Guide
Selling a Pre-1978 Home in Norristown or Delaware County? Here's When You Need a Lead Certificate First
Philadelphia's lead law has no point-of-sale trigger - but Norristown, Chester, and East Lansdowne can require a lead certificate before a pre-1978 home changes hands. Here's which sales need one first.
Published August 16, 2026 · Norristown & Delaware County
If you list pre-1978 homes across the Philadelphia suburbs, the single most useful thing to know about lead-paint rules is that they do not all attach at the same moment. Some towns require a lead certificate before a rental license renews – the landlord's recurring problem. A few require one before the property changes hands at all – the seller's problem, and yours at the closing table. Whether a given sale needs a lead certificate first comes down to which municipality the property sits in, and the towns this guide covers split cleanly into two groups.
The trigger most lead-law summaries skip: sale, not just rental
Most published explanations of Pennsylvania's lead-certification laws describe the rental-license trigger, because that is the version that touches the largest number of properties: a pre-1978 unit cannot keep its rental license without a current lead-safe or lead-free certification on file. That is a landlord's ongoing obligation. A separate and less-discussed trigger is the point-of-sale, or property-transfer, trigger: the certificate becomes a condition of selling the home, whether or not it was ever rented. An owner-occupant who has never been a landlord can still be caught by it. Which trigger applies – and whether the transfer trigger exists at all – depends entirely on the town.
Philadelphia: no lead certificate is required to sell
Philadelphia is the cleanest case, and it cuts the opposite way from what many suburban sellers expect. Philadelphia's universal lead law (Bill 180936-A, effective October 1, 2020) ties certification to rental licensing – every rental-license renewal for a pre-1978 property needs a current lead-safe or lead-free certificate on file – and, separately, to Family Child Day Care licensing under §6-814. It contains no point-of-sale or property-transfer trigger.
Source: Philadelphia Code Chapter 6-800, 'Lead Paint Disclosure and Certification'
For a realtor, that means a straightforward listing of a non-rental Philadelphia rowhome does not need a lead certificate to close. The obligation lives with the rental license, not the deed. If the property is sold as an operating rental, the buyer takes on the rental-license certification requirement going forward – but that is a licensing matter for the new owner, not a document the sale itself is gated on.
Norristown: the sale trigger is written into the ordinance itself
Norristown is different, and it is the most clearly documented of the suburban towns. Ordinance 21-14, codified as Chapter 200 (“Lead Poisoning Prevention and Lead Hazard Control”) and enacted November 16, 2021, lists four separate triggers in §200-3: rental licensing, condemned property, day care, and real estate transfer. The transfer trigger is explicit – a lead report is required, in the ordinance's own words:
“…as part of the real estate transfer inspection process.” (§200-3.D)
Source: Norristown Ordinance 21-14, executed text (Chapter 200, Lead Poisoning Prevention and Lead Hazard Control) (2021)
This is the one town among Norristown, Chester, and East Lansdowne where the transfer trigger is confirmed against the executed ordinance text itself, not only a passage announcement. In practice it runs through the borough's Use and Occupancy / resale-inspection process – the same Use and Occupancy packet used for a property transfer carries a dedicated lead-certificate intake line (LeadCert@Norristown.org). The ordinance does allow a temporary Certificate of Occupancy to substitute at transfer under §200-3.D, so a sale is not always hard-stopped at the door, but the lead report is formally part of the transfer inspection. The practical move for a realtor is to fold it into the Use and Occupancy timeline early rather than discover it during the closing scramble. The report is valid on a three-year cycle; a lead-free report is permanent.
Source: Norristown Use & Occupancy Application (Property Transfer / Change of Tenant) (2026)
Chester and East Lansdowne: the trigger is real, and here is exactly how solid the confirmation is
Both Delaware County towns adopted lead ordinances on the Norristown model, and both describe the same point-of-sale reach. In Chester, the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Lead Hazard Control Ordinance (City of Chester Code Chapter 174, Article IV) passed in April 2023. The public passage announcement described its scope directly:
“…any building involved in property transfers built before 1978…”
East Lansdowne adopted Ordinance No. 613 on December 12, 2022, codified as Chapter 11, Part 4. Its passage announcement made the same plain-language point: residents selling an older home would also need the property tested for lead before the sale.
Source: Pennsylvania Lead-Free Promise Project, East Lansdowne ordinance passage announcement (Ordinance No. 613) (2022)
What we can confirm, and what to verify for the specific property
For Chester and East Lansdowne, the transfer trigger is confirmed from each town's own passage announcement, but we were not able to independently verify the exact operative wording against the codified ordinance section. Chester publishes its code through a JavaScript-only viewer whose section text we could not extract, and East Lansdowne's specific transfer provision was not independently confirmable against its published text.
That matters because the mechanics can differ from Norristown's – for example, whether a temporary Certificate of Occupancy can stand in at closing, and the exact timing within the transfer inspection. Before you rely on a particular procedure for a specific listing in either town, confirm the current requirement with the city's or borough's Licenses and Inspections office.
One further gap worth naming: Yeadon adopted a lead ordinance in January 2025, but its operative text has never been published anywhere online, so we cannot confirm whether it carries a transfer trigger at all.
Source: Yeadon Borough Council, January 16, 2025 legislative meeting minutes (adoption record for Ordinance 2024-015) (2025)
Why this lands on the seller and the realtor, not the landlord
The rental-license trigger only reaches someone trying to hold a rental license. The transfer trigger reaches the sale itself. That is what makes it easy to miss: an owner-occupant who has lived in a pre-1978 Norristown twin for twenty years and never rented a room can still owe a lead report to sell it, while the same owner selling an identical rowhome across the city line in Philadelphia owes nothing. The certificate is not expensive or slow relative to a real estate timeline, but it is exactly the kind of item that becomes a problem only when it surfaces late. Ordering it when the listing goes live, rather than when the title company asks, keeps it off the closing critical path.
The short version for a realtor working these towns:
- Philadelphia – no lead certificate is required to sell a non-rental home. The obligation sits with rental licensing and daycare licensing, not the deed.
- Norristown – a lead report is required as part of the real estate transfer inspection, confirmed in the ordinance text. Build it into the Use and Occupancy timeline.
- Chester and East Lansdowne – a transfer requirement is confirmed from each town's passage announcement; verify the exact procedure with the town for a given listing.
This is also why the town pages on this site surface a “Selling your home?” note only for the towns whose ordinances carry a transfer trigger – the prompt appears where it is actually relevant and stays out of the way where it is not.
Why these ordinances exist at all
The build-year cutoff is not arbitrary. In 2023, 285 Delaware County children ages 0–71 months had a confirmed elevated blood lead level, and only 23.75% of that age group was tested county-wide – so the confirmed count is a floor, not a full picture. Deteriorating pre-1978 paint is the dominant exposure source, which is why both the point-of-sale and rental triggers hinge on that same build year.
Source: PA Dept. of Health, 2023 Childhood Lead Surveillance Annual Report, Table 12 (2023)
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