Maryland Rent Increase Laws: How Much Rent Can You Charge in Montgomery and Prince George’s County?

Short answer: for a new tenant, you can charge whatever the market will pay. Maryland sets no statewide ceiling on the rent you advertise to a new tenant. For a renewal with a sitting tenant, the answer changes at the county line — and in Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and Takoma Park, it is a specific number published by the government.

That split is the whole game in the Maryland suburbs. Most landlords we talk to in Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Bowie, and Hyattsville know roughly what their house is worth. What costs them money is not knowing which of the two rules they are operating under this year.

One honest note before we start: this is a guide written by a property manager, not legal advice. Regulations get amended and facts matter. For a specific dispute, talk to a Maryland landlord-tenant attorney.

How much rent can I charge in Maryland?

There are exactly two questions to answer, in this order:

1. Is this a fresh placement or a renewal? Caps apply to renewals. Fresh placements are priced by the market.
2. If it is a renewal, is the unit rent-stabilized where it sits? Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and Takoma Park each publish an annual allowance. Frederick, Howard, Charles, Anne Arundel and most of the rest of the state do not cap renewals at all.

Everything else — the comps, the school zone, the finished basement, the month you list in — is about finding the number the market will actually pay. That part is the same work whether or not a cap applies. The cap only tells you the ceiling; the market tells you the price.

What Maryland rents look like in 2026

The most useful free, official, ZIP-level benchmark for Maryland is HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rent. A Small Area Fair Market Rent is HUD’s estimate of the 40th-percentile gross rent — rent plus tenant-paid utilities — for standard-quality units in a single ZIP code. We publish the full 69-ZIP breakdown in our Maryland Rent Report 2026; here are the two-bedroom city benchmarks that anchor the DC-suburb market.

Source: Flat Fee Landlord analysis of HUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria DC-VA-MD metro area, retrieved June 10, 2026. City figures are the unweighted average of ZIP-level two-bedroom benchmarks within each locality.

Three things to take from that table. First, the spread inside a single county is enormous: Prince George’s County runs from $1,760 in Oxon Hill to $3,270 in Bowie’s 20720 ZIP, an 86% difference without crossing a county line. Second, the median suburban Maryland ZIP in the DC metro benchmarks at $2,220 for a two-bedroom — a useful sanity check when an estimate you have been handed looks wildly off. Third, and most important: these are 40th-percentile gross-rent figures, not asking prices. A renovated single-family home in the Whitman or Churchill feeder, or in Bowie’s newer sections, routinely leases well above the ZIP benchmark. Use the benchmark as your floor and your reality check, then price up from it based on what your property actually is.

Does Maryland have rent control?

Not statewide. The Maryland Tenant Bill of Rights, effective October 1, 2025, confirms there is no statewide rent control and sets one universal rule that every Maryland landlord has to follow: written notice at least 90 days in advance of any rent increase. Rent regulation itself is local, and in the DC suburbs it is dense.

Montgomery County rent stabilization is the rule that caps annual rent increases on County-licensed rental units that are at least 23 years old, unless the unit qualifies for a specific exemption. A unit hits the 23-year threshold on January 1 of the 23rd year after its construction date, so a building constructed in 2002 became rent-stabilized on January 1, 2025. The County also publishes a Voluntary Rent Guideline that sits below the cap; it is voluntary for market-rate units and mandatory only for units regulated under the Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program.

If your property is in Rockville, Gaithersburg, Takoma Park, Barnesville or Laytonsville, the County program does not reach it — but Takoma Park runs its own, stricter program, so the practical answer there is still a cap. For the full compliance walkthrough, see our Montgomery County rent stabilization survival guide.

Is my Montgomery County rental exempt?

Answer first: most owner-of-one landlords are exempt, and most owner-of-three landlords are not. Montgomery County publishes the exemption list, and the one that matters most to the people we manage for is the small-owner exemption: a unit owned by a natural person or the trust or estate of a decedent who owns 2 or fewer rental units within the County.

The full exemption list, as published by the Department of Housing and Community Affairs:

• A newly constructed unit that has been offered for rent for less than 23 years
• A unit owned by a natural person, or the trust or estate of a decedent, who owns two or fewer rental units within the County
• A unit subject to a regulatory agreement with a governmental agency restricting it to low- and moderate-income tenants
• A unit that has undergone a substantial renovation within 23 years
• An accessory dwelling unit
• An owner-occupied group house
• A transient lodging facility, a school dormitory, a religious facility, a licensed medical facility, a licensed assisted living facility or nursing home, and a 501(c)(3) temporary shelter

Two traps here, and we see both regularly. The first is ownership structure: the small-owner exemption is written for a natural person or a decedent’s trust or estate. Landlords who moved a Silver Spring rental into an LLC for liability reasons should confirm how that affects their status before relying on the exemption. The second is the count: two or fewer rental units within the County. Buying a third Montgomery County rental can change the classification of the two you already own. Confirm your status with the Office of Rent Stabilization rather than inferring it — the cost of guessing wrong is a rollback plus a complaint you have to defend.

The Prince George’s County rules

Prince George’s County moved from an emergency cap to a permanent one when the Permanent Rent Stabilization and Protection Act took effect on October 17, 2024. Regulated units are capped at the lower of CPI-U plus 3% or 6%; age-restricted senior housing is capped at the lower of CPI-U or 4.5%. The Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement publishes the applicable figure each year beginning May 1, effective July 1 through June 30 — confirm the current published percentage with DPIE before you send a renewal notice, because the number changes every July and the notice you send is the one you are held to.

