Selling a Home in Upper or Lower Chichester, PA: The Stormwater Certificate and the Lateral

A use and occupancy inspection at $130.50 per unit, plus, since August 2025, a $100 Southeastern Pennsylvania Stormwater Authority certificate that now rides with every change of ownership. Reinspections run $80.50. The checklist is comprehensive: smoke detectors on all levels and in every bedroom, carbon monoxide detectors on sleeping floors and wherever fossil-fuel equipment lives, GFCI protection on all receptacles, guardrails on decks and any surface over thirty inches, sump pumps discharging to grade, and four-inch house numbers at the door and on both sides of the mailbox. The township’s own advice is the most useful line on the application: call for an inspection as soon as the settlement date is known, because the schedule fills.

A $150 inspection with a $75 reinspection, requested no later than fourteen days before settlement, and a sewer lateral inspection that has been mandatory at point of sale since March 2016. The checklist covers the standard exterior and interior items, sidewalks, handrails, dry basement, GFCIs, egress doors, and the township recommends scheduling as early as possible. One quirk for absentee owners: Lower Chichester requires property managers to register annually with the township as contractors, at $100 per year, so a tenant-occupied sale can carry an extra registration nobody budgeted.

Upper Chichester joined the Southeastern Pennsylvania Stormwater Authority, and as of August 2025 the authority’s certificate is bundled into the township’s change-of-ownership inspection. Practically, it adds $100 to the municipal bill and a review of how the property handles runoff, downspouts, grading, and drainage, which the checklist already touches by requiring ground that slopes away from the building. Sellers who last moved before 2025 will not have seen this line item, and it is the kind of small, new fee that surprises net sheets when nobody flags it early.

The most affordable owner-occupant market in Delaware County, and busier than its reputation. Boothwyn, Linwood, and Ogden trade in ranchers, twins, and split-levels in Chichester schools, minutes from the Route 322 bridge, I-95, and the Wilmington employment market, and the buyer pool mixes Delaware commuters, first-time buyers priced out of Media, and investors. Homes that pass the municipal inspection on the first visit and arrive with the lateral already scoped sell quickly at full price; the fee schedule punishes improvisation more than the market punishes patience.