Outline of the eviction process in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania evictions run under the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951 and are heard by Magisterial District Judges everywhere except Philadelphia, where the Municipal Court handles them. Outside the city the process is quick and inexpensive: a ten-day notice, a hearing seven to fifteen days after filing, a ten-day appeal window, and a constable lockout on or after the eleventh day after the order for possession is served. Philadelphia has layered its own requirements on top, including a mandatory Eviction Diversion Program before filing, rental licensing, right to counsel in designated zip codes, and lockouts performed only by the Sheriff, so the two halves of this guide read differently.

1. Grounds for eviction in Pennsylvania

• Nonpayment of rent.
• Breach of a lease condition.
• End of the lease term or termination of a month-to-month tenancy, with no cause required outside Philadelphia.
• Drug-related criminal activity, which allows a shortened ten-day notice regardless of the lease term (68 P.S. § 250.501(d), referring to Section 505-A of the Act).

Pennsylvania has no statewide just-cause law and no rent control. Retaliation and discrimination remain defenses, and Philadelphia’s Fair Practices Ordinance adds source-of-income protection.

Squatters are not tenants. Since Act 88 of 2024 (signed July 17, 2024), the Act defines a tenant as someone who occupies the premises with the owner’s express or implied consent, the notice-to-quit section does not apply to a person who is not and never has been a tenant (§ 250.501(g)), and the Act as a whole does not apply to such a person. This guide covers tenants; removing someone who never had consent is a different proceeding.

2. The notice to quit (68 P.S. § 250.501)

• Nonpayment: ten days from service.
• Breach of lease or end of term: fifteen days for a lease of one year or less or an indeterminate tenancy; thirty days for a lease of more than one year.
• Drug activity: ten days.
• Mobile home park spaces have their own, longer periods under § 250.501(c) and are outside this guide.
• Waiver. Under § 250.501(e) the notice “may be for a lesser time or may be waived by the tenant if the lease so provides,” and most Pennsylvania form leases do. Check yours; if it waives notice you can file immediately, though many landlords still serve a short notice to build a record. The judge will ask whether notice was given or waived.

Section 250.501(f) gives three ways to serve the notice: personally on the tenant, by leaving it at the principal building on the premises, or by posting it conspicuously on the leased premises. Mailing is not one of the statutory methods. If the property is federally backed or subsidized, the CARES Act 30-day notice applies to nonpayment.

Philadelphia adds three prerequisites. You must hold a current Rental License and have given the tenant a Certificate of Rental Suitability and the city’s Partners for Good Housing handbook at the start of the tenancy; without them you cannot collect rent for that period or evict for nonpayment. For nonpayment and most other residential cases you must also enroll in the Eviction Diversion Program and wait at least 30 days after applying, negotiating in good faith with the tenant (and applying for rental assistance where available) before you may file. The program began as a temporary pandemic measure and was made permanent in 2024; Phila. Code § 9-811 now has no expiration date. The only exception is where eviction is necessary to stop or prevent an imminent threat of harm by the person being evicted.

3. Filing the complaint and service

Outside Philadelphia, file a Landlord/Tenant Complaint with the Magisterial District Judge for the district where the property sits. Court costs are set by statute, depend on the amount claimed and are adjusted periodically; expect roughly $85 to $175 plus the constable or sheriff’s service fee, and ask the district court for the current total. When the complaint is filed the judge must set a hearing not less than seven or more than fifteen days later (Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 504).

The court, not the landlord, arranges service, and it has two parts (Rule 506): a copy goes to the tenant by first class mail, and a sheriff or certified constable hands a copy to the tenant or an adult in charge of the premises if one is found and posts a copy conspicuously on the premises. Posting is required in every case so that occupants are on notice. Service must be made at least five days before the hearing.

Occupants who are not named. The notice attached to the complaint now warns unnamed occupants that they may be evicted, and since January 1, 2025 an occupant may file an intervention request before the hearing and ask to be added as a tenant (Rule 513.1). If the judge finds the person is your tenant, they join the case, with the same exposure to a money judgment. Notice of an intervention request is grounds for a continuance if you need one.

