Two Fishtown New Builds, Two Different Tax Bills: What the Abatement Filing Date Changes

In August 2025, The Philadelphia Inquirer's House of the Week featured a four-bedroom Fishtown home on East Dunton Street. It was built in 2021, measured 2,700 square feet and was listed at $784,000. The write-up mentioned the Wolf appliances and the roof deck with a view of the Ben Franklin Bridge. It also pointed out that more than six years remained on the home's 10-year tax abatement.

A home finished in 2023 can come with a better tax future than one finished in 2021. A newer-looking home permitted in 2022 can come with a worse one. In Fishtown, a resale home's tax bill for the next several years depends less on its build year than on a filing date that never shows up in the listing photos.

The Cutoff Is a Filing Date

Philadelphia's residential new-construction exemption is in Section 19-1303.4 of the Philadelphia Code. The code divides homes into two groups based on when the exemption application was "initially applied for." Applications filed on or before December 31, 2021, receive a 100% exemption on the construction value for ten years. Applications filed after that date start at 100% and drop by ten percentage points each year.

Two other parts of the code explain why build year is a poor guide. Builders had to apply to the Board of Revision of Taxes within 60 days of the building permit being issued. That means the application date follows the permit, not the finished house. The ten-year clock starts later, "immediately following the date on which settlement is made, and a required certificate of use and occupancy is issued."

So a house whose application was filed by December 31, 2021, and which was completed in 2024 still gets the full ten years of the old schedule, counted from its own settlement date. Here are the two schedules side by side:

Use a simple hypothetical to see the gap. Take a home whose construction value is assessed at $300,000, in its sixth year of exemption. At the current rate of 1.3998%, a home on the old schedule pays nothing on that $300,000. A home on the new schedule pays tax on half of it, which comes to about $2,100 a year more for the same structure. The gap grows every year after that until both exemptions end.

December 2021 Created a Large Group of Grandfathered Homes

The cutoff was publicized well in advance. City Council passed the reform in 2019 and delayed its start to January 1, 2022. Builders responded. Axios Philadelphia reported that 900 new-construction permits were issued in December 2021, compared with about 150 in a typical month.

The Inquirer, citing HUD data, reported 25,257 housing units approved citywide in 2021, with 10,939 of them in December alone. In January 2022 the number fell to 133 units. Pew's Philadelphia 2026 report uses Census building permit data and shows the same pattern. It counts 26,166 units authorized in 2021, 3,223 in 2022 and 3,366 in 2025.

For Fishtown buyers, this means some homes completed in 2022, 2023 and later came out of that final rush. If the exemption application was also filed by December 31, 2021, the home can look like the newest stock on the block and still carry the full, old-style abatement for years after its own settlement date. A December permit doesn't settle the question on its own, because the 60-day application window could push a filing into 2022 and onto the phase-down. Homes permitted after the cutoff are a much smaller group, and they're on the phase-down.

Fishtown was well placed to fill that pipeline. The Inquirer's map of 20 years of abatements shows Northern Liberties booming first. After the Great Recession, development moved up into Fishtown, and by 2015 Fishtown was an abatement hotspot, with activity spreading into nearby parts of Kensington. That timeline matters for resale buyers today. A full ten-year exemption that started around 2015 or 2016 reaches its end around now, so some of the neighborhood's older new construction is moving onto the full tax bill. Meanwhile, homes with applications filed by the end of 2021 still have years left on the full exemption.

The Land Was Never Abated

Every abated home in Fishtown pays tax on something. The exemption covers only "that portion of the assessment valuation attributable to the cost of construction." The code requires the land and the dwelling to be assessed separately. In the Inquirer's words, owners of fully abated new buildings "needed to pay only for the assessed value of the land on which their home sits."

