Which municipality, and the envelope will not tell you
Souderton is a borough, chartered in December 1887, 1.12 square miles, about 2,100 homes. Harleysville is not a borough and not a township. It is a census-designated place, sitting mostly in Lower Salford Township with a piece in Franconia Township, and it has no council, no mayor and no millage of its own.
Both are Souderton Area School District, which also covers Telford Borough, Franconia, Salford and Upper Salford. Six municipalities, one district. And Telford has a complication of its own: the borough straddles the Bucks and Montgomery line, with one side of Main Street in each county.
The tax bill that follows
Montgomery County assessments sit on a 1996 base year, and the Common Level Ratio factor for documents accepted between July 2026 and June 2027 is 3.36 — so assessed value is roughly the market price divided by 3.36.
All six municipalities pay the identical 37.3842 school mills for 2026–27. The municipal rate is the whole variable, and it runs from 1.400 in Salford Township to 9.750 in Souderton Borough. Totals, with county and community college at 5.952 on every parcel: Souderton Borough 53.0862, Telford on the Montgomery side 51.0962, Lower Salford 46.8452, Franconia 45.8162, Upper Salford 44.8362, Salford 44.7362.
Put a number on it. The district’s median homestead assessment is $159,060. At Souderton Borough’s rate that is about $8,444 a year; in Lower Salford, about $7,451. Roughly $993 apart on identical assessed value, before the homestead exclusion — arithmetic from the published millage, so call it an estimate and check the certification.
The school side moved hard this year. Souderton Area adopted 37.3842 on 18 June 2026, up from 35.8249, a 4.35% rise on a $165.51 million budget, about $248 more a year for a homeowner at that median assessment. It cleared the Act 1 index of 3.5% using a special-education exception, which put it 0.3054 mills above the cap. The homestead exclusion knocks $9,120 off assessed value, worth about $341 on the school bill, and the district’s per capita tax ended on 1 July 2026.
Earned income tax is 1% for residents, half to the municipality and half to the district. Lower Salford voters raised the township half from 0.5% to 0.75% on 19 May 2026, 3,130 votes to 680, to fund the $21.5 million purchase of the 62-acre Allebach Farm — about $225.36 a year more for the average worker. The township’s own tax page still showed the old figure in late August 2026, so ask the township when it starts.
Transfer tax is 2.000% at every Montgomery County address. It does not vary by township here. What varies is the county line, which is why Telford matters.
The houses
Souderton is a railroad-and-factory borough. The North Pennsylvania Railroad reached it in June 1857 on land donated by Henry Souder, the cigar and textile boom followed, and the borough says it kept many of the buildings from that era. About 2,100 homes on 1.12 square miles works out near 1,875 units per square mile, which is what narrow-lot singles, twins and attached rows look like on paper. The Souderton Historic District went on the National Register in 2011; a National Register listing is normally honorific and creates no local review board, and whether this one carries anything more is a question for the borough.
Harleysville and the rest of Lower Salford run on township-scale lots, 14.44 square miles with four villages — Harleysville, Lederach, Mainland and Vernfield — and 1,200 acres of preserved open space. Nobody publishes a year-built table for either place that stands up, so treat any percentage you read about pre-1940 housing here with suspicion.
What a lender will ask about here
Sewer and septic, and it will come up early. Next door in Franconia, a $2,349,000 PENNVEST loan approved in July 2026 will lay 15,010 feet of low-pressure sewer main to serve 131 existing homes still on on-lot systems; the sewer authority’s director said on the record that many of those systems have reached the end of their useful life. That is the appraisal conversation in one sentence — septic age, distance to the well, and whether a public main is coming.
Then the closing calendar. Souderton Borough requires a use and occupancy certificate on any sale in the borough, with the inspection set 30 days before settlement; the fee lives in a scanned schedule, so call the borough at 215-723-4371 for it. Lower Salford requires a sewer certification for any sale, refinance or transfer on public sewer, with a physical inspection by authority staff checking for roof drains, cellar drains, springs, sump pumps and French drains tied into the sanitary line. It is $100 at settlement, and appointments are Friday mornings between 7:30 and 9:00. A 30-day close needs both of those booked in the first week.
Running costs go in the file too: Lower Salford’s flat sewer rate rose to $150 per unit per quarter on 1 January 2026, and Souderton’s single-hauler trash runs $127 a quarter, with the contract out for rebid in 2026.
One more thing worth saying plainly. JBS announced on 13 June 2026 that it would close its beef plant — physically in Franconia Township, Souderton mailing address — by 14 August, about 1,700 jobs. If a household’s income changed with that, tell the lender at the start. Income documentation is the slowest part of any file to sort out late.
Next town over
Lansdale is down Route 63 in North Penn, close enough to share a Turnpike exit and far enough to be a different school bill. Ambler is further south again, in Wissahickon.
What to do next
Call and name the municipality if you can — borough, Lower Salford, Franconia, Telford. A licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender calls you back, usually the same working day and by the end of the next working day at the outside. Writing suits some people better. Send it along and it reaches the same desk. Around here the deed decides which of six municipalities you are buying into, and that is the thing worth settling before anything else.