Mediation. Since October 1, 2025, a county’s court of common pleas may adopt a local rule sending residential landlord-tenant cases before magisterial district judges to mediation (Rule 504.1). A local rule may not make mediation a precondition to filing the complaint. Check whether your county has one.

In Philadelphia, file in Municipal Court and confirm the current filing and service fees with the court. The court sets a hearing date typically three to six weeks out, and an income-eligible tenant may be entitled to free counsel through the city’s Right to Counsel program, which is not citywide: as of the April 2026 expansion it covers ten zip codes (19121, 19124, 19131, 19132, 19134, 19139, 19141, 19144, 19153 and 19154) for tenants at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

4. The hearing

You must appear and testify even if the tenant does not. A magisterial district judge may not enter a default judgment in a possession case, including for the money part (Rules 512(A), 514). If you fail to appear, the judge may continue the hearing or dismiss the complaint without prejudice.

Bring the lease, ledger, the notice with proof of service (or the lease clause waiving it), the Philadelphia license and certificate where applicable, and photographs for breach cases. Tenants commonly raise a defective notice, acceptance of rent after the notice, unlicensed rental (in Philadelphia and in other municipalities with their own licensing ordinances), retaliation, and the implied warranty of habitability, which in Pennsylvania supports rent withholding if the tenant gave notice of the defect. A tenant may also file a cross-complaint before the hearing for claims arising out of the occupancy (Rule 508).

Judgment is given at the end of the hearing or within three days (Rule 514(D)). It awards possession and, by separate entries, rent due, damages for unjust detention, physical damage to the premises and costs, and it states the monthly rent, which matters for any appeal. Money claims before a magisterial district judge are generally capped at $12,000 (42 Pa.C.S. § 1515).

5. Appeal, order for possession and the constable

Appeal. A residential tenant has ten days after judgment to appeal the possession judgment to the Court of Common Pleas; the money part of a judgment can be appealed within 30 days (Rule 1002). A tenant who is a victim of domestic violence has 30 days to appeal possession, and may instead file a domestic violence affidavit with the district court, which stays the order for possession for up to 30 days after judgment without any deposit (Rules 514.1, 1002(B)(2); 68 P.S. § 250.513).

To stay in the unit during an appeal the tenant needs a supersedeas (Rule 1008): at filing, the tenant deposits the lesser of three months’ rent or the rent actually in arrears based on the judgment, then deposits the monthly rent with the prothonotary within 30 days of the appeal and every 30 days after. A low-income tenant who files the tenant’s supersedeas affidavit instead deposits the monthly rent every 30 days if that month’s rent was already paid, or, if it was not, one-third of the monthly rent at filing, the other two-thirds within 20 days, and the full rent every 30 days after that; a Housing Choice Voucher tenant deposits only the tenant’s share. You can ask the court to release escrowed rent to you while the appeal is pending. If a deposit is missed, the prothonotary terminates the supersedeas on your praecipe and you can go back for possession.

Order for possession. If no appeal is filed, you may request an Order for Possession after the tenth day following judgment and within 120 days of it (Rule 515(B)); if an appeal, bankruptcy or other stay intervened, the 120 days run from the date it ended. The district court mails the order to the tenant and gives it to the sheriff or constable, who must serve it within 48 hours by handing it to the tenant or an adult in charge of the premises or, if no one is found, by posting it (Rule 517). The officer may carry out the lockout on or after the eleventh day after service (Rule 519(B)). An order cannot be executed more than 60 days after it issues; it can be reissued once for another 60 days, still within the 120-day limit (Rules 516, 519(C)).

Pay and stay. In a case brought solely for nonpayment, the tenant can satisfy the order at any time before the lockout is carried out by paying the executing officer the rent in arrears shown on the order plus costs (Rule 518; 68 P.S. § 250.503(c)).

Philadelphia. The private Landlord-Tenant Office that used to perform lockouts shut down in September 2024, and the Sheriff’s Office is now the only body that carries out evictions. Reported waits for a sheriff lockout have run from six weeks to three months, so build that into your timeline.

