By Rockwell Rutter, founder of Ugly House Finder, which scores residential property distress from imagery and public records at county scale.
Quick answer: Philadelphia property records are published by the Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment at property.phila.gov. You can look up a parcel by address or OPA account number and see market value, year built, building description, and sales history. What the county record will not tell you is the condition the house is in today, which is the gap Ugly House Finder fills.
Where to look up Philadelphia property records
Philadelphia property records are published by the Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment at property.phila.gov. A Philadelphia property search there lets you look a parcel up by address or OPA account number, and returns market value, year built, building description, and sales history.
One thing worth knowing: Philadelphia is a consolidated city and county, so one office covers both roles.
Deeds, mortgages, and liens are held separately by the Philadelphia Department of Records, so a full picture of a parcel usually means checking both offices.
What the county record shows, and what it leaves out
A Philadelphia property search answers ownership and value questions well. It will tell you who holds title, what the county thinks the property is worth, when it last sold, and how large the structure is. It will not tell you whether the roof is failing, whether the yard has been left to go wild, whether windows are broken, or whether the house reads as vacant. Assessor data describes a parcel on paper. It does not describe the condition of the house standing on it. That gap is why we built Ugly House Finder: we score visible condition from street-level and aerial imagery, then pair it with the same public records you can pull yourself.
How much of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania shows visible distress?
Out of 393 homes we could assess from street-level imagery, 169 showed at least some visible neglect, a rate of 43.0 percent. Because this is a random sample rather than a full count, the true citywide rate sits within roughly 38.2 to 47.9 percent at 95 percent confidence. Street-level imagery covered 91.4 percent of the sampled properties.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Homes sampled | 430 |
| Homes scored | 393 |
| Street-level imagery coverage | 91.4% |
| Some visible neglect (2.5 or above) | 43.0% (38.2 to 47.9%) |
| Clear distress (3.5 or above) | 1.5% |
| Average distress score | 2.42 |
Which parts of Philadelphia show the most distress?
Grouping the sample by ZIP code shows where distress concentrates. ZIP is derived from each property’s mapped location, not the owner’s mailing address, so absentee-owned homes count where the house actually sits. Sample sizes per ZIP are small, so read these as directional rather than precise, but the pattern is clear: West Philadelphia (19139) is the most distressed area in the sample at 78.9 percent.
| ZIP | Area | Homes scored | Some neglect | Average score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19139 | West Philadelphia | 19 | 78.9% | 2.76 |
| 19143 | Kingsessing | 19 | 63.2% | 2.57 |
| 19134 | Kensington | 18 | 61.1% | 2.53 |
| 19120 | Olney | 19 | 52.6% | 2.51 |
| 19148 | South Philadelphia | 19 | 26.3% | 2.28 |
What the imagery actually found
The scoring model records specific named conditions rather than one opaque number, so the distress can be broken down by what is actually visible.
| Condition | Share of scored homes |
|---|---|
| Overgrown or neglected yard | 54.2% |
| Peeling paint or damaged siding | 62.8% |
| Accumulated debris or trash | 34.1% |
| Roof damage | 2.5% |
| Broken or boarded windows | 24.7% |
| Visible structural damage | 4.6% |
| Reads as abandoned | 1.3% |
The common conditions describe wear rather than crisis. The rarer structural conditions are the ones that separate a genuinely distressed house from a merely tired one, and those are a much shorter and more actionable list.
How we did this
- Sample. A random sample of 430 residential parcels drawn from across Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, excluding vacant land and government-owned parcels. This is a sample, not a full census of the city.
- City, not metro. These figures describe Philadelphia itself. The surrounding suburbs would read differently, and the wider metropolitan county rate would be lower because it folds in more affluent outlying areas.
- Method. For each property we retrieved street-level imagery aimed at the structure and scored it with our current production vision model against a fixed distress taxonomy derived from our own hand-labeled training set. The model returns named indicators with a severity rating plus a distress score from 0 to 5.
- Thresholds. A score of 3.5 or above is clear distress; 2.5 to 3.5 is visible but milder neglect; below 2.5 is unremarkable.
- Confidence. With 393 scored homes, the citywide neglect rate carries a 95 percent confidence interval of about plus or minus 5 percentage points. Per-ZIP figures rest on far smaller samples and are directional only.
- What is not in here. This scan used street-level imagery alone. It includes no aerial imagery scoring and no tax-delinquency data, both of which our platform can add on request.
- Known error mode. Purely visual scoring can over-call distress where heavy shade or dark facades read as damage. We corroborate a visual-only finding against a second signal before treating any single property as a lead.
Finding properties in poor condition in Philadelphia
Run your own scan of any Philadelphia neighborhood, or request a full-county file. Start scanning, or see plans and pricing. For how we measure distress across every market we have studied, read the full research writeup.
Common questions
How do I look up property records in Philadelphia?
Philadelphia property records are published by the Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment at property.phila.gov. Search by address or OPA account number to pull a parcel’s record. There is no charge to search.
What information is in a Philadelphia property record?
A Philadelphia parcel record typically shows market value, year built, building description, and sales history. It does not describe the current physical condition of the house.
Can I search Philadelphia property records by owner name?
Not directly. The Philadelphia Office of Property Assessment indexes parcels by address or OPA account number, so start from the address if you only have a name.
How do I find properties in poor condition in Philadelphia?
Public records will not tell you condition. Ugly House Finder scores visible distress from imagery across Philadelphia and returns a ranked, per-property list. You can run a neighborhood scan yourself or request the full county.
Which Philadelphia neighborhoods have the most distressed homes?
In this sample, West Philadelphia (19139) showed the highest rate at 78.9 percent. Several adjacent ZIPs also ran well above the citywide average. Because each ZIP rests on a small sample, treat the ranking as directional.
How accurate is it?
Accurate enough to rank and prioritize, not to decide on a single address without looking. The model reliably separates a house in poor condition from one in good repair, and it can over-call in unusual lighting, which is why the output is a ranked list to work through rather than a verdict on any one property.