The exemptions are narrower than Montgomery County’s in some places and wider in others. Units constructed after January 1, 2000 are excluded, as are certain condominiums and owner-occupied duplexes. For a Bowie house built in 2004 or a Brandywine build from 2015, that construction-date exclusion is often the entire analysis. For an older Hyattsville, Riverdale Park or Oxon Hill property, assume the cap applies until DPIE tells you otherwise.

New placement vs. renewal: two different numbers

A cap governs what you may raise an existing tenant to. It does not govern what you may ask a new applicant. When a unit turns over, you list at market; the cap re-engages at that tenancy’s first renewal.

The consequence compounds. Say market rent on a Silver Spring three-bedroom rises 7% in a year when the County allowance is 5.2%. You renew compliantly, and the gap between your contract rent and market rent widens by 1.8 points. Do that for four years and you are 7% below market with a tenant who has every reason to stay. That is not automatically bad — a reliable long-term tenant with no vacancy and no turnover cost is often worth more than the gap — but it should be a decision you make on purpose, with the numbers in front of you, rather than a drift you notice in year five.

The practical rule we use: run the comparison 120 days before every lease expiration, because the 90-day notice requirement means the decision is effectively locked four months out. Compare the capped renewal against the realistic market rent minus turnover cost minus expected vacancy days. In Bethesda and Potomac, where turnover is expensive and quality tenants are hard to replace, the renewal usually wins. In fast-moving submarkets around College Park and Hyattsville, the turnover often does.

How to price your specific Maryland rental

Six steps, in order:

1. Start at the ZIP benchmark. Pull your ZIP’s two-bedroom figure from the Maryland Rent Report and adjust for bedroom count. This is your floor, not your price.
2. Pull true comparables, not neighborhood averages. Same property type, same bedroom and bathroom count, leased in the last 90 days, within about a mile. Leased comps only — what a neighbor is asking is an opinion; what a neighbor signed is data.
3. Adjust for school assignment. In MCPS and PGCPS territory, feeder assignment is one of the strongest rent drivers there is, and it does not follow ZIP boundaries. Verify the actual assignment for your address rather than the school name the listing site guessed.
4. Adjust for condition and layout honestly. A finished, legal, permitted basement is worth real money. An unpermitted one is a liability, not a bedroom. Kitchen age, flooring condition, and parking all move the number.
5. Adjust for timing. The Maryland leasing calendar peaks from spring through late summer, when family moves cluster around the school year. Our guide to the best time to rent your Maryland property covers the seasonal spread in detail.
6. Check the ceiling last. If it is a renewal on a covered unit, confirm the published allowance and the 90-day notice date before you commit to a number.

Five pricing mistakes that cost real money

• Pricing off asking rents instead of signed leases. The three overpriced listings that have been sitting on your street for six weeks are not comps. They are cautionary tales.
• Testing a high number for three weeks, then dropping. The drop is public. It tells every applicant that the property sat, and it invites lowball offers on the way down. Price it right on day one instead.
• Forgetting the 90-day clock. A renewal increase you decide on 45 days out is not enforceable for that renewal date. This is the single most common avoidable error we see in Montgomery County.
• Assuming an exemption. Landlords assume single-family homes are exempt from rent stabilization far more often than they actually are. Confirm it in writing.
• Treating a capped renewal as a capped placement. Some owners under-price a fresh placement because they think the cap binds them. It does not, and the mistake sets an artificially low base that every future capped renewal then compounds from.

The vacancy math behind every asking price

Every dollar of asking-price ambition has a vacancy budget attached to it, and the math is the same at every rent level. Chasing a premium over market is only rational if it costs you fewer than this many additional vacant days:

The ratio does not change with the size of the rent, which is why it is worth memorizing. On a $2,198 Silver Spring benchmark or a $3,370 Potomac one, a 5% stretch pays for itself only if the property still leases within about 18 extra days. In a peak-season month with a well-presented home in a strong school zone, that can be a reasonable bet. In November, in a soft submarket, it almost never is.

How we price Maryland rentals

Flat Fee Landlord manages properties across Montgomery and Prince George’s County, from Bethesda and Rockville to Bowie, Laurel and Hyattsville. Pricing is not a side effect of our management — it is the first thing we do and the thing we revisit 120 days before every lease expiration: leased comps, school assignment, condition, the published allowance if the unit is covered, and the notice calendar that makes the decision real.

We charge a flat monthly management fee rather than a percentage of rent, which matters more here than it sounds. When we tell you the market supports a higher number, we have no financial stake in that number — your management cost should not rise just because your rent did. The advice is the same whether your house rents for $1,900 or $3,900.

Get your free rental analysis and we will send you a current market rent range for your specific Maryland address, along with the rent stabilization status of the unit and the notice dates that apply to it. If you are still weighing whether to hire out the work at all, our breakdown of what property management costs in Maryland lays out the trade-offs, and our Maryland property management page covers what is included.

Sources and last reviewed

Last reviewed August 26, 2026. Every figure above was verified against the source listed here on that date. Published allowances change annually — confirm the current figure before you send a notice.

• Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs, Rent Stabilization Increases and Limitations — 5.2% allowance, CPI-U plus 3% or 6% formula, 90-day notice requirement
• Montgomery County DHCA, Rent Stabilization program overview — 23-year coverage threshold and municipal exclusions
• Montgomery County DHCA, Rent Stabilization Exemptions — full exemption list including the two-or-fewer-units small-owner exemption
• City of Takoma Park, Rent Stabilization (Rent Increase Allowance) — 3.0% allowance for July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027
• Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, Maryland Tenants’ Bill of Rights (effective October 1, 2025) — no statewide rent control, 90-day rent-increase notice
• Prince George’s County DPIE, Permanent Rent Stabilization and Protection Act — cap formula, senior-housing cap, annual publication cycle
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents — ZIP-level two-bedroom benchmarks, analyzed in our Maryland Rent Report 2026