Behind on Property Taxes in Anne Arundel County? What Happens After the June Tax Sale — and How Long You Really Have

The June 3 sale already happened — and you have not lost your house. What sold was a lien: a debt against the property, not the property itself. Anne Arundel County does not even hold a deed sale. Nobody can make you leave, and no one can take title unless a court forecloses your right to redeem — which, for an owner-occupied home, cannot even be filed before March 3, 2027. What you have is a clock, not an eviction, and everything below is about your position, your deadlines, and your money.

Investors: we don’t publish, sell, or share the delinquent list — the county’s advertised listing is the only public source. This page is for the homeowner.

Free and no-obligation. If keeping your house is the better move, we will tell you that and point you to the programs below.

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The Sale Already Happened. That Is Not the Same as Losing Your House.

Anne Arundel County held its annual tax sale on June 3, 2026. It holds exactly one per year, on a date in May or June set by the County Controller. If your account was in it, here is the single most important thing to understand: Anne Arundel County does not hold a deed sale. The county’s own FAQ says so in those words. What was sold was a lien certificate — a debt — not your property.

Under Maryland Tax-Property Article § 14-830, you keep the right to remain in possession and to exercise all rights of ownership until the right of redemption is foreclosed by a court. Under § 14-827, your right to redeem continues at any time until a circuit court order finally forecloses it. Title does not pass to anyone on auction day. It passes only if a judge later says so.

What you do have is a clock. Here it is, with real dates.

Your calendar, measured from the June 3, 2026 sale

Now — Oct 3, 2026 (Non-owner-occupied, vacant, commercial)
Purchaser may charge you nothing in fees or expenses. Redemption is taxes + interest only.

Now — Jan 3, 2027 (Owner-occupied homes)
Purchaser may charge you nothing in fees or expenses. This is the cheapest your redemption will ever be.

After Oct 3, 2026 (Non-owner-occupied)
Attorney’s fees up to $500 and a title search up to $250 can be added, if no foreclosure has been filed.

Dec 3, 2026 (Non-owner-occupied)
Earliest the certificate holder may file to foreclose your right of redemption.

After Jan 3, 2027 (Owner-occupied homes)
Attorney’s fees up to $500 and a title search up to $250 can be added, if no foreclosure has been filed.

Mar 3, 2027 (Owner-occupied homes)
Earliest the certificate holder may file to foreclose. Once a complaint is filed, chargeable attorney’s fees jump to $1,300–$1,500.

Two-year outer limit (All)
If no foreclosure proceeding is filed within 2 years of the certificate of sale, the certificate is void and the holder loses everything.

Those windows come from Maryland Tax-Property Article §§ 14-843(b)(1) and 14-833, and Anne Arundel County publishes the same seven-month and four-month figures in its own tax sale process document. The dates above are calculated from June 3, 2026 — confirm your own figures with the county, because your certificate date, not the auction date, governs some of them.

Read the dates once more and notice what they are telling you: if your home is owner-occupied and you can redeem before roughly January 3, 2027, you pay taxes and interest and not one dollar of anyone’s legal fees. That window is worth real money and it is quietly running right now.

What Happens to Your Equity if You Let This Run to the End

This is the question the whole clock is really about, and it deserves a straight answer. If the process reaches a final court judgment foreclosing your right of redemption, you can lose far more than you owe — the value built up in the home above the tax debt is what is at risk. Maryland has been rewriting these rules in homeowners’ favor, and exactly how much is protected in your specific case is a question for a Maryland attorney, not a web page. But the safe way to think about it is simple: every option on this page — redeeming, the Ombudsman’s program, the tax credit, or selling — ends better than letting a judgment land. The one path that can cost you everything above the lien is doing nothing until the court is done. Do not let it get that far without talking to someone.

If Someone Told You the Rate Is 18%, Check Whether That Applies to You

This is the most commonly mis-stated number in Anne Arundel County, and getting it wrong can push a homeowner into selling when they did not need to.

Anne Arundel County Code § 4-1-105(b) sets the county rate at 18% per annum. But Maryland Tax-Property Article § 14-820(c) caps the rate for owner-occupied residential property at 10% a year, and that cap overrides the county’s higher figure. You do not have to take our word for any of this — tap the statute to read it yourself. The county’s own 2026 Collector’s Terms carry the 10% figure in exactly these terms: “For Owner-Occupied Residential Property ONLY, the Interest Rate for Redemption of Property Sold at Tax Sale shall be Ten (10) Percent Per Annum.”

