Allentown Home Selling Articles

Allentown City is in Lehigh County. Bethlehem, Whitehall Township, Salisbury Township, and Emmaus Borough are separate municipalities, so an Allentown postal address alone does not tell you which inspection or zoning office applies.

For a property inside Allentown City, current city instructions call for a safety and maintenance inspection before a residential or commercial sale. A passing inspection produces a Certificate of Compliance, the city record that the property passed. If violations are found, the city says the seller fixes them unless the buyer agrees to take responsibility through the city's Acceptance Form. The Buyer's Information Report is due within three days of settlement. For presale inspection and rental-registration questions, call 610-437-7694; building permits and trade inspections are handled at 610-437-7592.

The city has three historic districts — Old Allentown, Old Fairgrounds, and West Park. Exterior work visible from a public right-of-way may require a Certificate of Appropriateness, which is city approval for an exterior change. Water history is also an address question: use the city's map layers and FEMA's address lookup rather than assuming a creek name tells you the parcel's flood status.

County offices answer different questions. The Office of Assessment handles assessment records, the Recorder of Deeds provides recorded deed and mortgage documents, and the Tax Claim Bureau handles delinquent property-tax balances and tax-sale questions. For a taxable transfer recorded from January 1, 2026, Allentown's December 23, 2025 notice states a 2.5% total realty transfer tax unless exempt, with the state portion remaining 1%; the recording submission date controls the notice's rate, and the contract and settlement sheet determine allocation.