Five steps, lower Bucks version
- Answer one question first: has anybody on the loan owned a house in the past three years? A no is worth roughly $24,995 of K-FIT at this median.
- Get pre-approved, then start looking. Twenty-one days on market leaves no room to arrange financing afterwards.
- Get three answers out of the seller on a 1957 rancher before you offer: roof, electrical panel, plumbing. The appraisal then rarely surprises anybody.
- Have the 245.99-mill stack, the $545 trash charge and the $15 per capita tax put into the monthly figure.
- Check the parcel against FEMA’s map if it sits near the Neshaminy or the Poquessing.
What it costs, and which programs reach it
$499,900 was the middle price here in July 2026. Volume ran 37% ahead of the previous July across 71 sales, houses went under contract inside three weeks, and 15 of the 69 active listings had already cut their price. That is a market with movement in both directions, which is a reasonable place to be a buyer.
Two percent transfer tax on that median is $9,998, roughly $4,999 on the buyer’s line. This is also where the programs actually work: PHFA’s Keystone Home Loan caps a Bucks price at $588,800, so the median clears it by $88,900, and K-FIT’s 5% comes to about $24,995 as a second loan that forgives a tenth a year over ten years. The county’s own $10,000 program stops at a $392,000 purchase price, which reaches the lower end of this market.
Picked up day and night, calls recorded. No credit pull, no application.
Say the price range and whether you've owned a home in the last three years, because K-FIT is worth about $25,000 at this median, and a licensed Pennsylvania lender calls you back. Worth the five minutes.
The form takes about a minute and lands in the same place as the call.
Three bills, 245.99 mills
Neshaminy School District is the big one: 198.0124 mills for 2026, up from 190.2137 in 2025 and 181.675 in 2024, on a $228,705,334 budget adopted June 29, 2026 with a 4.1% increase, following 4.7% the year before. Personnel alone is about $150 million of it.
The county adds 29.65 and the township 18.33, which was 16.33 in 2025 and 14.08 from 2022 through 2024. That totals 245.99 mills, roughly $7,380 a year on a $30,000 assessment before the homestead exclusion of $364.26. On top of the tax comes $545 a year for trash, unchanged since 2023 after $300 in 2022, and a $15 per capita tax. School bills mailed July 1, county and municipal bills the first week of March.
Hand the actual bills to your lender. An escrow estimate built on a guess is the most common reason a monthly payment moves between pre-approval and closing.
Ranches, then an 1980s layer, then apartments
Lower Southampton has 8,088 housing units and a median build year of 1970. Twenty-seven percent of them went up in the 1950s, 13% in each of the 1960s and 1970s, 19% in the 1980s and 11% in the 2010s, and 71% of the stock is single-family detached. On the ground that reads as single-story ranches, Cape Cods and split-levels, with Somerton Manor as the best-known pocket of them, an 1980s wave behind that, and a recent layer of apartments and townhomes.
The population tells the same story: 1,077 people in 1930, 12,619 by 1960, 20,599 in 2020 across 6.72 square miles. Trevose became its own census place in 2010 with 3,842 people, and takes its name from Joseph Growden’s estate, from the Cornish word for a farm.
A 1957 rancher is a clean loan with a specific punch list. Pre-1978 brings the lead disclosure. FHA and VA appraisers write up peeling paint and missing handrails. Insurers ask the age of the roof, the panel and the plumbing. Get those three answers before you make the offer and the appraisal rarely surprises anyone.
The creeks on either side
The township is bordered and crossed by the Neshaminy and the Poquessing. The Poquessing rises in Trevose, has marked the Bucks and Philadelphia line since 1682, and runs 10.3 miles to the Delaware. The Neshaminy gauge near Langhorne sets action stage at 8 feet, minor at 9, moderate at 12 and major at 14, with record crests of 22.84 feet in August 1955, 21.91 during Floyd in September 1999, 20.81 during Ida on September 2, 2021 and 19.56 during Irene in 2011. Floyd put the creek more than ten feet above normal, and the 2011 storms cost about $1 million in repairs.
Check the parcel at FEMA’s Map Service Center. In Zone A or AE the flood policy is required with a mortgage, and the premium belongs in the payment you plan around.
Two stations, and the roads
The West Trenton Line puts Trevose at 1100 Boundbrook Avenue with 219 spaces and Neshaminy Falls at 4255 East Bristol Road with 187. On the timetable effective July 5, 2026, the 7:23 from West Trenton hits Neshaminy Falls at 7:41 and Trevose at 7:44, reaching Suburban Station at 8:33, so 52 and 49 minutes respectively. Both stations sit just over the Bensalem line, close enough that the walk is the difference.
The rest is highway. The Turnpike crosses the township, US 1 and Street Road meet at the south end, and the Street Road interchange rebuild with its replacement bridges was set to finish in mid-2026. Anyone who has tried Street Road at five o’clock will find the completion date the most interesting number on this page.
What is in front of the supervisors
A 52-unit, three-story apartment building with ground-floor office and retail was proposed on 1.77 acres at 1834 Brownsville Road in February 2026, heard in June, and the hearing officer’s August 12, 2026 opinion recommends approving the conditional use with conditions. Supervisors take it up September 9.
Community Day, “Back the Blue,” is September 26, 2026, noon to four at Russell Elliot Memorial Park on Buck Road, and Octoberfest follows October 3 at Playwicki Farm on Bridgetown Pike, 110 acres with a farmstand running June through December.