That makes land value the part of an abated home's bill that changes from one reassessment to the next. Philadelphia has seen this before. In a 2016 analysis by Pew, 6,762 abated residential parcels saw higher bills when the city moved assessed value from improvements to land. The median increase among those parcels was $480. ZIP codes 19123 and 19125, which include Northern Liberties and Fishtown, were among the ZIPs with the most 10-year abatement properties at the time. Those are figures from the 2016 reassessment, and they show how the mechanism works. They aren't a forecast for 2027.

The Tax Year 2027 reassessment is the current version. The City began mailing new assessment notices on June 29, 2026. New values take effect January 1, 2027, and tax bills start mailing December 1, 2026. The City says the total rate of 1.3998% hasn't changed since 2016 and will stay the same for 2027. The Inquirer's analysis of the new single-family assessments, published July 8, 2026, found a 3% median increase citywide from Tax Year 2025 to 2027. Next door in Kensington, the median rose 15.3%, from $115,700 to $133,400. That was the largest increase of any neighborhood and works out to about $250 more a year at the current rate.

For an abated Fishtown home, the line to watch on the 2027 notice is the land assessment, not the total. On the old schedule, the land figure is what the owner pays tax on today. On the phase-down, the owner pays tax on the land plus the share of the improvement that is no longer exempt. Under either schedule, the full assessment is what they'll pay on once the exemption ends.

Homestead Has to Wait

The City says a property with an active 10-year residential abatement can't receive the Homestead Exemption. Once the abatement expires, the owner can apply.

For 2027, Homestead takes $100,000 off the taxable assessed value of an eligible owner-occupied home. The City says that saves most homeowners up to $1,399 a year. The application deadline to have it apply to the 2027 bill is December 1, 2026.

How this plays out depends on which group the home is in. On the old schedule, the abatement is worth far more than Homestead for its full ten years, so waiting costs little. On the phase-down, the abatement gets smaller every year while Homestead remains unavailable. For a home in the back half of the new schedule, an owner who expects to rely on Homestead in the meantime should compare the shrinking exemption with the $100,000 reduction they can't yet claim. For a Fishtown home whose old-style abatement is ending now, Homestead becomes available in the same year the full bill arrives.

What to Confirm Before You Rely on "Years Remaining"

The code is clear that the exemption "shall be upon the property and shall not terminate upon the sale or exchange of the property, so long as the dwelling units retain their eligibility." A buyer takes over whatever schedule the house is on and however many years it has left. Here's how to confirm both:

1. Look up the address on Philadelphia's Property Search. It shows ownership, sales history and assessed values by address or account number.
2. Separate land from improvement. The land value is taxed throughout the abatement. The improvement value is the part that becomes taxable as the exemption steps down or ends.
3. Confirm the exemption record and dates with the Office of Property Assessment. The City's property information guide explains how to look up assessed values, but a listing's "years remaining" is an estimate until OPA confirms when the exemption started and when it ends.
4. Ask which schedule applies. A filing date on or before December 31, 2021, means the full ten years. A later date means the phase-down shown in the table above.
5. Run the bill two ways. Calculate the tax on next year's taxable value and on the full assessment at 1.3998%, then compare both with what you've budgeted.

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm how these rules apply to a specific property with OPA, a tax professional or your attorney.

FAQ

Does the phase-down apply to renovated homes too? Pew's 2022 explainer on how property is taxed in Philadelphia says the change applied to residential new-construction abatements and did not apply to residential rehabilitation abatements.

Is the City changing the abatement again? WHYY reported on October 8, 2026 that the administration was preparing a proposed 20-year abatement for converting larger underused properties. The legislation was still being drafted and faced opposition in Council. It doesn't change the rules for ordinary new homes.

Can I still appeal my 2027 assessment? For Tax Year 2027, the Board of Revision of Taxes appeal deadline was October 5, 2026, and that date has passed.

If you're comparing Fishtown homes built after 2015, Reid Rosenthal and The Rosenthal Group can pull the land and improvement assessments for each one, along with the abatement start and end dates OPA confirms, so you can compare future tax bills along with asking prices. Schedule a Free Consultation and bring the addresses you're considering.