Jenkintown fits an entire town into six tenths of a square mile: a walkable downtown, a regional rail station with two lines, a school district the size of a family reunion, and blocks of Victorians and stone twins that sell on charm. The borough’s resale process is compact too, four compliance areas on one application, but one of them lives underground, and the sewer lateral video is what sets both the fee and the timeline.
The Jenkintown seller picture
Buyers are walkability shoppers: young families who want the tiny-district schools and the train, and empty nesters from bigger Abington and Cheltenham houses who want Friday nights on West Avenue. The stock is overwhelmingly pre-war, which means laterals as old as the houses and sidewalks with a century of tree roots under them, precisely the two items the borough’s inspection takes most seriously.
The four compliance areas
Ordinance 2017-5 built the residential U&O around four checks, and Chapter 79 makes the certificate a condition of any sale:
- Detectors: working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, confirmed by a notarized affidavit. Book the notary in contract week.
- Curbs and sidewalks: inspected and in good repair, the item with the widest cost range on the list.
- House numbers: four inches, visible from the street.
- The lateral: a video inspection of the sanitary sewer lateral from the house to the main, reviewed by the borough’s engineer.
The $300 fee and the $100 shortcut
The fee schedule prices the application by who runs the camera: $300 standard, $100 if a NASSCO-certified plumbing technician performs the lateral inspection and files the video with their report, and $50 for condominiums with no lateral to inspect. The borough’s own U&O overview adds the reassurance sellers need most: a broken lateral does not stop the sale. A temporary U&O keeps settlement on schedule while the repair is negotiated, often through escrow, like any other inspection issue.
The Pennsylvania money
The realty transfer tax runs 2% total in the borough, customarily split, so the seller’s half on a $450,000 sale is $4,500. Pennsylvania has no exit withholding, and the federal exclusion covers up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 for couples. The home-sale tax guide and the cost-to-sell guide hold the full arithmetic.
Where downsizers here go
Jenkintown downsizers who want to keep the walkable life look at the borough’s own condos and the elevator buildings across the Abington line, then at the broader stock in Abington, Cheltenham, and Upper Dublin, with the full county picture in the Montgomery County downsizing guide. The sequencing guide answers the timing question.
Getting started
The Jenkintown order: a free valuation that prices the walk-to-everything premium honestly, the NASSCO-certified lateral video ordered in listing week, the sidewalk and curb frontage walked with a contractor’s eye, the detector affidavit notarized at contract, and the application filed with the $100 fee instead of the $300 one. The complete downsizing guide covers everything after the sale.