Rental Property in Pennsylvania: What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Some states have one number that decides everything. Florida has its insurance premium. New Jersey has its property tax rate. Pennsylvania has neither, and that is precisely what makes it useful.

The effective property tax rate is 1.30% — above the middle, well below New Jersey's 1.89%. Insurance averages $1,365 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage — a little below the national middle. The median home price is $340,000 — comfortably affordable by Northeastern standards. There is no coastal wind exposure, no percentage hurricane deductible in ordinary use, and no single line item you can point at and say that is why the deal works or doesn't.

Which means the method decides it. And Pennsylvania supplies the sharpest illustration of that anywhere in this series. Take the Allegheny County example worked through in Section 5: principal, interest, taxes and insurance total $1,595.21 a month against an assumed $1,600 rent. The rent covers the mortgage. The naive check passes — by $4.79 a month.

Run the same house properly and it loses $430.41 a month.

If you take one thing from this article: in a moderate state, the difference between a good deal and a bad one is entirely in how you count. Nothing will jump out at you. You have to go looking.

A note before you start: this is general educational information about how rental property arithmetic works in Pennsylvania. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation about any property. Pennsylvania property tax is levied by county, municipality, and school district separately, and transfer tax rates are set locally on top of the state rate. Talk to a Pennsylvania CPA about tax treatment, a licensed Pennsylvania insurance agent about a real quote, and a Pennsylvania real estate attorney about anything contractual.

1. What a rental costs to buy here

The statewide median home price is $340,000. County medians run well below it:

• Philadelphia County: $280,000, effective property tax rate 0.83%, average insurance $2,150
• Allegheny County (Pittsburgh): $240,000, effective property tax rate 1.39%, average insurance $1,436

Note the inversion, because it recurs throughout this article: the cheaper county has the higher tax rate and the cheaper insurance; the more expensive county has the lower tax rate and the more expensive insurance. Neither one dominates. You have to run both.

The cash you actually need

Pennsylvania's realty transfer tax is where out-of-state buyers get caught, and it is worth being precise about.

• The state rate is 1%, and it is customarily split between buyer and seller.
• Almost every Pennsylvania municipality and school district adds its own local realty transfer tax on top — commonly about 1% more, which makes roughly 2% combined a common rule of thumb. It is not set by statute, so it genuinely varies.
• Philadelphia is the big exception: a 3.578% city tax on top of the 1% state tax, for 4.578% combined.

On a customary 50/50 split, the buyer's share on a typical 2% combined rate is 1% of price — and in Philadelphia it is 2.289%. The examples below use those figures. Confirm the actual local rate and the actual split for your municipality and your contract, because both are negotiable and both vary.

• Closing costs: 3% to 5%. This article uses a 4% midpoint — the top of the ranges used elsewhere in this series, because Pennsylvania's own recorded range starts higher.

On the $340,000 statewide median at 25% down:

• Down payment: $340,000 x 0.25 = $85,000
• Loan amount: $255,000
• Closing costs: $340,000 x 4% = $13,600
• Buyer's customary transfer tax share at 1%: $3,400
• Total cash in: $102,000

Pennsylvania's recorded annual home appreciation rate is 3.8% — moderate, like everything else here, and lower than New Jersey's or New York's.

2. The two expenses that decide whether it works

In Pennsylvania, neither of them does. That is the finding, and it is worth demonstrating rather than asserting.

Property tax

The statewide effective rate is 1.30%. On the $340,000 example:

$340,000 x 1.30% = $4,420 a year, or $368.33 a month.

Here is the sensitivity. Take the identical $340,000 house at the identical assumed rent and premium, and change only the effective tax rate:

The full Philadelphia-to-Allegheny range moves the cap rate by 0.56 percentage points and cash flow by $158.66 a month. Compare that with New Jersey, where the equivalent county range moved almost nothing but the state-level range moved 1.45 points, or with New York, where the county range alone moved 1.02 points. Pennsylvania's tax line is a real expense and a minor variable.

One landlord-specific note. Pennsylvania's homestead and farmstead exclusion under Act 1 of 2006 reduces the assessed value used for school property tax only — not county or municipal tax — by a flat per-district dollar amount, typically worth about $200 to $700 a year. It requires owner-occupancy and a filed application with the county assessment office, and a rental does not get it. Two consequences: if you are converting your own home to a rental, expect the school-tax portion to step up; and if you are buying from an owner-occupant, their bill may include an exclusion yours will not.

