Maryland Property Management —
Better Tenants. Faster Placement. Full Protection.

We charge a flat monthly fee — not a percentage of your rent. Our plans: Basic $139/mo (no tenant assurance, $500 renewal fee), Preferred $179/mo on annual billing (9-month tenant assurance + eviction coordination as bundle benefits when Tenant Placement + Property Management are purchased together, $450/yr renewal admin), Concierge $349/mo on annual billing (12-month tenant assurance + eviction coordination as bundle benefits, renewal included). Tenant placement is priced separately. Industry-typical percentage management runs 8–10% of monthly rent — on a $2,300/mo MD rental, that's $184–$230/mo. The flat fee never increases with rent. Tenant assurance is available with Preferred or Concierge (Basic does not include it).

Yes. Every lease we draft complies with the Maryland Real Property Code, Title 8 — the canonical MD landlord-tenant statute. That includes the 45-day security-deposit return rule with itemized deductions and accrued interest, the federal lead-paint disclosure requirement for every pre-1978 Maryland property, written move-in and move-out condition reports, the 60-day pre-lease-end renewal notice for tenancies of a year or more, and the Maryland Code Real Property §8-208 prohibition on penalty clauses for late rent above what the statute allows. We track every legislative change in Annapolis and every county-level regulatory update so you don't have to.

Most likely yes if the property is rental housing in Montgomery County. Montgomery County Rent Stabilization (Bill 15-23, signed July 25, 2023; codified in MoCo Code Chapter 29) caps annual rent increases on covered rental units at the lesser of CPI-U for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area plus 3%, or 6%. The cap is administered by the Office of Rent Stabilization (ORS) within the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA), and tenant complaints are adjudicated by the Office of Landlord-Tenant Affairs (OLTA). Newly constructed rental units are exempt for 23 years after the certificate of occupancy. Owner-occupied dwellings where the owner lives in the property typically qualify for the owner-occupied exemption. We audit your property's coverage status on day one, file the required notices, and recalculate compliant rent increases at every renewal. Violating the cap triggers OLTA-handled tenant restitution claims, rent rollbacks, and remedies — the most expensive avoidable mistake in MoCo.

No — and this is the single most-misunderstood difference in the MD rental market. Howard County has no county-wide rent-stabilization regime on private market-rate single-family rentals. Montgomery County Rent Stabilization caps annual increases at CPI-U + 3% or 6%, whichever is lower, for covered MoCo units. Howard County (Columbia, Ellicott City, Elkridge) follows the statewide Maryland Real Property Code Title 8 default — landlords may raise rent at lease renewal by the amount the market supports, subject to the statutory notice rule and statewide non-discrimination protections. Prince George's County's Permanent Rent Stabilization and Protection Act of 2024 (effective September 15, 2024) caps increases at CPI-U + 3% or 6%, whichever is lower — administratively similar to MoCo. The county-by-county regime is the reason a one-size-fits-all MD property manager misses real money. We price your renewal increase based on the actual jurisdiction your property sits in — not a brand-wide guess.

Our 21-day placement guarantee means if we don't place a qualified tenant in 21 days at the Flat Fee Landlord–recommended listing price, we waive your first two months' management fees — a direct financial incentive to move fast without cutting screening corners. Across our coverage area, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Potomac tend to lease fastest because steady NIH, Walter Reed, NRC, and FDA federal-employee demand keeps the applicant pool deep year-round; Rockville, Silver Spring, Columbia, and Ellicott City follow close behind; Gaithersburg, Germantown, Bowie, and Hyattsville run slightly longer. We'll publish exact per-city lease-time numbers in a substantiation file before we cite them on a per-city basis.

We cover three MD counties: Montgomery County (Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, North Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac, Gaithersburg, Germantown), Howard County (Columbia, Ellicott City), and Prince George's County (Bowie, Hyattsville). Our Maryland office is at 10411 Motor City Dr Suite 750, Bethesda MD 20817 — the Pinnacle Business Center next to NIH. We manage single-family homes, townhouses, condos, and small multi-unit buildings throughout the I-270 tech corridor, the Capital Beltway, and the BWI corridor.

Maryland non-payment evictions route through the District Court of Maryland. Process: written Failure to Pay Rent complaint filed in District Court, court hearing typically 5–15 days after filing, judgment of possession if rent remains unpaid. Per Maryland Real Property §8-401, the tenant has a right of redemption that persists until actual execution of the eviction — they can cure the default by paying all past-due rent, court-awarded costs, and fees at any point before the sheriff executes. If rent is unpaid within 7 business days of judgment, the court can issue a Warrant of Restitution; once the warrant issues, the landlord must give the tenant at least 6 days' written notice before the scheduled eviction. The 3-strikes rule (three prior judgments in the past 12 months) eliminates the right of redemption. Full timeline for a clean non-payment case typically runs 45–60 days. We handle every step: complaint drafting, District Court filing, hearing representation coordination, warrant scheduling, and sheriff coordination. Eviction protection is available with Preferred and Concierge plans (Basic does not include it).

