Pennsylvania Foreclosure Help: Know Your Timeline, Know Your Equity
The earlier you act, the more options you may have.
Pennsylvania is judicial, slow, and unusually helpful if you act
There is no power-of-sale foreclosure in Pennsylvania. The lender files a mortgage foreclosure complaint in the Court of Common Pleas, gets a judgment, and the property goes to sheriff sale. Timelines commonly run 12 to 24 months.
What makes Pennsylvania distinctive is not the timeline — it is that the state will actually lend you the money to catch up. That program is reached through a notice most homeowners throw away.
The Act 91 notice is a door, not a threat
Before filing, the lender must send an Act 91 notice. It gives you 33 days from the date of the notice to schedule and attend a face-to-face meeting with a HEMAP-designated consumer credit counseling agency, and it must include a list of approved agencies.
That meeting is the gateway to HEMAP — the Homeowners' Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program — which can lend a Pennsylvania homeowner the arrears. After the meeting, the HEMAP application must be filed with PHFA within 30 days, and the lender can take no legal action for 30 days after the meeting while PHFA reviews.
Act 91 does not apply to every loan — FHA Title II mortgages, commercial-use property, loans more than 24 to 36 months delinquent, and files where the reinstatement amount exceeds $60,000 are outside it. A defective or omitted Act 91 notice is also a live defense that can get a foreclosure dismissed.
You can reinstate up to an hour before the auction
Pennsylvania gives homeowners the latest practical cure deadline in the country: you may reinstate up to one hour before bidding begins at the sheriff sale, and you may do it up to three times in a calendar year.
The sheriff sale itself must be served on you, posted on the property, and published once a week for three weeks, with first publication at least 21 days before the sale.
No redemption after the sale, and a six-month deficiency clock
There is no post-sale right of redemption in Pennsylvania. Once the sale happens and the deed is delivered, the house is gone.
On deficiency, the lender must petition to fix the property's fair market value within six months after the sheriff's deed is delivered. Missing that window bars the deficiency, and you can have the judgment marked satisfied and discharged. Where the lender bought at the sale, the deficiency is capped at the debt minus the court-determined fair market value — not minus the often artificially low bid.
What this means if you are behind in Pennsylvania
There is no statewide mediation program, but county-level diversion and conciliation programs exist — Philadelphia's Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program requires lender participation, and Allegheny, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Luzerne, Lycoming, Monroe and Northampton counties run their own. Deadlines come from local rule, so check your county early.
Between HEMAP, county diversion and an hour-before-the-gavel reinstatement right, Pennsylvania homeowners have more genuine off-ramps than most. Almost all of them require making a phone call in the first month.
A note on what this page is
This is general information about how the foreclosure process works in this state. It is not legal advice and it is not a prediction about your loan. Timelines vary by lender, by servicer, by county and by the specifics of your file, and the law changes. If you are facing foreclosure, a conversation with an attorney licensed in your state about your particular situation is time well spent — and a confidential review with us costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.
Understand your value. Know your equity. Review your options.
One confidential review. Every available option. Call or text 888-870-0443.
KW Home Solutions, part of KW Default Solutions and powered by Keller Williams Realty. Corporate Office: Laguna Niguel, CA.