Also worth knowing: Pennsylvania counties reassess on wildly inconsistent schedules, and several have gone decades between reassessments. That produces common level ratios — a statutory adjustment factor that converts assessed values to current market values for appeal purposes — and it means the relationship between a parcel's assessment and its market value can be badly stale. Ask the county assessment office when the county last reassessed. In a county that has not reassessed in a long time, a purchase can trigger a "spot" reassessment question that is worth raising with a local attorney before you close.

Insurance

The reference figure is $1,365 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage with a $1,000 typical all-perils deductible. That is $113.75 a month, and 5.42% of gross rent on the statewide example.

Change only the premium on that same house:

Insurance is worth 0.23 points of cap rate across that whole range. In Florida the equivalent range was worth 1.89 points. This is why Pennsylvania is the teaching state: no line item is doing the work, so the analysis has to.

Pennsylvania's filed rate change was +2% year over year — one of the mildest figures in this series.

A rental is still not insured on a homeowners form. You need a landlord policy — a dwelling fire form with loss-of-rents coverage — priced for the specific address.

The deductible: mostly good news, with one caveat worth reading

Pennsylvania is recorded here as having no catastrophe deductible in ordinary use, and that conclusion is a judgment call rather than an obvious no. The state is landlocked and has no coastal wind exposure, and the ordinary Pennsylvania homeowners policy applies one flat all-perils deductible to wind and hail like any other peril.

But the Insurance Information Institute does list Pennsylvania among the 19 states plus DC where hurricane deductibles exist, describing them as typically 1% to 5% of insured value, reflecting remnant-tropical-system exposure in the southeastern part of the state. So a separate hurricane deductible is permitted and does appear on some Pennsylvania policies. It is neither common statewide nor statutorily required.

Supporting that read: Insurify's measurement of the average wind/hail deductible in Pennsylvania is 0.64% of dwelling coverage — one of the two lowest readings in the country. On a $300,000 dwelling limit that is $1,920, against a $1,000 flat deductible on the same page.

The practical takeaway: assume the flat deductible applies, but read the declarations page anyway if you are buying in the Philadelphia or Delaware Valley area. A percentage deductible cannot be there by surprise if you have actually looked.

For scale, if a percentage deductible did attach to a $300,000 dwelling limit, against Section 3's $12,560.60 of net operating income:

• 1% = $3,000, or 23.88% of a full year's NOI
• 2% = $6,000, or 47.77% of a full year's NOI
• 5% = $15,000, or 119.42% of a full year's NOI

Pennsylvania construction runs about $240 per square foot to rebuild, so a 1,500 square foot house has a replacement cost near $360,000, on which 1%, 2% and 5% are $3,600, $7,200, and $18,000.

Note that even Pennsylvania's ordinary $1,000 flat deductible is 7.96% of a year's NOI on this example. Deductibles are always larger relative to a rental's income than they feel relative to a household's.

If the voluntary market declines you, the Insurance Placement Facility of Pennsylvania — the state FAIR Plan, established under the Pennsylvania FAIR Plan Act of 1968 — writes basic property insurance for one-to-four family dwellings and commercial risks, with a combined building-and-contents limit of $500,000 for occupied dwellings and $335,000 for vacant ones. Farms, mobile homes, buildings under construction, and property insured to less than 80% of replacement cost under its DP 00 02 form are excluded. Pennsylvania's voluntary market is one of the more stable in the country, so the FAIR Plan functions as a genuine narrow backstop — largely for older urban housing stock and properties with condition or loss-history problems — rather than as the de facto market it has become in wildfire and hurricane states. Details at https://www.pafairplan.com/.

That "older urban housing stock" clause is the relevant one for a Philadelphia or Pittsburgh rental buyer. A 1910 rowhouse with knob-and-tube wiring and a 22-year-old roof is exactly the profile the voluntary market declines, and finding that out during your inspection period rather than three days before closing is worth the phone call.

3. A full worked example

The property. A single-family house at the Pennsylvania statewide median of $340,000.

