Every row is a single-family house in Philadelphia that at least one public record says is in trouble — a foreclosure notice filed with the county clerk, unpaid property tax, a city code case, a probate filing, a building fire, or a vacant-property registration. Nothing here is bought from a data broker; every signal traces back to a record a government office published. Value and equity figures are estimates, and are labelled as estimates wherever they appear.
How the order is decided. A property scores on how many independent sources point at it, how recent they are, what the house is worth, how long it has been owned, and whether the owner lives somewhere else. Every one of these 20 carries more than one signal — those are the rows to work first, because two public offices agreeing is much harder to explain away than one.
These 20 are examples. The records are real and current, but owner names, mailing addresses and phone numbers are withheld here — those arrive with the list itself. Open any row to read the county's own account of why the house is on it, and follow the link through to the city's own page for that property.
Whether a mortgage is recorded against the property and whether it was later satisfied, from the city's recorded-document index. A property with no recorded mortgage is the one a cash buyer can close on quickly. This shows liens, not balances: a private or unrecorded loan never appears.
Unpaid real estate tax owed to the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, with the total due and the oldest year still owed. The city states both, so nothing here is inferred. Properties already on a payment agreement are marked.
A Licenses and Inspections violation, with how many and how recent. The city publishes the violation code and its title, so the row says what the violation actually was.
The Philadelphia Fire Department recorded a fire at the house in the last twelve months that reached a room and its contents or the structure itself. Cooking and appliance fires confined to where they started are excluded.
The city's own vacancy model, built from its administrative records -- water shut-offs, Licenses and Inspections findings and similar -- ranks this building 0.50 or higher, the level the city calls most often accurate. It is a model rather than an inspection, so some of these will be occupied.
A deed recorded within the last two years that moved the house out of a decedent's estate, with no money changing hands -- so the current owner inherited it rather than bought it. The estate is named on the deed. Sales out of an estate are excluded: those are deals that already closed.
One slot per record source, always in the same order. Filled means that source has something on this property. Outlined means the source was checked and found nothing. Dotted means it does not reach this property at all.
The tax bill goes to a different ZIP than the house. 20 of these 20. Usually a rental or an inherited property, and usually an easier conversation than a family fighting to stay put.
Sources. Built from the city property roll, the real estate tax delinquency file, Licenses and Inspections violations, the recorded-deed index and the city's vacant property indicators. Everything was taken from each body's own published export or search, within its robots.txt, at one request per second. No consumer, credit or skip-trace data is used anywhere in this list, which is what keeps it outside the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Limits, stated plainly. The value estimate is an estimate. Each row carries what nearby sales suggest the house is worth: the median price per square foot for its ZIP over 24 months, times the house's own size. It ignores condition, street and renovations, and it is not an appraisal. The basis is printed on every row so it can be checked.
Probate cases with no recorded deed. Only estates that recorded a deed appear. Pennsylvania settles estates through the Register of Wills and the Orphans' Court, neither of which publishes in bulk, so an estate still working through the court -- or one that never records anything -- is invisible here.
Foreclosures and sheriff sales. Not included. Pennsylvania foreclosures run through the courts and the Sheriff's sale list, neither of which is published as open data the way the tax and violation files are.
Ownership length. The roll publishes a last sale date, which is used, but a sale date is not always a change of owner.
Assessed value is not equity: no public source publishes lien balances, so no equity figure is calculated. Addresses a county marks confidential are removed before this file is written and are never mailed.
Generated from philadelphia_leads_residential_20260916T050802Z.csv.