Philly's 2027 Property Tax went up a headline 4-7%, but really it's 0-44%

Philadelphia mailed its first citywide property reassessment since 2024 in late June. The Office of Property Assessment pulled 462,413 single-family parcels onto the new rolls. The city's framing is fairness: a reassessment pulls values closer to market and spreads the burden more evenly across the tax base. The data I pulled from the city's open endpoint tells a different story.

The citywide parcel median moved +4.2%. The mean moved +7.0%. That gap — a mean roughly 1.7 times the median — tells you the increase landed on a subset of properties, not on the middle of the distribution. The headline “4% to 7%” masks a much wider reality: the actual spread runs from -2.7% in Fishtown to +44.4% in one North Philadelphia census tract.

The range the citywide number hides

I keep coming back to Kensington and Chestnut Hill because they break the easy explanation. Kensington, one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods, had the largest ZIP-level increase: its median single-family assessment rose 11.5%, from $98,100 to $115,100. Chestnut Hill, the city’s wealthiest residential ZIP, was close behind at 10.6% — but that percentage was applied to a $717,750 median assessment. At the other end, Fishtown’s median assessment fell 2.7%, while Olney and Strawberry Mansion barely moved. The reassessment did not sort neatly by wealth, neighborhood type, or even direction. It moved in pockets, and the citywide median is too blunt to show where those pockets are.

That is why I do not read the ZIP map as a simple story about rich neighborhoods winning and poor neighborhoods losing. Kensington and Chestnut Hill moved by almost the same percentage, even though the homes underneath those percentages were worth radically different amounts. Meanwhile, some of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods stayed near the bottom of the change list. The public records show us where the numbers moved; they do not show the sales, renovations, or valuation judgments that made the Office of Property Assessment move them.

Why median +4.2% doesn't tell the household story

The citywide median also hides how many homeowners never saw an increase at all. In nine ZIP codes, fewer than half of single-family parcels went up. Fishtown was the clearest example: its median assessment fell 2.7%, and only 37.9% of parcels increased. In Olney, just 49.2% went up; in Strawberry Mansion, 47.6% did. Those are not small exceptions around a citywide rule. They are neighborhoods where the typical homeowner experienced something closer to flat or falling assessments, even as the average across Philadelphia rose.

The household-level picture is different from the citywide picture in another way. Take two ZIPs at near-identical percentage changes: Kensington went up +11.5% on a 2025 median assessment of $98,100 (a $17,000 dollar change), and Chestnut Hill went up +10.6% on a median of $717,750 (a $76,250 dollar change). Each ZIP’s median is computed independently on its own 2025 and 2027 cohorts — the percent changes are not derived from the same two parcels. At the published 1.3998% combined tax rate, that works out to roughly $238 more per year for the Kensington median and $1,067 for Chestnut Hill. The percentages are close, but the larger assessment base makes the Chestnut Hill increase more than four times as expensive.

Where the census tracts show the worst concentration

The ZIP map is still smoothing over the sharpest changes. In Fairhill, in North Philadelphia’s 19133, the median assessment in one census tract jumped from $84,300 to $126,600. That is a 44.4% increase, and 99.6% of the parcels in the tract went up. A homeowner there does not experience the citywide median as an abstraction; they experience a new number attached to their house. The next-highest increases were also concentrated in North Philadelphia, where several tracts rose more than 20%. The pattern is geographic, but the public records stop before the explanation: they do not tell us which sales, permits, or appraisal judgments produced those jumps.

Seven of the top ten hardest-hit tracts sit in 19133, 19134, or 19140 — the North Philadelphia ZIPs. One more is in 19143 (Kingsessing), one in 19131 (Overbrook), and one in 19104 (Mantua). All of these are ZIPs whose 2025 median assessments sat under $170,000. The geographic concentration is real, but the data I pulled does not include the sales, permits, or valuation-model inputs that would tell you why.

What the $77.7 million number actually means

Across the city, the reassessment adds up to a modeled $77.7 million in property tax before relief. That sounds like a city budget number, but it begins with individual houses: the typical parcel carries about $112 a year in additional tax under the current rate. Some owners will owe much less, some much more, and owners with the Homestead Exemption may see the increase reduced substantially.

The $77.7 million is not a prediction of what Philadelphia will collect. Council sets the tax rate through the budget, and the Homestead Exemption removes $100,000 from the taxable assessment of an eligible owner-occupied home. I am using the figure for a narrower purpose: to show the gross size of the reassessment before the city applies relief or changes the rate. It is a way to measure the pressure created by the new assessments, not a bill sent to the Treasury.

Where to check before you mail the appeal

That unevenness is why the next step is not to argue about a citywide average. It is to check the number attached to your own house. A homeowner can still reduce the bill through the Homestead Exemption, challenge an assessment through the Board of Revision of Taxes, or apply for another relief program. None of those protections happen just because the city reassessed the property; the owner has to claim them.

The Homestead Exemption removes $100,000 from the assessed value of every owner-occupied home that has it on file, before the tax is calculated. You apply once; the application is at phila.gov and the eligibility rules and current process live on the city's Office of Property Assessment page. The Board of Revision of Taxes hears first-level appeals of the new assessment within the published window. Additional property-tax relief programs — for income-qualified longtime owners, seniors, and other eligible households — live on the city's property-tax relief page; check the source for current eligibility and benefit mechanics before you file.

The city framed this as fairness — equal burden, across the tax base. The data I pulled says otherwise. A reassessment that put +44% on one tract and -2.7% on another didn’t spread the burden; it concentrated it. The $77.7M is the citywide number. The notice in your mailbox is a per-parcel number. They are not the same story.

Notes, Sources, and Methodology

I used the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Property Assessment records published through OpenDataPhilly and the city’s public data endpoint. I compared the 2025 and 2027 assessments for 462,413 single-family properties with usable values and ZIP codes. That gives us a citywide picture across 46 residential ZIP codes, not a sample of properties.

For each property, I calculated how much its assessment changed between the two years. I then used the middle property in each ZIP code or census tract as the typical case, rather than letting a small number of unusually expensive homes dominate the result. To translate an assessment change into a rough tax impact, I used Philadelphia’s published combined city-and-school tax rate. That is how I arrived at figures such as the $112 citywide median and the $77.7 million gross increase.

These numbers describe the reassessment, not the final bill. ZIP codes contain several neighborhoods, the Homestead field shows whether an exemption is on file rather than whether a homeowner qualifies, and the public records do not include the sales, permits, or appraisal decisions behind each change. The citywide reassessment was the first since 2024, so these figures should not be treated as a direct comparison with every prior tax year.