The rent — read this carefully. This site does not carry rent data. The $2,100 a month used below is an assumption chosen to be plausible for a house at that price. It is not a market observation. Pull three to five real comparable listings for the specific neighborhood and substitute the actual number.

The other assumptions:

• Vacancy: 8% of gross rent
• Property management: 10% of collected rent
• Repairs and maintenance: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Capital reserve: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Financing: 25% down, 30-year fixed at 7.00% — the rate is an assumption, not a quote
• No HOA

Step 1 — income

• Gross scheduled rent: $2,100 x 12 = $25,200
• Vacancy loss: $25,200 x 8% = $2,016
• Effective gross income: $25,200 - $2,016 = $23,184

Step 2 — operating expenses

Management is charged on rent actually collected, not scheduled rent:

• Management: $23,184 x 10% = $2,318.40
• Property tax: $340,000 x 1.30% = $4,420
• Insurance: $1,365
• Maintenance: $25,200 x 5% = $1,260
• Capital reserve: $25,200 x 5% = $1,260
• Total operating expenses: $10,623.40

Expense ratio: $10,623.40 / $23,184 = 45.82% of collected rent — comfortably inside the 35% to 55% band most rentals land in. This is what a normal expense structure looks like, which is exactly why Pennsylvania is the right state to learn on.

Step 3 — net operating income and cap rate

• NOI = $23,184 - $10,623.40 = $12,560.60
• Cap rate = $12,560.60 / $340,000 = 3.69%

The mortgage is deliberately absent from that figure. Cap rate exists to compare properties independently of how they are financed; putting debt service into it is the most common error in this whole exercise, and it makes two identical houses look like different investments because one buyer put more down.

Step 4 — debt service and cash flow

Loan: $340,000 x 75% = $255,000. At 7.00% over 30 years, principal and interest is $1,696.52 a month, or $20,358.24 a year.

• Annual cash flow = $12,560.60 - $20,358.24 = -$7,797.64
• Monthly cash flow = -$649.80
• Debt service coverage ratio = $12,560.60 / $20,358.24 = 0.62

Step 5 — cash-on-cash return

• Cash invested: $102,000 (Section 1)
• Cash-on-cash = -$7,797.64 / $102,000 = -7.64%

Rate sensitivity, since 7.00% was an assumption

• At 6.50%: P&I $1,611.77/mo, annual cash flow -$6,780.64
• At 7.00%: P&I $1,696.52/mo, annual cash flow -$7,797.64
• At 7.50%: P&I $1,783.00/mo, annual cash flow -$8,835.40

A full point of rate is worth $2,054.76 a year. Compare that with the entire Philadelphia-to-Allegheny tax swing of $1,904 and the entire Pennsylvania insurance range of $785. In Pennsylvania, the rate you negotiate matters more than the county you choose. That is unusual, and it is a direct consequence of the state being moderate on everything else.

The simplest version of the same finding

Add up the four bills a lender escrows:

• Principal and interest: $1,696.52
• Property tax: $4,420 / 12 = $368.33
• Insurance: $1,365 / 12 = $113.75
• Total: $2,178.60 a month

Against $2,100 of assumed rent, that is -$78.60 a month. A near miss. On the county examples in Section 5, the same check comes out positive — and the property still loses money. That gap is the entire subject of the next section.

4. The expenses people leave out

This is the most important section in the article, and Pennsylvania is where it is easiest to see, because here the omitted expenses are not competing with a $8,000 insurance premium for your attention. They are the whole story.

Vacancy, management, and capital reserves do not arrive as invoices. Nobody bills you for the month the house sits empty, or for the roof you will need in nine years, or — if you self-manage — for your own weekends. So they fall out of the mental model.

Here is the statewide example with those three removed and everything else identical:

The three omissions are worth $5,594.40 a year — $2,016 of vacancy, $2,318.40 of management, $1,260 of reserve. They flatter the cap rate by 1.65 percentage points and hide 71.74% of the annual loss.

Read the cap rate row again. 5.34% versus 3.69%. A 5.34% cap rate is a number a buyer would take seriously in 2026. A 3.69% cap rate is a number that makes you keep looking. The property did not change. The counting did.

And read the expense-ratio row: 27.96% without the omissions, against a normal band of 35% to 55%. That is your alarm. There is no such thing as a single-family rental that costs 28% of its rent to operate. If your analysis says there is, three rows are missing.

