Scranton, PA Rental Property Rules: Rental Registration (2026)

Scranton City Council established the Residential Rental Registration framework to address habitability conditions across the city's older rowhouse, duplex, and three-decker stock that dominates Hill Section, Green Ridge, South Side, and West Scranton neighborhoods. The program is codified in the rental and property-maintenance chapters of the Scranton City Code at ecode360.com/SC1148 and is administered by the Department of Licensing, Inspections, and Permits (LIP). Each owner of a residential rental property in Scranton must (a) register the property with the City - identifying the owner, any local agent for service of process if the owner does not reside in or adjacent to Lackawanna County, the number of rental units in the building, and contact information; (b) pay the annual registration/license fee set by City Council; (c) submit the property to a periodic exterior and interior inspection by LIP staff on a cycle the City sets (typically multi-year, with cycle frequency depending on building type and prior compliance history); and (d) correct any International Property Maintenance Code violations the inspector documents within the time the notice of violation specifies. The program applies to single-family rentals, two-unit and three-unit conversions (extremely common in Scranton's older neighborhoods), and large apartment buildings; owner-occupied homes are not within the rental-program registration regime, but become subject to it the moment any portion of the dwelling is rented to a non-family tenant. Pennsylvania's appellate courts have upheld municipal rental-inspection programs against constitutional challenge - including the Commonwealth Court's decision in Pottstown Borough v. Suber-Aponte, 202 A.3d 173 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2019) - and Scranton follows the administrative-warrant pathway when consent to inspect is withheld. Newly purchased rentals must register within the timeframe specified in the ordinance; change-of-ownership requires re-registration in the new owner's name. The program is separate from, and runs alongside, the Pennsylvania Landlord and Tenant Act at 68 P.S. §250.101 et seq.; Scranton's program does not regulate the landlord-tenant contract itself, only the habitability and licensure of the unit. Scranton has also adopted the Quality of Life Ticketing Program under Pennsylvania Act 90 of 2010 (53 P.S. §38001 et seq.), which gives LIP staff and Scranton Police a streamlined civil-fine mechanism for property-maintenance violations including failure to register a rental.