Gimer Law

MD and DC real estate law

Tom Gimer

DC TOPA Update 2026

Effective 1/1/26, TOPA only applies to transfers involving 2-4 unit properties if the seller/owner is a business corporation. Individual owner? LLC owner? Partnership owner? No tenant rights to purchase. The tenant notice provisions still apply, but the rights to purchase do not.

Also new construction buildings (less than 15 years)… no TOPA rights.

The framework concerning 1 unit and 5+ unit accommodations remains effectively unchanged, although satisfying tenant notice obligations becomes easier.

From my perspective they are gradually phasing out TOPA, and that is a good thing.

How to redeem your Maryland ground rent

If you acquired your Maryland home via an instrument titled “Deed of Assignment”, you hold a “leasehold” interest in the property. Someone else actually owns the ground that your house sits on. A system in which there are two chains of title to a property (the leasehold and the fee) is a bit strange but things have worked this way in certain parts of Maryland since the mid-1800s. The leasehold form of ownership requires you to make rent payments (typically on a semi-annual basis) to the owner of the ground. Should you you fail to make the payments you could lose your interest in the property via a court case brought by the ground rent owner to “eject” you and in so doing extinguish your lease. To stop having to pay the ground rent owner each year, Maryland law provides that you can redeem (buy out) the ground rent at any time*.

*Of course every rule has exceptions. If the ground lease to your property was created prior to 1884, and the ground rent owner has taken certain steps (registration of the ground rent and periodic preservation notices recorded in the land records) the ground rent may be irredeemable, meaning that you would not have the right to buy it out. However, the pool of irredeemable ground rents is so small that this is likely not the case… so let’s assume that you can redeem your ground rent.

In redeeming the ground rent you will be changing the interest you own from leasehold to fee simple by “merging” the leasehold and fee interests. Two chains of title become one. This is done thru a 3 step process — (1) paying the owner of the ground the redemption amount set by statute; (2) obtaining a signed ground rent redemption deed from the ground rent owner; and (3) recording that deed among the land records. Let’s go over each step.

1 – calculating the redemption amount. The dollar amount required to be paid to the ground rent owner is based upon a calculation determined by 2 elements — the amount of annual rent you pay and the date the original ground lease was created. Here is a link to the section of the Maryland Code where the calculation is found:

https://law.justia.com/codes/maryland/real-property/title-8/subtitle-8/section-8-804/

Let’s say your ground rent is $90 per year and the lease was created in 1950. By reading the Code section above, you would see that the cap rate for this lease is set by statute at 6 percent (6%). And here is the math: 90 divided by 0.06 = 1500. $1500 or thereabouts is a fairly common redemption amount.

2 – obtaining the signed ground rent redemption deed. Every ground rent, in order for the rent to be collected legally, must be registered with the State Department of Assessments and Taxation. In the unlikely event you don’t have the contact information for the person who owns your registered ground rent, you can find it on the ground rent registration form on file with SDAT. Once you have it, simply reach out to the ground rent owner and say you want to redeem the ground rent. They will be happy to take your money (they’ll need the rent paid current as well as the redemption $), sign the merger deed, and stop dealing with the periodic billing and collections — trust me on this. You’ll want to retain an attorney (such as our real estate law firm) to properly prepare and record the redemption deed. There is a link to do so below.

3 – recording the deed. In order to record a ground rent redemption deed, recordation and transfer taxes will be due to the state and county, just like they are with any deed to property. These taxes are based on the redemption amount, so they should not be significant. Also most Maryland jurisdictions do not require a lien certificate in order to record a merger deed.

So the costs to redeem a registered ground rent are the redemption amount (as calculated above) + the $60 recording fee to the clerk + recordation / transfer taxes + deed prep. If you would like an estimate to to engage us to handle the redemption for you, complete the form here.

In a future article we’ll discuss how to deal with redeeming ground rent that is not registered. That scenario requires an entirely different framework to be be followed, is slightly more expensive, and takes much longer.