Vacancy. Eight percent is roughly one month a year, which is what a single clean turnover costs between move-out and the next tenant's first full month. Setting it to zero assumes the house is never empty, including between tenants.

Management. Set it to zero and the return is paying you for your own labor rather than for the property. Self-managing this house saves $2,318.40 a year, lifting NOI to $14,879 and the cap rate to 4.38%, with cash flow improving to -$456.60 a month. It is a real saving. It does not fix the deal, and it stops being free the moment you stop being available.

Capital reserves. Roofs, HVAC, water heaters, and flooring have known lives, and Pennsylvania has some of the oldest housing stock in the country — which shortens every one of those lives and makes the reserve line more important here, not less. The 5%-of-rent convention used above is one option. A harsher and equally common convention is 1% of purchase price a year for maintenance and 1% for capital, which here is $3,400 each. Run that way: total operating expenses $14,903.40, expense ratio 64.28%, NOI $8,280.60, cap rate 2.44%, cash flow -$1,006.47 a month, DSCR 0.41.

So the honest cap-rate range for this property is 2.44% to 5.34% depending purely on counting conventions — a spread of nearly three full points on one unchanged house. Choose your convention deliberately and apply it to every property you look at, or you will end up comparing a generous count of one house against a strict count of another and concluding something false.

What would actually have to be true

The rent this property needs. For cash flow to reach zero at this price and this financing, gross scheduled rent must reach about $35,911.04 a year, or $2,992.59 a month — 0.88% of purchase price per month. The assumed $2,100 rent is 0.62% of price.

The price this rent supports. Hold rent at $2,100 and solve for the price at which cash flow reaches zero with 25% down: about $233,003, or 68.53% of the statewide median. Both county medians in our data — Philadelphia at $280,000 and Allegheny at $240,000 — sit above that, but not by much, which is why Pennsylvania's county examples come so close to working.

The down payment this price needs. Keep the $340,000 price and the $2,100 rent and solve for the loan the NOI can service: about $157,329 — which means roughly $182,671 down, or 53.73% of the price. That is the lowest breakeven down payment in this seven-state set, and it is a genuine point in Pennsylvania's favor.

5. What actually varies by county here

Run each county at its own real median price, its own tax rate, its own insurance, its own transfer tax, and a rent assumption scaled to the price. This is where the Pennsylvania lesson lands.

Philadelphia County at $280,000 with an assumed $1,800 rent, 0.83% tax and $2,150 insurance:

• Down payment $70,000, loan $210,000, closing costs $11,200
• Buyer's customary half of Philadelphia's 4.578% combined transfer tax: $6,409.20
• Cash in: $87,609.20
• Annual property tax $2,324. P&I $1,397.14. PITI $1,769.97 against $1,800 rent — a $30.03 monthly surplus
• Effective gross income $19,872, operating expenses $8,621.20, expense ratio 43.38%
• NOI $11,250.80, cap rate 4.02%, cash flow -$459.57 a month, cash-on-cash -6.29%, DSCR 0.67
• Without vacancy, management and reserves: NOI $16,046, cap rate 5.73%, cash flow -$59.97 a month, DSCR 0.96
• Breakeven rent $2,431.28 a month (0.87% of price); actual ratio 0.64%

Allegheny County at $240,000 with an assumed $1,600 rent, 1.39% tax and $1,436 insurance:

• Down payment $60,000, loan $180,000, closing costs $9,600
• Buyer's customary 1% transfer tax share: $2,400
• Cash in: $72,000
• Annual property tax $3,336. P&I $1,197.54. PITI $1,595.21 against $1,600 rent — a $4.79 monthly surplus
• Effective gross income $17,664, operating expenses $8,458.40, expense ratio 47.88%
• NOI $9,205.60, cap rate 3.84%, cash flow -$430.41 a month, cash-on-cash -7.17%, DSCR 0.64
• Without vacancy, management and reserves: NOI $13,468, cap rate 5.61%, cash flow -$75.21 a month, DSCR 0.94
• Breakeven rent $2,191.22 a month (0.91% of price); actual ratio 0.67%

Three answers, one house

Line the three ways of asking the question up side by side for the Philadelphia property:

And for the Allegheny property:

On the Philadelphia property the three omissions total $4,795.20 a year and account for 86.95% of the true annual loss. On the Allegheny property they total $4,262.40 and account for 82.53%. Those are the highest hidden shares anywhere in this series — higher than Florida's 48%, higher than New Jersey's 51%.