Maryland Real Property §8-203 caps residential security deposits at two months' rent. The deposit must be held in a Maryland branch banking account in trust for the tenant. Landlords must return the deposit within 45 days of lease termination, with an itemized written list of any deductions for damages beyond ordinary wear and tear, accompanied by receipts for any repair charge above the statutory threshold. Statutory interest must accrue on the deposit at the daily U.S. Treasury yield curve rate for 1-year (as of the first business day of each year) OR 1.5% per year, whichever is greater. Interest is paid at monthly intervals and is not compounded. Failure to itemize within the 45-day window, failure to pay statutory interest, or unreasonable retention triggers a tenant claim for up to 3× the wrongfully withheld amount plus reasonable attorney's fees under §8-203. On every lease we manage, we track the 45-day clock, document move-in and move-out condition with timestamped photos, calculate accrued interest using the statutory rate, and handle itemization.

Maryland has one of the highest concentrations of federal civilian employees in the country — NIH Bethesda, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, NRC Rockville, FDA White Oak (Silver Spring), NIST Gaithersburg, NOAA Silver Spring, and HHS Parklawn all sit inside our coverage area. Federal employees offer stable W-2 income on a published GS pay scale, but every continuing-resolution fight is a renter cash-flow risk. During the 2018–19 35-day federal shutdown, MD landlords without shutdown-prepared federal tenants saw rent slippage. We stress-test federal-employee income beyond base salary: we verify liquid-reserve documentation, build ACH auto-pay provisions into federal-tenant leases, and include lease language coordinating late-fee timing during declared government funding lapses.

Yes, in all three counties — and the rules differ. Montgomery County issues a Rental Housing License through the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA), renewed annually (July 1 - June 30), with an inspection requirement every three years for multifamily properties. Howard County issues a rental housing license through the Department of Inspections, Licenses & Permits (DILP) under the Howard County Property Maintenance Code; the Director inspects the dwelling before issuing the license. Prince George's County issues a Rental Facility License through the Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement (DPIE). Each jurisdiction has its own inspection checklist, application fee, and lead-paint-affidavit requirement under the Maryland Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act (1994) — MDE registration required for pre-1978 rental properties. We handle all three counties' license applications, renewals, and inspection coordination as part of management.

Maryland's HOME Act (Md. Code, State Government §20-705), enacted in 2020, prohibits discrimination based on source of income across the entire state — meaning you cannot refuse a tenant simply because their rent will be paid partially or wholly with a Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8), VASH, Bridge Subsidy, or similar housing assistance. MoCo, HoCo, and PG County overlay their own protections on top. What you CAN still do is apply standard underwriting — income-to-rent ratio (calculated on the tenant's share of rent, not the gross rent), credit history, rental history, criminal background (subject to local fair-housing limits) — uniformly across every applicant. We run the HUD Section 8 voucher pipeline on managed properties, coordinate Housing Quality Standards inspection scheduling, and document our underwriting criteria so a denied voucher applicant cannot claim discriminatory pretext.

MoCo and HoCo are 20 minutes apart but operate in different regulatory worlds. Montgomery County: Rent Stabilization (Bill 15-23) caps annual increases at CPI-U + 3% or 6%, whichever is lower, administered by ORS within DHCA, with OLTA adjudicating tenant complaints. DHCA issues annual Rental Housing Licenses with a 3-year inspection cycle for multifamily. Howard County: no county-wide rent stabilization, rental housing license through DILP with inspection before license issues, and a regulatory environment that broadly defers to the statewide Title 8 default. Translation for landlords: a Bethesda renewal needs a compliant cap-aware increase; an Ellicott City renewal targets market within Title 8's notice and non-discrimination rules. Same flat fee from us, different playbook per jurisdiction.

Perfect 10ant System™ is Flat Fee Landlord's 10-point tenant screening process — the operational moat behind our under-1% eviction rate across 2,000+ placements. Every applicant on every Flat Fee Landlord listing is verified across ten dimensions: credit, criminal background, eviction history, income, employment, prior rental history, ID verification, sex-offender registry, address history, and fraud check. We pull each data source independently, look at the patterns across them rather than scoring each in isolation, and reject any application that fails our minimum threshold — even when the property has been on market longer than we'd like. The fee model removes the perverse incentive: because we charge a flat monthly fee not a percentage of rent, we have nothing to gain from rushing a marginal placement. The 10ant System is the difference between "they pass the credit check" and "they're going to take care of the property and pay the rent on time for the full lease term."

Flat Fee Landlord charges a flat monthly management fee, not a percentage of rent. Three plans on annual billing: Basic at $139/mo (the core essentials — rent collection, owner and tenant portals, maintenance coordination, lease enforcement, 24/7 emergency line), Preferred at $179/mo (the most popular choice — adds annual tax filing, home warranty admin, mid-lease inspection with photos, annual strategy review with rent and sales comps, 24-hour callback response time, plus the 9-month Tenant Assurance and eviction coordination as bundle benefits when Tenant Placement is purchased together), and Concierge at $349/mo (everything in Preferred plus renewals included, two inspections per year, twice-yearly strategy review, multi-year lease coordination included, plus the 12-month Tenant Assurance). Tenant placement is priced separately at one month's rent plus a $350 listing & activation fee — billed once per placement. Industry-typical percentage management runs 8–12% of monthly rent: on a $2,800/mo Maryland single-family rental that's $224–$336/mo, scaling up automatically every time the rent goes up. Our flat fee never increases with rent. Use our quote builder at flatfeelandlord.com/get-a-quote for exact pricing on your property.