If you just closed out the year on your rental and the math didn’t work, you’re not alone in feeling this way. Maybe the furnace went, then a tenant left mid-lease, then it sat empty for six weeks while you scrambled to turn it over. By the time you added it up, the “profit” you thought you had was gone, and you’re still carrying a mortgage on a property that isn’t paying you back for the trouble.
This is the moment a lot of landlords hit. Not a crisis, exactly. Just a quiet, tired realization that the numbers don’t work anymore, and something has to change. The good news is you have real options here, not just one obvious answer. Let’s walk through them honestly.
Start With What the Property Actually Costs You
Before you decide anything, it helps to separate two different problems that feel like one: is this a bad property, or is this just a hard year? A burst pipe and a bad tenant can happen to a good rental. But if you’re seeing a pattern, repairs eating your margin every year, turnover that never seems to end, a mortgage payment that barely gets covered even when things go right, that’s not bad luck. That’s the property telling you something.
Write down the real numbers. Not what you hoped to make, what you actually made after the mortgage, taxes, insurance, repairs, and any property management fees. Then ask yourself honestly whether next year looks different, or whether you’re just hoping it does.
Option One: Keep Managing It Yourself
If the property is fundamentally sound and this year was just rough, it might be worth sticking it out. Some things that eat landlords alive are fixable: better tenant screening, a maintenance reserve set aside before the year starts instead of scrambled together after something breaks, or simply raising rent to match what the market actually supports now.
But be honest with yourself about the part that’s harder to fix: your own bandwidth. If the 2 a.m. calls and the chasing-down-rent and the finding-a-contractor-on-a-Saturday are wearing you down, that exhaustion is a real cost too, even if it doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet.
Option Two: Hire a Property Manager
A property manager can take the day-to-day off your plate, the tenant calls, the maintenance coordination, the leasing when someone moves out. For a landlord who wants to keep the asset but not the headaches, this is often the middle path.
The tradeoff is straightforward: you’re paying someone else to do what you were doing, which further tightens a margin that’s already thin. If your rental barely cash flows now, a management fee might tip it into losing money every month, not just some months. Run those numbers before you decide, using actual management rates in your area, not a guess.
Option Three: Sell It
If you’ve done the math and the property just doesn’t pencil out anymore, or if you’ve realized you’re simply done being a landlord, selling is a legitimate answer. There’s no shame in that. Plenty of landlords get into rentals expecting income and stability, and plenty of them get out when the reality doesn’t match what they signed up for.
Selling a tenant-occupied rental in Maryland has a few extra steps compared to selling a house you live in, and it’s worth knowing them before you start.
Tenants have rights you need to respect. Under Maryland law, if you’re going to offer the property for sale, your tenant is entitled to written notice, and then has 30 days to make a written offer to purchase it themselves. This is a right of first refusal ahead of a voluntary transfer of title. It’s not there to slow you down out of spite, it’s there so tenants aren’t blindsided. But skipping it isn’t a shortcut worth taking: a landlord who violates this can be fined up to $1,000 per violation. Build that 30-day window into your timeline from the start.
Selling with a tenant in place, or waiting for the lease to end, are both real paths. Some buyers, including investors, are comfortable buying with a tenant already there. Others want the property vacant. Which route makes sense depends on your lease terms and your tenant’s situation, and it’s worth talking through with whoever’s helping you sell.
Transfer taxes vary by where the property sits. If you’re in Baltimore City, you’re looking at a 1.5% city transfer tax plus a 0.5% state transfer tax, so 2% total on the sale price. In Baltimore County, the transfer tax is 1.5%, plus Maryland state recordation of $2.50 for every $500 of value. Other counties in our area set their own rates, so it’s worth confirming the exact number for your county before you set expectations on proceeds.
If you sell for real gains, know there may be an added state tax. Maryland adds a 2% tax on net capital gains for individuals whose federal adjusted gross income is over $350,000. Most landlords selling a single rental won’t hit that threshold, but if this sale is part of a bigger financial year for you, it’s worth asking your accountant whether it applies.
If you don’t live in Maryland, there’s a withholding step. Out-of-state sellers of Maryland real property are subject to mandatory withholding on the proceeds unless an exemption applies, and if tax was withheld, there’s a process to apply for a refund starting 60 days after the deed is filed (and no later than December 1 of the year you sold), though that refund option isn’t available if the property sold for more than $1.5 million. A tax professional who’s handled Maryland investment sales can walk you through whether this applies to you.
None of this makes selling complicated in a bad way. It just means there are a few boxes to check that a live-in-your-house sale doesn’t have. A real estate attorney or an experienced closing company can walk you through the tenant notice and the transfer tax numbers specific to your county in a single conversation.
How to Actually Decide
There’s no formula that tells you the right answer, but here’s a way to think about it. If your rental had one bad year but the bones are solid and you still want to be a landlord, fixing the process, better screening, a repair fund, maybe a manager, is probably worth trying first. If you’ve had multiple bad years, if the exhaustion is bigger than the income, or if you’re just done, selling isn’t giving up. It’s recognizing that the property is costing you more than money.
If selling starts to look like the right move and the property needs work you don’t want to put money into, or you don’t want to deal with listing, showings, and a tenant notice period stretching things out, a cash sale is one option worth knowing about. Deep Roots buys houses as-is, so repairs aren’t a condition of the sale, there are no commissions, and in most cases we cover closing costs too. Sales typically close in 30 days, sometimes less. But we’ll also tell you straight if listing with an agent would net you more. That’s not our sales pitch, that’s just the truth, and you deserve to hear it before you decide anything.