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Investor Guide · Updated 2026-06-04

How to Find Pre-Foreclosure Leads in Pennsylvania (2026)

Authored by , Founder of Keystone Court Data. See our editorial standards.

A Pennsylvania-specific guide to sourcing pre-foreclosure leads directly from public court records. Covers court portal access, case-type identification, the Pennsylvania timeline, and what to filter.

Pennsylvania home prices were +5.3% year-over-year as of 2026 Q1; PA judicial foreclosure timelines vary widely across the state's 67 counties.

What counts as a pre-foreclosure lead in Pennsylvania

A pre-foreclosure lead is a property where the lender has filed public legal action signaling serious mortgage default, but the property has not yet been auctioned at sheriff sale or transferred to bank-owned status. Lender must serve Act 6 and Act 91 pre-foreclosure notices and provide Pennsylvania Homeowner's Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP) information before filing. Defendants have 20 days to answer.

Step 1: Access the Pennsylvania court portal

Each county Court of Common Pleas runs its own docket portal; Western Pennsylvania counties also use the PACFile statewide e-filing system.

Filings are made in the Court of Common Pleas of the county where the property sits. Case-type designations vary; look for filings labeled Mortgage Foreclosure or Complaint in Mortgage Foreclosure.

Step 2: Identify the foreclosure complaint filing

Once inside the portal, search by case type or party. The court file will include the named defendants (the homeowner or borrower), the named plaintiff (the lender or servicer pursuing foreclosure), the property address, and the case-filing date.

Step 3: Verify the property against the assessor

Court records describe the case; the property itself is verified via the county tax assessor or GIS parcel database. Look up each defendant's name in the assessor records to confirm current titled ownership. If the owner's mailing address differs from the property address, the owner does not reside at the property — they could be an out-of-state landlord, an inherited estate's executor, a second-home owner, or a transitional owner; the assessor data doesn't distinguish.

Step 4: Time the outreach against the Pennsylvania foreclosure timeline

Pennsylvania judicial foreclosure commonly runs 9 to 18 months from complaint to sheriff sale; county court calendar backlogs (notably Philadelphia and Allegheny) add significant variance.

Pennsylvania does not have a statutory post-sale redemption right; the homeowner may cure prior to sheriff sale only.

That window is the actionable pre-foreclosure period. Outreach in the first 30 days after filing tends to land before the homeowner has retained counsel.

Step 5: Filter for leads you can actually work

Top Pennsylvania counties by foreclosure filing volume

Based on Keystone Court Data's verified filings across Pennsylvania counties:

Should you build this in-house or use a provider?

Pennsylvania has 5 counties in our scrape coverage, each with its own court portal and filing nuances. Building same-day coverage requires per-county scrapers, ownership verification against tax assessors, deduplication, and continuous portal-vendor monitoring as portal HTML changes. For investors focused on deals rather than data engineering, working with a court-records specialist is the more common approach.

Keystone Court Data publishes verified Pennsylvania pre-foreclosure leads via the subscriber dashboard. One subscriber per county. Trials are free.

Related Pennsylvania resources

Get day-of-filing Pennsylvania court records

Subscribe to a Pennsylvania county to receive every new pre-foreclosure complaint the day it's filed at the courthouse. One subscriber per county. View Pennsylvania counties.