We buy houses in Baltimore County, Maryland.

Baltimore County wraps around the city on three sides, from the brick rowhomes and cape cods of Dundalk and Essex to the postwar ranchers of Parkville and Catonsville to horse farms north of Cockeysville that still run on well and septic. It is the second-largest county in Maryland by population and it has its own rules for sellers: a rental license that has to exist before a tenant moves in, a 1.5% county transfer tax, ground rents on tens of thousands of older lots, and a tax sale that lands in late summer rather than spring. We buy Baltimore County houses for cash, as-is, and we deal with all of that so you do not have to.

The rental license comes before the tenant, and it lasts three years

Baltimore County requires every rental property with six or fewer units to be registered and licensed before a tenant moves in, not after. The Department of Permits, Approvals and Inspections runs the program, the license runs for three years, and each new license or renewal needs a passing inspection by a Maryland-licensed home inspector rather than a county employee. A house built before 1978 also needs a current lead risk-reduction certificate from the Maryland Department of the Environment before it can be rented at all.

That trips up a lot of Baltimore County sellers who inherited a rowhome in Dundalk or a rancher in Parkville, put a family member or a tenant in it, and never registered. An unlicensed rental cannot legally collect rent, which also makes it hard to evict, which is how a lot of owners end up calling us. We buy those houses as they stand, licensed or not, tenant in place or not, and the licensing question becomes ours the day we close.

Transfer and recordation tax: 1.5% plus $5 per $1,000

Baltimore County charges a 1.5% county transfer tax on every sale, one of the higher county rates in Maryland, plus recordation tax of $5 for every $1,000 of the price. The State of Maryland adds its own 0.5% transfer tax on top. On a $300,000 sale that is $4,500 in county transfer tax, $1,500 in recordation tax, and $1,500 in state transfer tax, about $7,500 before anyone negotiates who pays which line. The county does exempt the first $22,000 of the price from its transfer tax when the buyer will live in the house, which helps a retail buyer a little and a cash buyer not at all.

When you sell to us, none of that arithmetic is yours to do. A licensed Maryland title company calculates every line and pays it out of closing funds, and you are never asked to write a check for a tax at the table.

Ground rent is a real thing here, and it can sit on title for a century

A large share of older Baltimore County houses, especially in Dundalk, Catonsville, Arbutus, Lansdowne and the neighborhoods that grew out of Baltimore City, sit on ground rent: you own the house but a ground-rent holder owns the land and collects a small annual rent, often under $200. Maryland requires ground-rent holders to register each lease with the State Department of Assessments and Taxation, and an unregistered ground rent cannot be collected or enforced. An owner can also redeem the ground rent, meaning buy the land outright, at a price set by a state formula.

Ground rent confuses lenders, which is why it shows up in retail deals as a last-minute delay. It does not confuse us. We buy houses subject to ground rent all the time, the title company confirms whether the lease is registered and whether any rent is owed, and the deal closes on the date you picked.

The tax sale here comes in late summer, not spring

Most Maryland counties sell tax liens in May or June. Baltimore County runs later: its 2026 tax sale is scheduled for August 27, with delinquent taxes needing to be paid by July 31 to keep the property off the list, and the sale itself is conducted online. Once a lien is sold, interest and fees accrue against you until the property is redeemed, and after the redemption period the certificate holder can go to court to take the house. A cash sale that closes before the sale date pays the county directly out of the proceeds at settlement, and you keep the equity that is left.

Probate through an elected Orphans’ Court of lawyers

Baltimore County is one of three Maryland jurisdictions, with Baltimore City and Prince George’s, where the elected Orphans’ Court judges are required to be practicing attorneys. The Register of Wills sits in the County Courts Building at 401 Bosley Avenue in Towson and handles the filing. A personal representative gets letters of administration from that office, creditors then have six months from the date of death to file claims, and an account is due within nine months of appointment. Maryland law lets the personal representative sell the house without a separate court order unless the will says otherwise, so the estate does not have to wait for a hearing to accept our offer.

We buy Baltimore County houses that are still in probate, with the contents left inside, and we coordinate closing with the personal representative and the estate’s attorney so the sale lands when the estate is ready for it.

Waterfront, Critical Area, and the north-county well-and-septic belt

The east side of the county, from Dundalk and Edgemere up through Essex, Middle River and Bowleys Quarters, is shoreline, and much of it sits inside the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area, where the county restricts what can be built or expanded within 1,000 feet of tidal water and flood insurance is a real line item. North of Cockeysville, in Hereford, Monkton, Parkton and Phoenix, public sewer never arrived and houses run on private wells and septic systems that Maryland requires to be inspected before settlement. Both situations make a retail buyer’s lender nervous. Neither one changes our offer.

What we actually buy in Baltimore County

The three sales we see most: a brick rowhome or cape cod in Dundalk, Essex or Parkville that a parent lived in for 50 years and that needs everything, a rental in Catonsville, Rosedale or Randallstown whose owner is done with tenants and the county inspector, and a rancher or split-level in Perry Hall, White Marsh, Owings Mills or Pikesville with a 1970s interior nobody in the family wants to renovate. Oil heat, Formstone, cast-iron drain stacks, knob-and-tube in the older stock and Federal Pacific panels in the 1960s stock are all things we price for rather than walk away from.

We buy across ZIP codes 21222, 21221, 21234, 21204, 21228, 21208, 21117, 21133, 21128, 21162, 21220, 21237, 21227 and 21030, in any condition, in any situation.