That is not because Pennsylvania rentals are unusually bad. It is because they are unusually close to working. When a property misses breakeven by $5,000 a year and the omitted expenses are $4,500 a year, the omissions are the verdict. In Florida, the property was going to lose money whether or not you counted them; in Pennsylvania, they decide it.

Side by side, at each county's own price:

All three cluster between 3.69% and 4.02% cap rate and between 0.62 and 0.67 DSCR. Pennsylvania is consistent, which is another way of saying that geography is not going to save you here and the numbers are the numbers.

The one genuinely large county-level difference is not tax or insurance at all — it is Philadelphia's transfer tax. The buyer's customary share of $6,409.20 is 7.3% of the entire cash-in on that purchase, and it is larger than the whole buyer transfer-tax share on either of the other two examples. It does not touch the cap rate. It goes straight into the cash-on-cash denominator.

Three further things to check for a specific address:

The school district rate. Pennsylvania's largest property tax component is usually the school district levy, and district rates vary substantially inside a single county. A county effective rate is a starting point, not an estimate.

When the county last reassessed. Several Pennsylvania counties have gone decades between countywide reassessments, which makes the relationship between assessed value and market value stale in ways that can move either direction on a sale.

The local transfer tax. It is set municipally, it is not capped by statute at a common figure, and the buyer/seller split is customary rather than legal. Get the actual number before you write the offer.

6. Financing a rental is not financing a home

These are the standard mechanisms across the mortgage market. Any specific rate or overlay is your lender's, not this article's.

Down payment. Conventional financing on a non-owner-occupied one-unit property generally requires more equity than an owner-occupied purchase — 20% is usually the floor and 25% the common expectation, which is why this article models 25%. FHA and VA are not available for a property you do not occupy. The genuine exception is house hacking: a two-to-four-unit property you live in one unit of qualifies for owner-occupied programs, and Pennsylvania's rowhouse and duplex stock makes that a realistic route in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Rate. Investment-property loans price above owner-occupied loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac apply loan-level price adjustments for investment occupancy that scale with loan-to-value and credit score; lenders pass those through as rate or points. The 7.00% modeled above is an assumption, and Section 3 shows a full point of it is worth $2,054.76 a year — more than any county variable in this state.

Conforming limits. Both Philadelphia and Allegheny counties carry the $832,750 one-unit baseline conforming limit, so at Pennsylvania price levels jumbo pricing is essentially a non-issue. That is not true in New York, New Jersey, or Massachusetts, and it is a quiet advantage here.

Reserves. Lenders typically require post-closing reserves — months of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance held in liquid assets — scaling with the number of financed properties you own. At the Allegheny example's $1,595.21 of PITI, six months is $9,571.26 — the most manageable figure in this seven-state set.

Rental income counting. Lenders credit a portion of market or lease rent toward qualifying, not all of it. Ask what percentage yours uses and whether they need an appraiser's rent schedule.

DSCR loans. A debt service coverage ratio loan qualifies the property rather than the borrower, comparing property income to debt service and largely skipping personal income documentation. The trade is a higher rate, a larger down payment, frequent prepayment penalties, and a minimum DSCR — commonly stated at or above 1.0 and often above 1.2.

Note what happens here. The Philadelphia example's DSCR is 0.67 on the full analysis and 0.96 with the three expenses stripped out. That second number is close enough to 1.0 that a borrower running the loose version might genuinely believe the property qualifies. It does not. A DSCR lender will underwrite vacancy and management whether or not you did — which makes DSCR underwriting, in a moderate state like Pennsylvania, a fairly good free second opinion on your own arithmetic.

7. What to check before you buy in this state

The counting, first — because in Pennsylvania it is the variable that decides.

1. Run the analysis with vacancy, management, and a capital reserve before you run it any other way. Section 5 shows two properties that pass the rent-versus-PITI check and lose over $400 a month.
2. Check your expense ratio against the 35%-to-55% band. Below 35% on a single-family rental, something is missing.
3. Pick a reserve convention — 5% of rent or 1% of price — and apply it to every property you compare. Section 4 shows the two conventions produce cap rates of 3.69% and 2.44% on the same house.

