It usually arrives the same way. The agreement of sale is signed, the buyer's inspector spends a morning in the house, and a few days later your agent forwards a one-page lab report with a number on it: 6.2 pCi/L, or 11, or 23. Attached is a request that you either install a radon mitigation system before closing or knock money off the price. Nobody in the house has ever been sick, you have lived there for thirty years, and until this week "radon" was a word you had heard on a hardware-store display.
This guide is for Northeast Pennsylvania sellers who have just been handed that report, or who suspect they are about to be. It covers what the number actually means, what Pennsylvania requires of you (and what it does not), who is legally allowed to test and fix radon in this state, and what your real options are when a radon result lands in the middle of a sale in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, the Back Mountain or the Poconos.
A high radon result is common and fixable in Pennsylvania — the state DEP says roughly 40% of homes tested here come in above the EPA's 4 pCi/L action guideline. Pennsylvania does not require you to test before selling, but its disclosure form asks whether you know of radon and whether the house has been tested, so a result you have seen is a result you disclose. Anyone paid to test or mitigate must be DEP-certified. And you have three real paths: fix it, credit it, or sell to a buyer who is not asking.
What the Number on the Report Actually Means
Radon is a radioactive gas that comes out of the soil and rock under a house and enters through cracks and openings in the foundation. It has no smell and no colour, which is why the only way anyone knows about it is a test. Results are reported in picocuries per liter of air, written pCi/L.
The figure that matters in a real estate deal is 4 pCi/L. That is the EPA's action level, and it is the line the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection uses too: at 4 or above, the recommendation is to reduce it. For context, the EPA estimates the average indoor level nationally at about 1.3 pCi/L. Between 2 and 4, the EPA says to consider fixing; below 2 is difficult to improve on.
What DEP says about Pennsylvania specifically is blunt: the state has one of the most serious radon problems in the United States, and approximately 40% of homes tested here have levels above 4 pCi/L. Put another way, a buyer testing an older Lackawanna or Luzerne County house is not looking for something rare. They are checking for something that turns up in a large share of the houses they test. If your result came back high, you are in very ordinary company.
DEP publishes radon test data by ZIP code through its public reporting site, linked from the DEP "Radon in the Home" page. It will not tell you anything about your house — two neighbouring houses can test very differently — but it will tell you whether a high result is typical for your area. The DEP Radon Hotline is 1-800-237-2366.
Why It Surfaces During a Sale
Most owners never test, so the first radon test a house ever gets is usually the buyer's. The EPA's Home Buyer's and Seller's Guide to Radon tells buyers to ask the seller for existing results and, if there are none, to have the house tested — and it recommends testing in the lowest level of the home that could be used regularly, finished or not, because a buyer may plan to use a basement the seller never did. In a Northeast Pennsylvania house with a full basement, that means the test canister usually sits downstairs, which is where levels tend to run highest.
Timing matters too. Real estate tests are short-term tests, typically a couple of days, run under closed-house conditions. They are designed to fit inside an inspection contingency, not to give a year-round average. That is why DEP suggests that a result in the 4–8 pCi/L range can be confirmed with a second test before anyone spends money. A single high short-term reading is a reason to act, but it is also a number that can move.
What Pennsylvania Requires of You as a Seller
There is a lot of bad information on this point, so here it is plainly.
- You are not required to test before selling. Nothing in Pennsylvania's Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law obliges a seller to commission a radon test. The EPA recommends testing before you list, and there are good strategic reasons to (below), but it is a choice.
- You are required to disclose what you know. The disclosure law, 68 Pa.C.S. § 7301 and following, requires residential sellers to disclose known material defects before the agreement of sale is signed. The State Real Estate Commission's disclosure form, published at 49 Pa. Code § 35.335a, has a Hazardous Substances section that asks whether you are aware of hazardous substances on the property — radon is named in the question — and, separately, whether the property has been tested for any hazardous substances.
- "As-is" does not change that. An as-is sale means you are not making repairs. It is not an exemption from disclosure. We cover the full form, and who is genuinely exempt, in what you must disclose when selling a house in Pennsylvania.
The practical consequence catches people out. Once a buyer's inspector hands you a radon result, you know about it. If that buyer walks away and you put the house back on the market, the next buyer's disclosure form has to reflect what you now know. A high reading does not go away because the deal that produced it did.
If you had a radon system installed years ago, or a previous test came back high, say so and hand over what you have — the post-mitigation result, the installer's name, any paperwork. The EPA tells buyers to ask for exactly this. A documented system that is working is a selling point; an undisclosed one discovered later is a problem you do not want.
Who Is Allowed to Test and Fix Radon in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is stricter than many states here, and it matters for both sides of a deal. Under the Radon Certification Act and DEP's regulations in 25 Pa. Code Chapter 240, three activities each require their own certification:
| Activity | What Needs Certification |
|---|---|
| Testing | Placing and retrieving radon test devices for someone else, and analysing the tester's own continuous monitors. |
| Mitigation | Anyone who repairs or alters a building for the purpose of reducing indoor radon — in other words, installing a radon system. |
| Laboratory | Analysing radon devices received from the public or from certified testers. |
DEP publishes a Radon Services Directory listing certified testers and mitigators, sorted by county, so you can check a contractor before you let them drill through your basement floor. The stated purpose of the certification program is to protect the public from "unqualified or unscrupulous persons," and in a real estate deal that is not an abstraction: a buyer's agent or lender may want paperwork from a certified firm, and a system put in by an uncertified handyman gives the buyer a reason to keep negotiating.
