We buy houses in Baltimore City, Maryland.

Baltimore City is its own jurisdiction, not part of Baltimore County, and it has more rules aimed at property owners than anywhere else in Maryland: a rental license with a third-party inspection for every unit, Vacant Building Notices that can end in receivership, a tax sale every May with the lowest thresholds in the state, ground rent under most rowhomes, and the highest transfer-and-recordation bill in Maryland at 3%. We buy Baltimore City rowhomes and houses for cash, as-is, vacant or occupied, and we have closed on the other side of every one of those rules.

Every rental needs a license, and the inspection is done by a private inspector

Since 2019 Baltimore City has required a rental license for every rental dwelling, from a single rowhome up. The Department of Housing and Community Development issues it, but the inspection is done by a Maryland-licensed home inspector who is registered with the city, and the report cannot be more than 90 days old when the application goes in. A first license runs two years. After that the term is one, two or three years depending on how the owner handled violation notices: no notices, or every notice fixed within 60 days, earns three years.

A rowhome rented without a license cannot lawfully collect rent, and an owner who cannot collect rent usually cannot evict either. That is how a lot of city landlords end up calling us. We buy the house with the tenant and the license gap exactly as they are.

Vacant Building Notices and the vacant property tax

When a city inspector or a neighbor reports a rowhome as vacant and uninhabitable, the city posts a Vacant Building Notice on it. The notice is a code violation with its own fines, and it is the first step toward receivership, a process only Baltimore has: the city asks a court to hand the property to a receiver, who sells it at auction to someone who will fix it, and the owner is left with whatever is left after liens and costs. The city has also layered a separate, higher tax rate on long-vacant properties, with rules that were rewritten again in 2026. An owner who inherited a vacant rowhome in Park Heights, Broadway East or Carrollton Ridge and has been paying nothing is usually a lot closer to losing it than they think.

A Vacant Building Notice does not stop us. We buy VBN properties, boarded properties, and properties already in the receivership pipeline where the timing still allows a sale, and the notice comes off after we pull the permits and do the work.

The tax sale is every May, and the thresholds are low

The city starts its tax sale process in early February with a final bill and legal notice, April 30 is the last day to pay and stay off the list, and the sale itself is normally held the third week of May, online. An owner-occupied house goes into the sale once its city liens reach $1,000, and any other property at $750, so an unpaid water bill and one missed tax payment can be enough. After the sale, redemption interest runs at 10% a year for an owner-occupied house and 18% for anything else, the buyer can add legal fees and costs after four months, and can file in court to foreclose the right of redemption after six months on a non-owner-occupied property or nine months on an owner-occupied one.

The city runs a Tax Sale Deferral Program that keeps an owner-occupied home out of the sale for a year, with applications normally taken February 15 through April 15, but it does not erase the bill. A cash sale that closes before the sale date pays the city out of the proceeds at settlement, and if the lien has already been sold, we can usually still close inside the redemption window. Our Baltimore City tax sale timeline walks through the dates.

Transfer and recordation: 3% in the city

Baltimore City charges a 1.5% transfer tax and $10 per $1,000 in recordation tax, the highest recordation rate in the state, and Maryland adds its 0.5% state transfer tax. That is 3% of the price on a typical sale: on a $200,000 rowhome, $3,000 in city transfer tax, $2,000 in recordation tax and $1,000 in state transfer tax. The city exempts the first $22,000 of the price when the buyer signs an affidavit that the house will be their principal residence, which does not apply to a cash buyer like us and does not change what we pay. When you sell to us, a licensed Maryland title company pays every tax line out of closing funds and you are never handed a bill at the table.

Ground rent under the rowhome

Most Baltimore City rowhomes built before the 1950s sit on ground rent: you own the building, someone else owns the land and collects a small annual rent. Maryland requires every ground rent to be registered with the State Department of Assessments and Taxation or it cannot be collected, and an owner can redeem the ground rent, meaning buy the land, at a formula price set by state law. Unpaid ground rent used to be a way to lose a house; since 2007 the holder’s remedy is a lien, not ejectment, but it still shows up on title. The title company sorts it out at closing when you sell to us, and it never delays the date.

CHAP districts, water bills and probate downtown

Rowhomes in the city’s historic districts, Federal Hill, Fells Point, Mount Vernon, Butchers Hill, Ridgely’s Delight, Union Square and a couple dozen more, fall under the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, which has to approve exterior changes down to the windows. A city water bill is a lien on the house, and the city pursues large unpaid balances even though owner-occupied water debt alone no longer triggers a tax sale. Estates are opened with the Register of Wills in the Elijah Cummings Building at 111 North Calvert Street, and the city’s elected Orphans’ Court judges must be attorneys. Creditors get six months from death to file claims, an account is due within nine months, and Maryland law lets the personal representative sell the house without a separate court order in most estates. We buy houses in probate with the contents left inside and settle the water bill and any ground rent out of proceeds.

What we actually buy in Baltimore City

The three sales we see most: an inherited rowhome in Belair-Edison, Hamilton, Frankford or Edmondson Village that has been sitting since a parent passed and now has a Vacant Building Notice on the door, a rental in Highlandtown, Pigtown, Brooklyn or Park Heights whose owner cannot collect rent and cannot evict, and a Canton, Hampden, Federal Hill or Patterson Park house with a flat roof, a party wall and an inspection report a lender will not finance around. We buy across every city ZIP code, in any condition, in any situation. Vacant, fire-damaged, tenant-occupied, mid-receivership, behind on taxes: all of it qualifies.