Selling a Home in West Goshen Township, PA: The West Chester Suburb With No Resale Permit

No. The township answers this on its own website: no new use and occupancy permit is required for the sale of an existing residential property, and the fee schedule confirms that U&O permits apply to new construction only. The township drafted a resale certificate ordinance in 2021 that would have inspected smoke detectors, sump pump connections, roof drains, and sewer cleanouts, but it was never adopted into the code. What a settlement does need are the routine certifications, sewer, trash, and real estate tax, which your title company orders from the township and the tax collector.

One border, two systems. East Goshen requires a residential property transfer application with a $150 fee, a review for open permits and violations, and a fifteen-business-day processing window before a use and occupancy issues. West Goshen requires none of that. The practical consequence is timing: an East Goshen seller has to file weeks before settlement, while a West Goshen seller can move as fast as the buyer can. Confirm which township the parcel actually sits in, because West Chester mailing addresses cover both, plus the borough itself, which runs its own process.

The permit history. West Goshen is the largest of the West Chester suburbs, and its housing stock, postwar ranches through 1990s colonials, has absorbed decades of finished basements, decks, and additions. With no municipal inspection forcing the question, the buyer’s home inspector and attorney are the ones who will ask whether that work was permitted. Pull your file from the code department at 610-696-5266 before listing, close anything open, and stage the paperwork. Rentals are separate: the township licenses rental units annually with biennial inspections, so a tenant-occupied sale carries its own file.

Strong and unusually liquid. The township wraps around West Chester borough on three sides, which means walkable-adjacent neighborhoods in West Chester schools at prices below Main Line equivalents, and a buyer pool of families, university staff, and borough renters moving up. Downsizers have real in-township options, from Hershey’s Mill’s neighbor communities to newer carriage homes along the Route 202 corridor, and the absence of a municipal resale gate means a well-prepared sale can close on whatever timeline the next home requires.