they should change the law about property taxes because there are tens of thousands of vacant properties in Baltimore that aren't having any property taxes paid, even though someone wealthy out in the county owns the land. property taxes should be paid by the person who owns the land. They wouldn't need the property tax rate to be so high if taxes were actually being paid on all the land which is owned but vacant.

Actually, the ground rent holder does not own the property, but rather has a lien against it to secure payment of the semi-annual ground rent (much like a lender has a mortgage or deed of trust lien against the property to secure payment of the loan used to acquire it). The party who owns the house or other improvement(assuming there is one) owns the land, just subject to that lien.

JSH-

I deal with SDAT all the time, and definitely go to 801. If you try to find 808, you'll be pulling your hair out after 15 minutes of fruitless searching.

Also, be prepared to wait. And wait.

But it will get done.

if my ground rent is 46$ a year, about how much would it cost me to purchase the ground away from the current owner? could you use this amount as an example for a future artical on the topic of purchasing your ground rent?

Hi, Enzo -- everything I've read describes ground rent in Maryland as an ownership situation, not a lien. Here's an example written by an attorney (http://www.rosenbergmartin.com/documents/framearticle_000.pdf):

"Ground rent is a relatively unusual interest in real property, unique to Maryland and certain other former U.S. colonies, wherein the ownership of the land is legally separated from that of the home or building constructed thereon. Owners of homes subject to ground rent are deemed to 'lease' the underlying land indefinitely, pursuant to a written 'ground lease' (typically 99years in duration, but renewable in perpetuity), and are obligated pay a semiannual or annual rental payment to the ground lease holder."

If you're seeing contradictory stuff, please point me to it!

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Stagger Lee, Young was suggesting people mail in the request, but I'm sure you're right about where folks should go if they decide to walk them in.

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Allen, I'll keep that in mind for a future post. In the meantime, here's a link about ground-rent redemption: http://www.dat.state.md.us/sdatweb/ground_rent.html

My ground rent was created in 2005 by Federal Hill Real Estate Agent, Steve Stoehecker. That seems a little shady to me. Is there any way to pressure the city to provide reporting on the top ground rent holders?

Ethan, there were a number of newer ground rents created just before the 2007 raft of new laws. Check out the Sun's ground-rent series: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/real-estate/bal-groundrent,0,907571.storygallery

I'll ask the state assessment department whether an ownership list will be made public once the processing is done.

Jamie: The summary you cite is probably adequate to explain the situation to a layperson, and that's perhaps what was intended, but it is not technically correct. The explanation I offered was also written by an attorney (who's been practicing for going on 35 years, and has some experience in these matters)- namely, me. Folks whose property is subject to a ground rent do own the land and improvements, just not in fee simple absolute, but rather subject to the duty (usually, but not necessarily, semi-annually) to pay the ground rent, which originally represented what was basically a loan by the seller of a portion of the purchase price, capitalized at (again, usually) a rate of 6%.

Aha, that's interesting, Enzo. Thanks for explaining.

To Lee. Most of the vacant properties in Baltimore city belong to Baltimore city and they do NOT sell them. I worked for a nonprofit organization that would buy houses rehab them and rent them out to low income families for a very low rate. We tried at one point to buy houses from the city and were told that they don't sell. As far as Ground rent owners if they paid the taxes on a vacant building wouldn't that mean that they would then own the building? No. They would pay taxes on a property that they can not use or fix up. That would be point less. Don’t believe everything you read in the Sun paper. I used to work for one of the people who owned the ground rent on a property that was highlighted in the Ground Rent series that the sun paper wrote that started all the law changes. The little old lady that was crying about losing her house over a little tiny ground rent that she didn't know she had was not being honest! We had a whole file of every bill that was sent and every conversation we had with her. She not only wasn't paying her ground rent but she did not pay her water bill, her property taxes or her mortgage. I don’t know about you but I would lose my house if I tried to live there for free.

Great information. Thank you.

Does anyone know approximatley how much will it cost to get the Ground Rent Extinguishment recorded?

Thanks for the write-up, Jamie! I worked to redeem my ground rent in March 2010, had lawyers draft the documents and broker the transaction and file the purchase with Land Records to attach it to our deed.

Today I checked our record in SDAT and it shows that the ex-lease holder was able to successfully register the already redeemed ground rent a full 6 months later, right at the deadline. The erroneous registration is now attached to our deed as well.

Do you have any advice on what to do in this instance?

Thanks!

Bob, that's frustrating. You should contact the state Department of Assessments and Taxation, which handled the registration, to explain what happened and ask for a resolution. Perhaps, once it's verified that you redeemed the ground rent, it will send you an extinguishment certificate that you can file in the land records.

Will do, Jamie. I'll post back to this thread as this unfolds. Thanks again!

Can you simply buy back your ground rent and how do you come up with the amount, and if so can the ground rent owner object if you desire to do so?

I I cannot afford the groung rent at full purchase amount at one time, how can i purchase my ground in payments to own?

I believe that the system needs to be for ever closed to people being able to buy the property under a house that some one pay one hundred to a million dollars for. You eather buy a house with the land. The house should come with the land its perfect sense what is the 500 years ago where people where promised land and now make people pay rent to live on top of it. That would make no sense since in fact you could never own land. If the system is made like this it would make more sense to always rent. It should also mean that the land holder has to pay the land taxes and also make sure the land is kept up. Other wise this is a get paid for nothing scheme. Hell I want to buy all of Hampden & Rolland park then set my rent price at about 1k a year per house btw if they don't pay do I get to take their house or force them to move their house off my land? Can I also set rules like no drinking on my land? I'm sorry but if you make money of the land then you should pay the taxes and half to take care of the up keep just like home renters. I'm sorry but this in ways goes against what our founding fathers had in mind, also people should sue for when their property is marketed as being 1 acre of land because its not yours. This makes it possible to a company that has income from land but with no risk.