Two caveats, both of which matter. First, the 10% cap was added by Maryland’s 2025 tax sale reform (HB59, Chapter 231) and took effect January 1, 2026 — and the Act applies prospectively only. A certificate issued at the June 2026 sale is covered. An older, still-unredeemed certificate from 2024 or 2025 is not, and remains at 18%. Second, the county’s main tax sale web page still displays a flat “1.5% per month or 18% per annum” with no owner-occupied carve-out. That page appears not to have been updated after the law changed. Do not take a rate from a web page — get your payoff figure in writing from the Office of Finance and ask them to confirm which rate they applied.

What you actually pay to redeem

Under § 14-828, redemption means paying the Collector the total tax sale price plus redemption interest, plus taxes and penalties accruing after the sale, plus whatever expenses the purchaser is entitled to under § 14-843. Maryland’s 2025 reform added a carve-out excluding post-sale taxes, interest, and penalties from the redemption amount for owner-occupied residential property — another reason to make the county state your figure in writing rather than estimating it.

Practical mechanics that trip people up:

• Payment must be certified check, money order, or cash. Personal checks, business checks, debit cards, and credit cards are not accepted.
• No redemptions are allowed on the day of the tax sale or the day after.
• You pay the county, never the certificate holder directly.
• The high-bid premium you may see discussed is a bidder’s cost, refunded to the bidder on redemption. It is not part of what you owe.

Free and no-obligation. If keeping your house is the better move, we will tell you that and point you to the programs below.

Before You Consider Selling: Programs That May Let You Keep the House

We buy houses. We would still rather you read this section first, because for some Anne Arundel homeowners one of these ends the problem without selling anything. If one of them fits you, take it.

The Homeowner Protection Program — and it accepts you after the sale

Maryland’s Homeowner Protection Program, run by SDAT’s Office of the State Tax Sale Ombudsman, can keep a home out of tax sale for at least three years and set up an affordable plan to pay what is owed. Critically, it is not limited to people who are still pre-sale: the program accepts homeowners already on the tax sale list, homeowners whose lien has already been sold, and homeowners already in tax sale foreclosure.

It also has teeth. Under Tax-Property § 14-811(i), the Collector shall withhold from sale the dwelling of a homeowner enrolled in the program. That is mandatory language, not a request.

2026 prequalification: taxes owed of $7,000 or less; 2025 combined household income of $60,000 or less; assessed value of $300,000 or less; assets excluding the home of $200,000 or less. Contact the Ombudsman at (410) 767-4994 or toll free (833) 732-8411, or email sdat.taxsale@maryland.gov.

Homeowners’ Property Tax Credit — deadline October 1, 2026

This is the one genuine deadline on this page that has not passed. The Maryland Homeowners’ Property Tax Credit reduces your property tax bill where the tax exceeds a set share of your income, and the 2026 filing deadline is October 1, 2026. Combined gross household income must not exceed $60,000, and net worth excluding your home must not exceed $200,000.

Filing by April 15 would have put the credit straight onto the July bill; that date has gone, so a filer now receives a revised bill instead. It is still worth filing. Anne Arundel County supplements the state credit locally, and County Bill 65-25 raised the local supplement’s assessed value cap from $350,000 to $400,000 effective November 2025, so more county homeowners qualify than did a year ago. There is no separate county form — the state application covers both. Apply at taxcredits.sdat.maryland.gov, or call SDAT’s credit line at 410-767-4433 or 1-800-944-7403.

The $1,000 threshold

Under Tax-Property § 14-811(b)(2), where total taxes including interest and penalties come to less than $1,000, the Collector shall withhold owner-occupied residential property — and residential property occupied by an heir of a deceased owner — from tax sale. Anne Arundel publishes the same $1,000 threshold for owner-occupied and heir-occupied accounts, and $750 for non-owner-occupied property and vacant land. If your balance is hovering near that line, paying it down below the threshold can keep the property off next year’s list entirely.

Talk to the county directly

Anne Arundel County asks delinquent owners to call the Tax Sale office at (410) 222-1735 to discuss payment of outstanding charges. The county does not publish specific installment terms, so we are not going to describe terms it has not stated — but the invitation to call is on its page, and it costs nothing to take it up.

If a housing counselor would help, Maryland’s HOPE Hotline is 877-462-7555.

