New Hope and Solebury share a school district, a river, and some of Bucks County’s strongest property values, and they split the resale rulebook cleanly in half. The borough runs a genuine two-track permit, zoning review plus property maintenance inspection, and doubles the fee on anyone who skips it. The township requires no resale certificate at all and lets the wells and septic systems ask the hard questions instead.
The river-town picture
Buyers come from New York as often as Philadelphia, drawn by the towpath, the galleries, and New Hope-Solebury schools, and they pay premiums for turnkey condition. Sellers skew long-tenured with large gains, which makes the tax math below worth running carefully. The first question, as always along the Route 32 corridor, is which side of the municipal line the parcel sits on.
The New Hope permit, two tracks
The borough’s U&O application and fee schedule lay out the sequence:
- 01Apply and pay at submission. A residential re-occupancy inspection is $100 per dwelling unit, and the zoning review for a single unit is another $100.
- 02Two reviews run together. The zoning officer checks the use against the zoning ordinance, deed restrictions, and prior zoning decisions; the code official inspects against the property maintenance code and issues a deficiency checklist if anything fails.
- 03Fix and reinspect at $50. Multi-unit buildings inspect all units at once, $100 for the first and $50 each additional, and any unit not accessible at inspection time draws its own $50 fee.
The Solebury side
Solebury’s code ties certificates of occupancy to zoning permits, new construction, and changes of use, so a straightforward home resale closes with no township certificate. The practical scrutiny shifts to the systems: much of the township is on wells and septic, buyers test both as a matter of course, and the township’s own new-construction standards for well yield and water quality tell you what a careful buyer’s consultant will look for. Sellers with organized pumping records and a recent water test hold the stronger negotiating position.
The Pennsylvania money
Both municipalities sit at the standard 2% total realty transfer tax, customarily split, so the seller’s half on a $900,000 sale is $9,000. Pennsylvania withholds nothing at settlement, and long-tenured owners here genuinely exceed the federal exclusion thresholds, $250,000 single, $500,000 married, which makes documenting decades of improvements against basis real money. The home-sale tax guide explains what counts, and the cost-to-sell guide covers the rest.
Getting started
The order here: a free valuation that prices the river premium and the school district correctly, the borough application filed at agreement of sale if you are in New Hope, HARB questions answered before any exterior work, and well and septic records organized if you are in Solebury. The neighboring Doylestown guide covers the county seat’s split rulebook, the Bucks County downsizing guide maps where sellers here land, and the sequencing guide settles the order of operations.