Bills to tackle ground rents [Baltimore]
Several state legislators said yesterday that they are drafting legislation to change Maryland’s arcane ground rent system, including bills to prevent homes from being seized over missed rent payments and to ban the creation of new land leases.
“We’re just going to do what we did with flipping and other scams. We’re going to get rid of it,” said Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat who is chairwoman of the House Environmental Matters Committee, which handles matters of real property and housing. “We’re going to stop it right where it began.”
Tens of thousands of Baltimore City residents as well as some in Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties pay rent on the land under their houses, a practice that can be traced to Colonial times. A series of articles in The Sun this week documented that in recent years a small group of ground rent investors increasingly has exercised its power under state law to gain possession of homes or to extract thousands of dollars in fees from their owners over back rent as little as $24.