Deed project costs

When you request an estimate from us for a deed project, we typically send it as 2 options — 1) “Deed prep only” — a flat fee to prepare the deed, and 2) “Full service” — the total cost of the deed PLUS recording fees PLUS any applicable transfer and recordation taxes PLUS processing the recording. You would be surprised at all that goes into even the simplest of title/deed changes. Full service covers everything.

Our estimates typically look like this:

Deed prep only: $x — We prepare the deed and send to the client electronically. No additional services are provided.

Full service: $y — We prepare the deed, we prepare supporting documents as needed, we prepare the land intake sheet and assemble the recording package, and then we handle all aspects of the recording process and payment, often through the SimpliFile online platform.

Below is an overview of the main issues we address in a deed prep project.

Identifying the property

The first step is to confirm the property information and find and pull most the recent recorded deed to the property. If the property was transferred within the past few decades and that deed includes the full property interest, this step is fairly easy as it just involves a quick search of the tax and local land records. However, if the latest deed relates to only a portion of the property (a percentage interest less than 100% or a single parcel out of several the client wishes to transfer) then the most recent deed would not suffice… more title research would be required.

Confirming the current owners

Once we identify the property, we then need to ascertain who is/are the current owners of the property. This requires us to determine the current status of all of the owners of record. Is everyone named still living? Are there heirs or successors to deal with? And so on.

Let’s look at this aspect of the process through a hypothetical. Imagine that a married couple takes title to a property as tenants by the entirety. The husband then dies. His death and this particular tenancy election results in the surviving spouse becoming the 100% owner of the property. This surviving tenant scenario is fairly common in title chains.

But with the same hypothetical property let’s say rather than a married couple it is two (2) siblings that take title to the property as tenants in common. Due to that tenancy election, we will end up with a completely different result when one owner passes away. Upon the death of one sibling, that interest would pass to the decedent’s heirs. However, in both MD and DC such a transfer does not happen automatically but rather through the probate process. The death leaves 50% owned by the surviving sibling and 50% owned by the estate of the deceased sibling. A Personal Representative would need to be appointed by the probate court to sign a deed for that 50% interest.

Dealing with transfer taxes

Another factor in the cost analysis would be the identification and satisfaction of applicable transfer and recordation tax exemptions. In Maryland there are 3 types of deed taxes/stamps and in DC there are 2.. If you are claiming an exemption from any of the taxes, the deed and paperwork submitted with the recording need to cite to the correct State/County/City code and you may need to document proof of the exemption via notarized affidavits, copies of fully executed supporting documents, etc.

Calculating the full cost of the deed recording

If we are retained to take care of a deed preparation project as a “full-service” endeavor, we handle the recording of the deed, including the calculation and submission to the clerk of all funds needed to accomplish the transfer. Many intra-family transfers involve the full or partial application of exemptions. So while a transfer may be exempt from state transfer and/or state recordation taxes, it may not be exempt from county transfer taxes OR it may be partially exempt from some or all. We do all the math and confirm figures with the clerk prior to submission.

A note about ground rent redemption deeds

Ground rent redemption deeds require both chains of title (leasehold and fee) to be researched. What occurs in the redemption process is that the leasehold and fee interests are merged together as one and the ground rent is forever extinguished. Tracking down the original ground lease can significantly increase the work required to do this. You may need to search back to the mid-1800s to find that lease and that can involve deciphering old, handwritten instruments. We cannot adequately estimate a ground rent redemption request until completing at least a preliminary review of both chains of title. And if a ground rent is not registered, redemption may not even be possible by deed… the SDAT redemption process could be the only route. That can take upwards of 1 year.

Deed preparation only projects

A good estimate for a “deed preparation only” project is $175-350. That’s just 30-60 minutes of attorney time. Call around and you’ll find that to be very reasonable. With a “deed prep only” project, the client would be responsible for preparing and processing the recording… which at a minimum requires completing a land intake sheet and dealing with the clerk. Most clients elect “full-service” when they discover how much work the recording process entails.