If you’re sitting on a vacant house right now, you already know the feeling. It’s not costing you anything you can point to on a single day. There’s no big scary bill that shows up all at once. It’s just a slow drain, month after month, and it’s easy to underestimate because so much of it is quiet. No mortgage payment reminder if it’s paid off. No tenant complaint. No obvious sign that money is leaving your pocket. But it is, every single month, whether the house sits there quiet or not.
We talk to people in this exact spot a lot: an inherited house nobody’s living in, a rental between tenants that turned into a longer gap than planned, a place someone moved out of during a divorce or a job change and just hasn’t dealt with yet. The house sits there. The costs don’t pause. And because nothing feels urgent, it’s easy to let months go by without ever adding it up.
So let’s add it up. Not to scare you into a decision, but because you can’t weigh holding versus renting versus selling until you know what holding actually costs you.
The property taxes don’t stop
This is the one people forget first. In Maryland, property taxes keep coming whether anyone lives in the house or not. The county and municipal rates are set locally, and they don’t care that the lights are off. The Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation posts current rates every August, so if you want to know exactly what your county is charging this year, that’s the place to check.
If your house happens to sit in Baltimore City, there’s something else worth knowing about. Maryland law now allows Baltimore City (and counties, if they choose to adopt it) to set a special, higher tax rate on property that’s been cited as vacant and unfit for habitation on a housing or building violation notice. This isn’t a tax on every empty house. It applies specifically to property that’s been formally cited. But where it applies, the numbers are real: Baltimore City’s regular property tax rate is $2.248 per $100 of assessed value, and the vacant-property rate that’s been reported is $6.744 per $100 in the first year, three times the regular rate, and $8.992 per $100 after that, four times the regular rate. On a house assessed at $150,000, that’s the difference between a few thousand dollars a year and something considerably steeper. This only kicks in if the property has actually been cited, so it won’t apply to every vacant house, but if you’ve gotten a notice, it’s worth taking seriously and not just filing away.
If your house is in Pennsylvania instead, in York, Lancaster, or Berks County, the vacancy tax rules are different there, and we’re not going to guess at how your specific county or school district handles it. What we can tell you is how the math works: your property tax is your assessed value multiplied by the county, municipal, and school millage rates, then divided by 1,000. If you want the exact number for your parcel, your county assessment office can pull it for you in a few minutes.
Insurance costs more when nobody’s home
Here’s one that surprises a lot of homeowners. An empty house is riskier to insure than an occupied one, because nobody’s there to notice a leak, a break-in, or a fire before it turns into real damage. Industry sources commonly put vacant-home insurance at roughly two to three times what you’d pay for the same house occupied. And there’s a sharper edge to this: many standard homeowners policies simply exclude coverage once a home has sat vacant for more than 30 to 60 days. That means if something goes wrong in an empty house, months into the vacancy, your regular policy might not pay out at all unless you’ve specifically switched to a vacant-property policy. So the real cost here isn’t just a higher premium, it’s the risk of having no coverage at the moment you’d need it most.
Utilities you’re still paying for a house nobody’s using
Even with nobody living there, you generally still need some utilities running: enough heat to keep pipes from freezing in winter, enough power for security systems or lighting, water if you’re not planning to shut it off completely. Industry estimates put minimum utility costs on a vacant home at roughly $50 to $200 a month. That’s not enormous on its own, but stack it with taxes and insurance and it adds another steady drip.
What this looks like added together
None of these costs are dramatic by themselves. That’s exactly why they’re easy to ignore. But property taxes, elevated insurance, and baseline utilities are all showing up every single month whether or not the house has anyone in it, and whether or not it’s making you a dime. If you want to see your own real number, pull your last property tax bill, call your insurance agent and ask what a vacant policy would run compared to what you’re paying now, and add in whatever you’re spending to keep the utilities minimally running. That total is your true monthly cost of holding.
Your three real options
Once you know that number, the decision in front of you gets a lot clearer.
Keep holding it. This makes sense if you have a real plan and a timeline, maybe you’re waiting on an estate to settle, or you’re planning to move in yourself once some other piece of life sorts itself out. Holding without a plan just means paying that monthly number indefinitely with nothing coming back.
Rent it out. This can offset the carrying costs and then some, but it comes with its own work: finding a tenant, keeping up with repairs, being the landlord. If the house needs real work before it’s rentable, that’s an upfront cost too, on top of everything you’ve already been paying while it sat empty.
Sell it. Listing with an agent can make sense, especially if the house is in good shape and you’re not in a hurry. A for-sale-by-owner route can work if you’ve got the time and stomach for it. And a cash sale is worth knowing about as an option, particularly if the house needs work you don’t want to take on, or if the monthly bleed has gone on long enough that you just want it done.
If a cash sale is the direction that fits your situation, here’s what that actually looks like with us: there are no real estate commissions in a cash sale with Deep Roots, we buy houses as-is so you’re not sinking more money into repairs before a sale, and in most cases we cover closing costs too. Closings typically happen within 30 days, sometimes less, though we won’t promise you an exact date until we’ve actually looked at your situation.