Test for ground rent reform

Not in the least confused wrote:

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Anyone that is stupid enough not to do a title search before buying a house gets what is coming to him. OWE'Malleys's "reforms" merely shifts the costs to the taxpayers, who shopuld not be responsible for other people's poor financial choices.(just like the ARM buyout.)
CAVEAT EMPTOR, MCG!
(by trhe way, is MCG short for Moronic Cretin Galore?)

By the way, moron, there is no financial burden to the taxpayers related to this law. The ground rent holder can recover what is owed to him through the foreclosure process. He just can't seize ownership a $200,000 property for an unpaid $500 ground rent bill. If you're too stupid to understand liens and the foreclosure process, then I recommend that you take a business law or accounting class(and take a remedial reading course while you're at it too).

MCG wrote:

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Go choke on your vomit, douchebag!

How eloquent! Run back to class now little boy, recess is over!

Why hasn’t anyone mentioned that you (the home owner) can buy your ground rent from the ground rent owner? I know my parents did this in the 70s. This investment makes your hose more desirable and ends the yearly bill cycle (and errors that this can bring). But no, that’s right, people don’t like to pay there bills and in this case Baltimore and MOM agree. Note- I don’t know what these ground rents sell for now, but that is were the legislation should have been (if the sell prices were abusive). I love being smarter then everyone else!

Pay Your Bills wrote:

Great, now when people dont want to pay their bills, they just cry to the government. You have to pay your BGE bill, phone bill, cable bill etc why not a small ground rent? Personally, I'd pay a bill which could result in me losing the house but that is just me. Stop the abuses on the ownership side and PAY YOUR BILLS on the other and everything works out.

If you read the stories, the owners of the homes that were confescated over ground rent in MOST CASES weren't aware of the ground rent to begin with. The ground rent holder didn't even make the attempt to notify the current home owner before going to court to collect. If the rent holders would at least take the time to find out who lives on the properties and go through that process like any other rentor / landlord arrangement, then there wouldn't be a problem. They always move to the extreme of collecting and forced eviction. How would you feel if you were evicted from your owned home after you've paid all your bills, taxes and mortgates over $24 in unpaid ground rent that you weren't even aware of. These rent owners are scum for not even attempting to contact the current owners and going to the extreme.

know_it_all wrote:

Why hasn’t anyone mentioned that you (the home owner) can buy your ground rent from the ground rent owner? I know my parents did this in the 70s. This investment makes your hose more desirable and ends the yearly bill cycle (and errors that this can bring). But no, that’s right, people don’t like to pay there bills and in this case Baltimore and MOM agree. Note- I don’t know what these ground rents sell for now, but that is were the legislation should have been (if the sell prices were abusive). I love being smarter then everyone else!

Well Know it all, it would be nice, IF you could track the owners of the rent down. In most cases they aren't registered, and they don't contact you until there's a court case over an unpaid bill. Go back and read the stories. The SUN laid out the issues pretty well. Anyone wishing to buy property in Baltimore City beware. Find out who owns the ground the home sits on before you purchase to avoid the hassle. At least now you know about it. Before it wasn't a widely known problem until after these articles. Good job SUN.

MCG wrote:

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By the way, moron, there is no financial burden to the taxpayers related to this law.

Who do you think pays the judges, procecutors, clerks, and who do you think pays for the building, genius?

You have a bulldog mouth and a hummingbird brain.

MCG wrote:

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By the way, moron, there is no financial burden to the taxpayers related to this law. The ground rent holder can recover what is owed to him through the foreclosure process. He just can't seize ownership a $200,000 property for an unpaid $500 ground rent bill. If you're too stupid to understand liens and the foreclosure process, then I recommend that you take a business law or accounting class(and take a remedial reading course while you're at it too).

