Delaware County packs remarkable variety into a small footprint: dense boroughs like Media and Swarthmore, first-ring towns along the Blue Route, and the estate country around Newtown Square and Glen Mills. 18.3% of residents are 65 or older, per U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, and many of them own homes bought thirty or forty years ago. What sets Delco apart for downsizers is the strength of its lifecare options alongside the usual active adult communities.
The Delco downsizing picture
Demand for Delaware County’s housing stock is broad: walkable boroughs pull in younger buyers priced out of the Main Line, and the western townships attract families chasing land and the Garnet Valley and Rose Tree Media school districts. Longtime owners here sell into a real audience. The trouble is rarely the sale itself. It is finding somewhere to land, since so little of Delco’s regular housing stock was built with first-floor living in mind.
Where Delco downsizers go
- Fox Hill Farm (Glen Mills, Concord Township). The county’s flagship active adult community: established carriage homes and single-family homes with a busy social calendar, minutes from Route 202 and the Brandywine Valley, about 25 minutes from Philadelphia International Airport.
- Riddle Village (Media). A lifecare retirement community offering apartment-style independent living with assisted living and skilled nursing on the same campus, adjacent to Riddle Hospital.
- White Horse Village (Newtown Square). A nonprofit life-plan community on 109 acres, with independent living residences and a full care continuum.
Many Delco downsizers also look one county west: Hershey’s Mill, Pennsylvania’s largest active adult community, sits just over the Chester County line. Our Chester County guide covers it in depth.
Active adult versus lifecare
Delaware County forces a useful clarity because its strongest options sit in different categories. An active adult community like Fox Hill Farm is a real estate purchase: full independence, association fees, and your equity stays in a deed. A lifecare community like Riddle Village is part real estate, part long-term-care insurance: a larger entrance fee, predictable monthly costs, and a guaranteed care path as needs change. Neither is better in the abstract; they answer different worries. The age-in-place-or-downsize framework helps identify which worry is actually driving your move.
What the sale costs here
Most Delaware County municipalities charge a total realty transfer tax of 2% of the sale price, customarily split evenly. One Delco-specific note: a number of boroughs and townships require a use-and-occupancy inspection before settlement, and repairs it flags can land on the seller in the final weeks. Haverford Township requires the application at least 30 days before settlement, and Springfield Township adds a $100 rush fee inside 15 days, Upper Darby pairs its U&O with a sewer lateral camera inspection, Ridley Township wants its application 45 days ahead, Radnor runs the whole process through its Engineering Department, Media Borough inspects every change of ownership in the county seat, Lansdowne wants the application 30 days out with your MLS sheet attached, Ridley Park includes the first reinspection in its $100 fee, Glenolden is the borough that made Act 133 case law, Brookhaven prints the as-is options on its $60 application, and Aston wants a notarized detector affidavit; each has its own guide. So do Swarthmore, where the U&O standards reach the sewer lateral, Clifton Heights with its use-only path for as-is sales, Yeadon with provisional certificates priced by the calendar, Folcroft with the county’s steepest no-show fee, and Darby and Collingdale side by side, Norwood, Prospect Park, and Sharon Hill with three different checklists along the airport corridor, Aldan, Colwyn, East Lansdowne, and Millbourne where the smallest boroughs run the most particular processes, from sixty-day lead times to lead paint testing, Newtown Square with its two-check U&O and sewer certificate, and Nether Providence, where a private plumber’s lateral video rides with the U&O, and Upland, whose $25 reinspection is the gentlest failure penalty in the county, and Rutledge and Morton, where one borough wants the sewer lateral proven sound and the other checks your tax bill before processing anything, and Marcus Hook and Trainer on the riverfront, where one publishes its checklist and the other requires the owner present at the inspection, and Eddystone, whose code builds a fourteen-day floor under the inspection calendar, and Chester Heights and Rose Valley, where one borough inspects to its fire code and the other sends a camera down the sewer lateral, and Chester City, which repealed its pre-sale inspection in 2025 while the township of the same name kept its own, and Glen Mills and Chadds Ford, where Concord Township wants six original forms and its own sewer lateral inspection while Chadds Ford wants none, and Upper Providence, whose $150 inspection charges full price again for any reinspection, and Tinicum Township, where Essington’s $75 certificate comes with a half-price reinspection rule, and Edgmont, which skips the house and televises the sewer lateral instead, and Bethel Township, whose Garnet Valley checklist wants a fire extinguisher in the kitchen and thumb-turn deadbolts on the doors, and Upper and Lower Chichester, where one township bundles a new stormwater authority certificate into its inspection and the other has scoped sewer laterals since 2016, and Parkside, Chester Township, and Darby Township, where conditional certificates go through a borough solicitor, the county’s steepest fee runs $250, and the lateral test gets a township witness, and Middletown Township, where there is no U&O but the sewer authority’s $200 certification, two weeks minimum, applies to refinances as well as sales. Elsewhere, ask your agent about your municipality’s requirements at listing time, not after you are under contract. The rest of the cost picture follows our cost-to-sell guide, and the tax questions, including the federal $250,000/$500,000 exclusion, are covered in the PA/NJ tax guide.
County resources worth knowing
COSA, the County Office of Services for the Aging (610-872-1392) is Delaware County’s Area Agency on Aging: care management, in-home supports, Medicare counseling, and protective services for residents 60 and older. Pennsylvania’s Property Tax/Rent Rebate pays up to $1,000 a year to income-eligible residents 65 and older, owners and renters alike; see the PTRR guide for the eligibility math. And when the plan needs a real number at its center, start with a free valuation of the current house.