The property tax, from the parcel rather than the state.

1. Get the county, municipal, and school district rates separately for the specific parcel. The school levy is usually the largest of the three and varies most.
2. Ask the county assessment office when the county last reassessed and what the current common level ratio is.
3. Recompute the bill with no homestead or farmstead exclusion — a rental does not get one.

The transfer tax, before you write the offer.

1. Get the actual combined state-plus-local transfer tax rate for the municipality, and confirm the customary split in that market. In Philadelphia the buyer's customary half is 2.289% of price.

The insurance.

1. Get a bindable landlord policy quote for the specific address — a dwelling fire form with loss-of-rents coverage, not a homeowners quote.
2. Read the declarations page for a hurricane or windstorm deductible line even though Pennsylvania mostly does not have one, particularly in the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley area. It is permitted here; it is just uncommon.
3. Get the roof age and the wiring type in writing on older urban stock. Knob-and-tube wiring, fuse boxes, and roofs past 20 years are the profile that gets declined into the FAIR Plan, whose dwelling limit is $500,000 and whose coverage is narrower than an HO-3.
4. Get a flood quote separately. Pennsylvania has real riverine flood exposure, no property policy anywhere covers flood, and being outside a mapped high-risk zone is a statement about a flood map rather than about whether water can reach the house.

The rent, from the market.

1. Pull three to five genuine comparable rentals for the specific neighborhood and note how long they sat.
2. Divide monthly rent by purchase price. The breakevens computed above were 0.88% statewide, 0.87% in Philadelphia, and 0.91% in Allegheny.

The law, from the statute rather than from an article.

1. Do not take eviction procedure, notice periods, security-deposit handling, or late-fee rules from a blog — including this one. Pennsylvania residential tenancies are governed principally by the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 (68 P.S. § 250.101 et seq.). Read it through the General Assembly's own site, https://www.legis.state.pa.us/, and have a Pennsylvania real estate attorney walk you through the process before you sign anything.
2. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh both regulate rental housing at the city level, including rental licensing and, in Philadelphia, a Certificate of Rental Suitability that must be provided to a tenant at the start of a tenancy. Requirements change. Confirm current obligations directly with the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections (https://www.phila.gov/departments/department-of-licenses-and-inspections/) or the equivalent city department, not from a summary.
3. Ask about lead paint certification requirements, which apply in Philadelphia to many rental units and which are a real, enforceable, dated obligation rather than a formality — especially given the age of the housing stock.

The money and the tax treatment.

1. Ask a Pennsylvania CPA how the property will be taxed, including depreciation, passive activity loss rules, Pennsylvania's own treatment of rental income, any applicable local earned income or business privilege taxes on rental activity, and treatment on sale. Pennsylvania's local tax layer is more complicated than most states' and is worth a professional conversation.

What to do next

Every figure above came from a data file or was computed in front of you. Re-run all of it with your own numbers.

The Pennsylvania rental analysis calculator does exactly the work in Sections 3, 4 and 5 — enter your price, your real local rent, and your own vacancy, management, and reserve assumptions, and it produces NOI, cap rate, cash flow, cash-on-cash, and DSCR. Crucially for this state, it warns you when you have left out the expenses Section 4 is about, rather than letting them pass silently. In Pennsylvania that warning is the whole product.

The Pennsylvania insurance premium estimator will get you closer to a real figure for a specific dwelling limit than the $1,365 statewide average, which sits between Allegheny's $1,436 and Philadelphia's $2,150.

The Pennsylvania mortgage payment calculator gives you the principal and interest figure for the rate you are actually quoted — worth about $2,055 a year per point here, which is more than any other variable in this state.

This article is general educational information about rental property arithmetic in Pennsylvania, based on figures current as of August 2026. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice. The rent figures in the worked examples are stated assumptions, not market data. Transfer tax figures assume a customary 50/50 split at commonly cited combined rates and must be confirmed for the specific municipality and contract. Property tax assessments, insurance premiums, and mortgage rates change and vary by property, municipality, and school district. Consult a Pennsylvania CPA, a licensed Pennsylvania insurance agent, and a Pennsylvania real estate attorney before buying.