Property and Housing Guide:Property Sales

When a property is sold, a deed is usually filed with the Allegheny County Department of Real Estate. Deeds typically contain details related to the sales transaction including buyer, seller, sales price, and a legal description of the property. Property sales data is widely used to understand housing market dynamics, including sales prices, sales volume, and sales characteristics.

What's Included in the Data

Publicly Available

• Parcel ID
• Property Address
• Date of Sale
• Date Deed Recorded
• Sale Price
• Sale Validation Code
• Instrument Type
• School District
• Municipality
• Deed Book and Page

Not Publicly Available

• Seller Name Unavailable as Open Data
• Buyer Name Unavailable as Open Data

Where to Find the Data

• Sales Transactions as Open Data on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center's Website
• Parcel Downloader
• Parcel Dashboard
• Median and average sales prices for municipalities, census tracts, and City of Pittsburgh neighborhoods are available in the Southwestern Pennsylvania Community Profiles
• Property Deeds Can be viewed at no cost by visiting the Department of Real Estate's Offices in Downtown Pittsburgh. Scanned Property Deeds are available for a fee on the Department of Real Estate Website
• The Property Assessment Data on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center's Website Includes Data on a Property's Three Most-Recent Sales. This information is also available in the County's Real Estate Information Portal.

Things to Know

The Allegheny County Office of Property Assessment captures some of the information included on the deed in a database. The Office uses this data to update ownership records and calculate property valuations. The Office of Property Assessment also makes this information available as open data.

• The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center receives monthly updates of transactions where deeds have been recorded as open data, and hosts data for sales occurring since January 1, 2013.
• Names of buyers and sellers have been removed from the open data record due to a County ordinance (3478-07) that prohibits the County from sharing property owner names in a searchable online database.
• Only transactions where a deed has been filed are included in the open data. The filing date may not occur immediately after the sale date, and there is no requirement that a deed be filed following a sale.
• It may take several weeks for a new sale to be recorded in the database maintained by the County Office of Property Assessment.
• When using data to analyze sales trends, consider only including arms-length transactions. These sales are classified as "valid" in the sale description.
• Sales including multiple parcels in the same transaction are recorded in one sales record. There are no separate records for each parcel involved in a multi-parcel sale.