Ground rent is a contract that the holder has for the land. It is a binding contract. That means that the property can be confescated over unpaid dues through a court order for breach of contract. The owner of the home is not defaulting on the mortgage so it doesn't go through foreclosure. The home owner is still responsible for paying the mortgage. Usually though during that process the mortgage owner looses the morgtgage and it is transferred by court order over to the ground rent holder. Then the rent holder owns the home on the property at that point. That is how the process usually played out in the court system. Again this was an abuse by both the ground rent holders and the specific judges overseeing the disputes. Proper jurisprudence was not followed to apply an appropriate remedy. Personnaly I think the judges who did this should also be reoved from the bench, since they are equally as responsible for the situation.

sjw wrote:

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Well Know it all, it would be nice, IF you could track the owners of the rent down. In most cases they aren't registered, and they don't contact you until there's a court case over an unpaid bill. Go back and read the stories. The SUN laid out the issues pretty well. Anyone wishing to buy property in Baltimore City beware. Find out who owns the ground the home sits on before you purchase to avoid the hassle. At least now you know about it. Before it wasn't a widely known problem until after these articles. Good job SUN.

According to you logic (or lack there of), every single ground rent leaser (thousands, tens of thousands), for years, has not been billed or has not wrote a check with a name on it and put it in an envelope with a mail to address? Let me explain – if you can write a check, you know there name (or company) and if you mail it with the USPS you know the address of the person (or company). Gee, I really am smart!

In my case, when I refinanced my house last year, I wanted to buy my property. My gound rent was only $36 a year, and had been paid on time by my mortgage company for the 6+ years I've owned my home. However, with all of the media coverage, I didn't want to take my chances of losing my house over a couple of dollars. There is a formula you can use to determine how much it is to buy your land. In my case, I was paying $36/year. Divide that by 6% (the standard percentage), and you have a cost of $600. With added legal fees, I paid $900. Well worth it in my opinion for a house that has more than doubled in value since I bought it. The only major issue I had was that since it took over 3 months to track down the owners of the ground rent, that I lost out on lower interest rate on my mortgage. I'd recommend the process to anyone looking to refinance these days who isn't Fee Simple.

know_it_all wrote:

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According to you logic (or lack there of), every single ground rent leaser (thousands, tens of thousands), for years, has not been billed or has not wrote a check with a name on it and put it in an envelope with a mail to address? Let me explain – if you can write a check, you know there name (or company) and if you mail it with the USPS you know the address of the person (or company). Gee, I really am smart!

Read FedHill's post before this one. There is no registry for easy checking on who owns the rent. It is up to the home owner to track it down. Again, there shouldn't even be a ground rent system. The owners of the homes should own the property it sits on. It's that way everywhere else. Not to mention property owners shouldn't lose their home over unpaid ground rent for $24 or any amount for that matter. That is an abuse by both the judicial system and the ground rent holders that need to be corrected.

The ground rent system is archaic.

I live in Baltimore County and just purchased the grount rent on my house.The ground rent was held by a mortgage company in Florida. The mortgage was paid off last July and it took me from July 2007 to March 2008 to work through the bureaucratic maze to purchase the ground rent. I initiated every correspondence. I never heard from the ground rent holder until they called me to tell me that it was in collections due to none payment. When I contacted Batimore County, they told me that I needed a Real Estate Attorney to expedite the matter. Had I not been tenacious and pusued ti on my own . I would have had to pay an additional $300-$500.00

As as added detail, I know exactly who my ground rent check was getting paid to. When I first contacted that management company about redeeming my property (back in 2005 - another refinancing), 3 attempts by phone and fax went unanswered. In 2007, I was determined to get it done, especially b/c of all the media coverage. I contacted the same management company to determine who owned the actual ground. Again, more unsuccessful attempts. How can a company in charge of managing ground rents not know who owns the ground??? Ultimately, it was my persistance and a local title company that got the job done.

Maryland is fortunate that it has an alert media to chronical the problems with ground rents, a responsive legislature, and smart, alert judges who care.

In Delaware,manufactured housing on leased land is a feudal system, a festering sore on the Delaware economy and reputation. Unlimited yearly rent increases financial evict home owners. A home owner can be force to move his or her home after a one year notice.

