A quitrent is a fixed annual payment that a landholder once owed to a king, lord, or colonial proprietor in exchange for being released from other feudal obligations such as military service or farm labor. The name captures the deal: by paying the rent, the tenant was “quit,” or free, of further demands. Quitrents themselves were abolished in the United States after the Revolution, but their structural descendants, called ground rents, still attach to tens of thousands of properties in Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania.
Where Quitrents Came From
Under English feudal law, holding land meant owing something to whoever granted it. That something might be weeks of plowing a lord’s fields, supplying armed soldiers, or performing other unpredictable services. Over time, many of these duties were converted into a small, predictable cash payment. Blackstone described the earlier servile duties as “commuted for a small pecuniary quit-rent.”1Yale Law School. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England
The amount was fixed and could not be raised. The obligation attached to the land itself rather than to any individual, so when property changed hands the new owner inherited the quitrent. The land was security for the debt. Payment was often trivially small, sometimes a few pence a year, but what it bought mattered: once paid, the tenant controlled the land without interference.
Quitrents in the American Colonies
The British crown transplanted the system to North America through large grants to colonial proprietors. In Maryland, Lord Baltimore collected quitrents as a primary funding source for the colony’s government. William Penn did the same in Pennsylvania. These proprietors distributed smaller parcels to individual settlers, each grant carrying a perpetual annual fee, often set at a few shillings per hundred acres.
Collection never worked well. Many colonists treated quitrents as an illegitimate tax imposed by distant landlords, arrears piled up, and the obligation came to symbolize a power structure in which settlers merely held land at the pleasure of someone above them. After independence, states moved quickly to abolish quitrents and replace feudal tenure with ownership free of any obligation to a superior. The revenue function that quitrents once served passed to the modern property tax, which, unlike a quitrent, moves with assessed value and public budgets rather than staying fixed forever.
The Modern Descendant: Ground Rents
The quitrent is legally extinct in the United States, but its structure survives in ground rents found primarily in Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania. A ground rent splits a property into two layers of ownership: one party owns the land, and another owns the building sitting on it. The building owner pays a small annual or semi-annual fee to the land owner.
Tens of thousands of properties in and around Baltimore still carry ground rents, many created in the 18th or 19th century. Annual amounts are usually modest, often $50 to $150, because they were set long ago and never adjusted. Maryland law requires ground lease holders to register their interest with the State Department of Assessments and Taxation. A holder who fails to register cannot collect rent, charge late fees, or bring any legal action to enforce the lease, and the property owner cannot be required to hold more than three years of ground rent in escrow.
Pennsylvania also retains ground rents, though less commonly. Pennsylvania law gives the holder several enforcement tools, including the right to pursue the tenant personally for unpaid rent, foreclose on the ground rent as if it were a mortgage, or exercise a right of entry.
How to Buy Out a Ground Rent
If you own a home subject to a ground rent, you can usually buy out the obligation permanently through a process called redemption. In Maryland, the price is calculated by multiplying the annual ground rent by a capitalization factor tied to when the lease was created:
- Most ground leases use a multiplier of 16.66, reflecting a 6 percent capitalization rate.
- Leases created after July 1, 1982, use a multiplier of 8.33, based on a 12 percent rate.
- A narrow window of leases from 1884 to 1888 uses a multiplier of 25.
So if your annual ground rent is $120 and your lease predates 1982 but falls outside the 1884–1888 window, the redemption price is $120 × 16.66, or about $2,000.
You must give the ground rent holder at least 30 days’ notice by certified mail. If you cannot locate the holder, Maryland’s Department of Assessments and Taxation has a formal procedure. You file an application with the Ground Rent Department along with a processing fee ($70 for expedited five-week processing or $20 for the standard nine-week track), wait at least 100 days, then submit the redemption payment by certified check. The department issues a Certificate of Redemption, which you record with your county’s land records office. Once recorded, the ground rent is extinguished and you hold full fee simple title to both the building and the land beneath it.
What Happens if You Ignore a Ground Rent
The most common problem with ground rents is that owners don’t know they owe one. A buyer may purchase a property in Baltimore without realizing the land underneath is held separately, especially if the ground rent holder hasn’t sent a bill in years. The obligation doesn’t disappear. When a holder eventually surfaces, or a new holder acquires the right, they can demand up to three years of back rent. On its own, that amount is small. What piles on top of it is not.
A ground rent holder pursuing collection can add up to $500 in fees before filing a lawsuit, another $700 in attorney’s fees once suit is filed, $300 for a title search, and additional court costs. A $100-per-year obligation can quickly become a bill of several thousand dollars.
In the most extreme scenario, if at least six months of ground rent is in arrears and the ground lease includes a right of reentry, the holder can file a court action to take possession of the property. The holder must send a bill by certified mail and wait at least 45 days before filing, and actual removal requires a court-issued writ of possession executed by a sheriff. Losing a home over a few hundred dollars in unpaid ground rent sounds absurd, but the mechanism exists and has been used.
Ground rents can also complicate mortgage financing. Lenders on a leasehold property need to verify that the lease meets their requirements, including sufficient remaining term relative to the mortgage. Government-backed loans require review of the lease terms to confirm they don’t disadvantage the borrower or lender. If you are buying in a ground-rent area, confirm whether the property carries one before closing, and budget for redemption if you want it gone.