Buy a house in Montgomery County and 2.000% of the price moves through the settlement sheet as realty transfer tax. Refinance the same house and none of it does. Pennsylvania taxes the transfer of a deed, and a mortgage is not a taxable document — 61 Pa. Code §91.193. A refinance produces a considerable stack of paper and, unusually, no deed at the end of it.
What a refinance skips, and what it does not
The 2% is the big one. It is the same 2% everywhere in the county — 1% state, 0.5% municipality, 0.5% school district, read 26 August 2026 against the Recorder of Deeds and two title underwriters’ deviation lists — and a refinance is simply outside it.
The exemptions in the transfer tax code are worth knowing for the deed changes that do come up around a refinance: transfers between spouses, parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, brother and sister, transfers under a will or intestate succession, sheriff’s sales, and transfers to government agencies and nonprofit conservancies. Adding a spouse to a deed is on that list. Buying a house out of an estate is not.
Everything else about the house stays where it was. The assessment does not move because you refinanced; it sits on the county’s 1996 base year like every other parcel in Montgomery County. What is on the loan side — appraisal, title, recording — is the lender’s to quote, and no figures for any of it appear on this page.
The escrow line moves in July, and that is the school district
If the escrow analysis lands with a shortage, the usual culprit is not the loan. Montgomery County’s school districts set millage on a July-to-June year, and 2026-27 went up nearly everywhere:
| District | 2025-26 | 2026-27 |
|---|---|---|
| Lower Merion | 35.2674 | 36.5017 |
| Upper Dublin | 39.7506 | 41.1418 |
| Cheltenham | 54.7700 | 56.6800 |
| North Penn | 32.2040 | 33.3280 |
| Norristown Area | 39.5960 | 40.1899 |
| Pottstown | 44.39 | 45.28 |
Lower Merion publishes the household version: on the district’s median assessment of $250,680, the school bill went from $8,841 to $9,150, up $309 for the year. Norristown Area took 1.50% against an available index of 4.6%, the most restrained increase in the county.
The county levy has climbed too, and steadily — 4.627 mills in 2023, 5.178 in 2024, 5.642 in 2025 and 5.952 in 2026, which is 5.462 general plus 0.49 for Montgomery County Community College. On the county’s own average single-family home, $556,546 of market value and a $171,193 assessment, that comes to $935 plus $84.
Abington owners should take the figure off their own bill. The county’s millage page lists Abington School District at 39.8992 mills and leaves out the 1.3738-mill referendum levy for the middle school project, which the township’s tax office prints as its own line. The real 2026-27 total there is 53.397 mills.
The limits that still apply
A refinance is bound by the same 2026 ceilings as a purchase. Conventional runs to $832,750 on a one-unit house in Montgomery County, $1,066,250 on two units and $1,288,800 on three. FHA in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro stops at $630,200 on one unit. Both were read 26 August 2026 from the agencies’ own files, both are usually restated in late November, and the lender confirms which figures govern on the day. A VA interest rate reduction refinance sits outside the conforming limit altogether.
Whether any refinance is approved, and on what terms, is the lender’s decision. Nothing here is an offer of credit.
If the number on the bill looks wrong
Assessed value divided by 0.298 is the market value Montgomery County is effectively taxing you on, using the Common Level Ratio factor of 3.36 that applies to documents dated 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2027. If that implied value is well above what the house would sell for, there is an appeal in it.
Annual appeals are due 1 August — the next one is 1 August 2027, for tax year 2028. An interim appeal runs 40 days from the date printed on a change-of-assessment notice. The fee is $50 on a single-family house, $100 residential multi-family, paid by check to the Montgomery County Treasurer, with three copies of supporting documentation and supplements in at least ten days before the hearing. The Board sits at One Montgomery Plaza in Norristown and has warned that postal delays can make a timely-mailed filing look late, so it asks for hand delivery, hand cancellation or certified mail.
What to do next
Have the township, roughly what is left on the loan and roughly what the house would fetch. Call the line, or put it in the form and send it along, and a licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender calls you back to work out whether a refinance earns its keep. If the answer is no, that is a perfectly good answer to get on a Tuesday.