The Republican controlled state legislature has blocked a Rent Justification Law, and, thus far, a Right of First Refusal law that would permit home owners to buy their communities. The just resigned head of the Delaware GOP owns and manages leased land communities.

Marylanders who own vacation homes on leased land in Delaware have their equity at risk because of the total disregard the landlords have for their property. Elected officials don't care because Marylanders can't vote. Even the Maryland Attorney General has ignored the piracy warnings.

Retirees thinking about moving to Delaware should not be enticed into a leased land communities regardless of promises.

Before I closed on my home in Baltimore, I made it very clear that the ground rent was to be redeemed. I strongly suggest property owners with a ground rent on them should redeem also. Fee simple is the only way to go.

Thank you FedHillChick and sciencelady for expaining to the folks in this blog and the readers at large that YOU solved YOUR problem instead of crying to the Government to fix it. I don’t recall the Sun article series or the official debates ever mentioning purchasing the ground rent lease – if it was it was downplayed over the –people are losing there house for 24 dollar- hysteria. A better article would have informed you about what you eventually leaned on your own. What gets me the most about this topic is the opinions that folks like SJW that think peoples legally binding contracts should be voided just because -I don’t want to pay because it’s not fair!-(what a baby!). I’m sure that SJW will be more than happy to overlook any obligations that are owed to them.

The mere fact that we even allowed this kind of action to exist, speaks of the mind set of some law makers history tries to make great. Ground rent in it self is a misnomer. In Baltimore city the homes are brick and mortar, ground rent should be applied only for trailer homes. Did they even have trailer homes back then? Finally, when I brought my home the title company whom I paid didn't offer me the option of buying the land my house is sitting on, nor did they know who owned the deed so they need to be investigated for those actions as well! Stop this sad madness, no one should lose their home to some out dated unfair law, that does not include honest attempts to collect the ground rent, and honest offers to sell the land to the owner over time. At most a lien against the property is all that needs to be applied excluding legal fees. That's just the cost of doing business.

People, there is a database of groundrent owners. Mdlandrec.net allows you to look at every deed recorded in MD since the 1600s from the privacy of your own home. It's free, but you do need to get a password. Type in your address and sort through the results. If you don't like having a groundrent, redeem it according to the 6% formula. Yes, like everything else pertaining to real estate, it's a pain in the neck. But either do it, or stop complaining about what is essentially a 6% loan against your property.

Thanks for the compliment; however, I was trying to make two points.#1 - that is difficult at best for someone of average intelligence to redeem ground rent and #2 - whether you owe $24 or $36 or $200 or $1,500, no one should be able to take your home worth $100k,$200K or whatever. All you should be entitled to collect is what is owed. Period.

Secondly, while I don't know what ultimately got passed, there was legislature pending (or at least proposed) that mandated the redemption of the ground when either the house changed hands (sold) or a mortgage was refinanced.

sjw wrote:

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If you read the stories, the owners of the homes that were confescated over ground rent in MOST CASES weren't aware of the ground rent to begin with. The ground rent holder didn't even make the attempt to notify the current home owner before going to court to collect. If the rent holders would at least take the time to find out who lives on the properties and go through that process like any other rentor / landlord arrangement, then there wouldn't be a problem. They always move to the extreme of collecting and forced eviction. How would you feel if you were evicted from your owned home after you've paid all your bills, taxes and mortgates over $24 in unpaid ground rent that you weren't even aware of. These rent owners are scum for not even attempting to contact the current owners and going to the extreme.

Well said.

Don't forget that Lee Barnstein is a scum bag too! How can he expect people to feel sorry for him. "I'm paying like three or four times what I am able to collect". Please, give me a break, Barnstein. You are an attorney and you have been collecting ground rent for years and years. How many times over have you recouped your original investment? Sitting back and collecting ground rent has probably been just a mere hobby for you. You are an attorney with your own practice - I'm sure your practice is how you house and feed your family. I guess you don't care about how I house my family. The fact that you think that it is okay to take someone's $150K house for $96 shows you are a scum bag and do NOT deserve a peaceful life. I am so glad that you are being outed as the snake that you are!