Property left behind. Before removing or disposing of it you must give the tenant written notice by first class mail. The tenant has ten days from the postmark to retrieve it or to ask you to store it, and on request you must hold it for up to thirty days from the notice, in a place of your choosing, at the tenant’s cost, using ordinary care (68 P.S. § 250.505a). The statute does not require the request to be in writing. A written lease can set different terms, except that where a protection from abuse order is in place you must leave the property alone for thirty days from the notice whatever the lease says. A landlord who disposes of property in violation is liable for treble damages and attorney fees. Self-help lockouts and utility shutoffs are unlawful and, in Philadelphia, carry fines and criminal exposure.

Typical timeline

Step	Typical time
Notice to quit	10 days (nonpayment), 15 or 30 days (breach or end of term), unless waived in the lease
Philadelphia Eviction Diversion	30 days before filing
Filing to hearing	7 to 15 days (magisterial district judge), 3 to 6 weeks (Philadelphia)
Appeal period	10 days (30 for a domestic violence victim)
Order for possession to lockout	On or after the 11th day after service

Outside Philadelphia an uncontested nonpayment case commonly takes five to seven weeks from notice to lockout. In Philadelphia, plan on four to six months including diversion and the sheriff’s lockout queue.

Recent law changes landlords should know

• Mediation by local rule (Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 504.1, effective October 1, 2025): counties may send residential cases to mediation, but not before filing.
• Occupant intervention (Rule 513.1, effective January 1, 2025): an unnamed occupant can ask to join the case as a tenant before the hearing.
• Squatters (Act 88 of 2024): the Act, including the notice to quit, does not apply to someone who never was a tenant.
• Philadelphia Eviction Diversion Program (Phila. Code § 9-811): mandatory pre-filing enrollment and 30-day good-faith participation for residential cases; made permanent in 2024.
• Philadelphia lockouts: the Landlord-Tenant Office closed in September 2024 and the Sheriff’s Office now performs every eviction.
• Philadelphia Right to Counsel: free representation for income-eligible tenants in designated zip codes, expanded to ten zip codes in April 2026. It is not yet citywide.
• Fee waiver rules: a Supreme Court order of April 21, 2026, effective November 1, 2026, restyles the appeal and supersedeas rules and the tenant’s affidavit around a new fee waiver application. The deposit amounts described above do not change.

When to bring in an attorney

Outside Philadelphia many landlords file their own nonpayment cases before the district judge. Use counsel in Philadelphia (the licensing, diversion and right-to-counsel rules make self-representation risky), for any appeal to Common Pleas, for breach cases, when an occupant seeks to intervene, and for subsidized housing. The Pennsylvania attorneys listed below represent landlords before magisterial district judges and in Philadelphia Municipal Court, with several concentrated in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley.

Sources

• Landlord and Tenant Act of 1951, Act of April 6, 1951, P.L. 69, No. 20, as amended through Act 88 of 2024 (P.L. 944), official text on the Pennsylvania General Assembly website: § 102 (definition of tenant), § 501 (68 P.S. § 250.501, notice to quit), § 503 (hearing, writ, payment of rent), § 505.1 (68 P.S. § 250.505a, tenant property), § 513 (appeal), § 603 (applicability).
• Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 501 to 521 (246 Pa. Code ch. 500), including Rules 504, 504.1, 506, 508, 512, 513.1, 514, 514.1 and 515 to 519.
• Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 1002 and 1008 (246 Pa. Code ch. 1000), and the Supreme Court order of April 21, 2026, No. 560 Magisterial Rules Docket, 56 Pa.B. 2569; 42 Pa.C.S. § 1515 (jurisdiction).
• Philadelphia Code § 9-811 (Eviction Diversion Program), Chapter 9-3900 (rental licenses and Certificate of Rental Suitability), Chapter 9-1100 (Fair Practices Ordinance); Philadelphia Municipal Court landlord-tenant procedures; City of Philadelphia Right to Counsel announcement of April 29, 2026.