Two footnotes. A homeowner can still buy a do-it-yourself kit — DEP puts the cost at about $20 to $30 at a hardware store — and test their own house; certification applies to people providing testing as a service. And radon in water is handled differently: DEP does not certify water testing, it only lists the people who do it.
What Fixing It Actually Involves
The word "mitigation" sounds bigger than the job usually is. The standard fix is a vent pipe and fan that pull radon from beneath the slab and exhaust it outside — the EPA says systems like this can reduce radon levels by up to 99%. In a typical basement it is a single pipe through the floor, sealed, running up and out, with a fan.
- Time: DEP says installation should take less than a day.
- Proof: after the system has been running for at least 24 hours, the installer should run a follow-up test to confirm levels came down. That post-mitigation result is the document a buyer actually wants to see.
- Cost: the EPA's current guidance is that most homes can be fixed for about the same cost as other common home repairs, and that the price depends on how the house was built. Get written estimates from one or more DEP-certified mitigators rather than trusting a number from the internet — including ours.
- Upkeep: the system has a U-tube manometer on the pipe. If the fluid levels are uneven, the fan is running. The EPA notes that fans may last five years or more before needing repair or replacement, and DEP recommends retesting every two years.
Houses on a private well
Plenty of houses in the Back Mountain, the Abingtons and the Poconos are on private wells, and radon can come in with well water as well as through the soil. The EPA's guidance is that soil gas is usually the much larger risk, but if the air test is high and the house is on a well, some buyers will ask about the water too. Water treatment is a separate system — aeration or a carbon filter — and it is a separate conversation. Houses on public water rarely raise it.
Your Options When the Buyer's Test Comes Back High
The EPA's own guidance for this moment is refreshingly practical: if elevated levels are found during the transaction, the buyer and seller should discuss the timing and costs of radon reduction. That discussion usually lands on one of four outcomes.
| Option | What It Means for You | Watch Out For |
|---|---|---|
| Retest first | If the result is modest (roughly 4–8) and you suspect the test conditions, ask for a confirming test by a certified tester. | It costs days inside an inspection contingency, and a second high result settles the question. |
| Install before closing | You hire a certified mitigator, the system goes in, and a post-mitigation test is handed to the buyer. | You are paying for work on a house you are leaving, and the closing waits on the retest. |
| Give a credit or price reduction | The buyer installs their own system after closing, with your money. | Buyers tend to ask for the high end of an estimate. Some loan programs cap how large a seller credit can be. |
| Let the deal go | The buyer exercises the inspection contingency and walks. | You now know the result, and the next buyer's disclosure has to say so. |
None of these are disasters. Radon is one of the most routine findings in a Pennsylvania home inspection, and plenty of buyers are perfectly comfortable with a house that has a working system in the basement. Where it becomes a real problem is when it stacks on top of everything else a buyer's inspector found in an older NEPA house — the 1920s wiring, the tired roof, the stone foundation, the mine subsidence question — and the renegotiation stops being about radon and starts being about the whole house.
If You Haven't Listed Yet: Test First
If you are reading this before a buyer has tested anything, the EPA's advice is to test before you put the house on the market and, if needed, fix it first — partly because a reduced, documented level can be a positive selling point, and partly because it gives you control of the timing. You get to choose the mitigator, the price and the schedule instead of negotiating all three against a contingency deadline.
The trade-off is the disclosure point above: once you test, you know. If you test and the number is high, plan on fixing it or disclosing it; do not test and then hope. For most sellers who intend to list with an agent, testing early is still the better move, because the buyer is almost certainly going to test anyway.
Radon Result Stalled Your Sale?
Tell us the number and what else the inspection turned up. We'll give you a straight read and a cash offer within 24 hours — no repairs, no mitigation, no fees.
Selling to a Buyer Who Doesn't Ask for a Radon Credit
The other path is to skip the negotiation entirely. When we buy a house, radon is on our list of assumptions from the start, not a surprise on day 21. We buy as-is across Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, the Stroudsburg and Pocono area and the rest of our Northeast Pennsylvania service area, and whatever the basement needs goes into the offer up front — we explain how that math works in how cash offers are calculated in NEPA.
That is not a pitch that radon makes your house worth less. A single fixable item like radon on an otherwise sound house is usually cheaper to handle yourself, and if that is your situation we would tell you to fix it and list. Where selling as-is makes sense is when radon is one line on a long report, or when the deal that just fell apart was the one you were counting on. Late surprises are how sales die here: in the Back Mountain we stepped into a sale where a failed septic test days before closing nearly ended it. The as-is selling page covers what we buy, and our fix-it-or-sell-as-is comparison walks through the numbers on both paths.
You will still fill out a disclosure form when you sell to us, and you should put the radon result on it. The difference is that we are not going to use it to reopen the price. More common questions are answered on our FAQ page, and the step-by-step is on How It Works. Or call (570) 433-9191 and read us the report.
This article is general information about radon and Pennsylvania real estate disclosure and is not legal, health or engineering advice. Radon guidance comes from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. EPA and can change; confirm testing and mitigation questions with DEP's Radon Division at 1-800-237-2366 or a DEP-certified professional, and speak with a Pennsylvania real estate attorney about your disclosure obligations.
