential Use & Occupancy Certification at the time of a residential sale under Ordinance #2017-5, and it applies whether your buyer is paying cash or getting a mortgage. The borough’s published application fee is $300, or $50 where there’s no sewer lateral to inspect, and $100 if you supply the lateral video through a NASSCO-certified plumbing technician. Call Borough Hall at (215) 885-0700 to confirm current fees and process before you schedule anything.
What happens if the sewer lateral video fails?
The borough’s wording is that defects have to be resolved before the permanent certificate is issued — which is why sellers with an old clay lateral often end up choosing between a large repair bill and a buyer willing to absorb it. That’s the situation we’re built for: we buy as-is, and a bad lateral is a line item in our offer rather than a reason to walk away. Ask the borough what temporary or conditional options currently apply in your case.
My mail says Jenkintown, but am I actually in the borough?
Call Jenkintown Borough at (215) 885-0700, or use the “how do I find out if an address is in the Borough?” page on the borough’s website. The 19046 ZIP extends well past the borough line into Abington Township, Rockledge, Glenside and Lower Moreland. If you’re outside the line, Jenkintown’s U&O requirement doesn’t apply to you — your own township will have its own rules instead, so check those.
Do I have to tell a buyer about the 2025 SPS Technologies fire?
Pennsylvania’s seller disclosure law applies to most residential sales — including as-is cash sales — and it asks about material defects you actually know about. The February 2025 fire was at the SPS plant on Highland Avenue in Abington Township, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has published its testing publicly: DEP reported no impact on drinking water or air quality, while soil sampling found elevated arsenic and lead at some tested locations. Point buyers to DEP’s published findings rather than characterizing it yourself, and ask your attorney how the disclosure form applies to your property.
How fast can you actually close in Jenkintown?
Once we agree on price, the pace is set by title work and the borough’s U&O scheduling rather than by a lender. There’s no appraisal and no financing contingency to wait on, which makes the timeline far more dependable than a financed sale. Many sellers pick a date inside two to three weeks; others push it out a month or two to line up a move. You choose the date, and we work to it.