Get Your Numbers — Both of Them

Tell us the address and we will put the two figures side by side: what it would cost you to redeem and keep the house, and what you would walk away with if you sold it as-is. No cost, no obligation, and the numbers are yours whichever way you go.

If Selling Is the Right Answer

Sometimes it is. The house needs work you cannot fund, or it is an inherited property nobody lives in, or the balance has grown past what redeeming makes sense for. In that case selling converts a problem into cash, and the tax debt is paid off at closing out of the proceeds — which is what actually ends the process.

What we are, and what we are not. We are a buyer. We are not a foreclosure rescue service, a counseling agency, or a negotiator. We do not contact your lender, we do not modify loans, we do not represent you before the county or the circuit court, and we do not charge you anything for a conversation.

• We buy as-is — no repairs, no cleaning, no agent commissions.
• The delinquent taxes and the certificate payoff are settled at closing through the title company out of the sale proceeds.
• We cover closing costs at settlement.
• You receive any remaining equity.
• Most sellers have a written, no-obligation offer within 24 hours. Most of our closings take two to three weeks. When the title is already clean, we’ve closed in as little as 7 days.

We will not promise you a closing by any particular date on the calendar above. Whether that is achievable depends on title condition, the county’s payoff figures, and how quickly documents move — none of which we control. What we will do is give you an honest read on the timeline before you commit to anything, and tell you if we think redeeming beats selling.

If you owe more on a mortgage than the house is worth, your lender would have to agree to any sale for less than the balance. That is a conversation between you and your lender — we can tell you what the property is worth, but we do not negotiate with lenders on your behalf.

Between the Offer and the Closing

The most common thing that goes wrong with a cash sale is the buyer who writes a big number to win you, then grinds it down the week of closing. Here is how we handle the part everyone else stays quiet about.

The price we write is the price we close at. We never renegotiate just to renegotiate. The number only changes if the property’s condition turns out to be materially different from what we could see or were told — short of that, the figure on the offer is the figure at settlement.

We keep visits to a minimum. We schedule them around you, not the other way around — typically a single walkthrough before we finalize our number. Your home is not a showroom, and we will not treat it like one.

Proof of funds comes with the offer. You will not have to ask for it twice, and you will not have to take our word that the money is real — it is on the table when the number is.

One person, not a machine. You deal with Jacob from the first call to the closing table. If your answer is no, we take the no — one follow-up to make sure you have what you need, and then we leave you alone. You will not be handed off to a call center or sold as a “lead” to five other investors.

No pressure to sign. Accept it, or take time to think it over — either way, we understand. No offer of ours is only good “if you sign today.” Take it to a family member, a lawyer, or another buyer for comparison; a real offer survives a second opinion.

Closings run through established, independent local title companies. A neutral title company handles the settlement and the funds — the same way any legitimate real estate sale closes.

How an Anne Arundel Account Reaches the Sale in the First Place

Useful if you are not yet in the sale and want to stay out of the next one:

1. July — real property tax bills are mailed. Taxes are due and payable without interest as of July 1.
2. September 30 — full payment deadline, or the first semiannual installment for a principal residence.
3. December 31 — second semiannual installment due. A service charge applies to the second installment and is avoided by paying in full by September 30.
4. October 1 — unpaid taxes are overdue and in arrears. Interest and penalties accrue at 1% per month, or any fraction of a month, until paid.
5. At least 30 days before advertising — the Collector mails the owner of record a notice stating the amount due and that the property must be sold if it is not paid (§ 14-812).
6. Four successive weeks — the property is published once a week in two county newspapers, historically The Capital Gazette and The Baltimore Sun (§ 14-813).
7. May or June — the sale, as set by the Controller.

Paying the total due to the Office of Finance before the sale date keeps the property out of it entirely — by cash, cashier’s check, or money order.

The 2027 sale date has not been published. Anne Arundel sets it annually and it falls in May or June. We are not going to print a guess, and you should be wary of any site that does — a wrong date here is how people miss real deadlines.

What Changed in the Law — and What Changes This October

Maryland has been actively rewriting tax sale law in homeowners’ favour, and two rounds of it affect Anne Arundel owners directly.

• Already in force (January 1, 2026) — 2025 HB59, Chapter 231: the 10% owner-occupied redemption cap, mandatory statewide withholding of low-balance owner-occupied and heir-occupied homes with the threshold raised from $750 to $1,000, exclusion of post-sale taxes from the owner-occupied redemption amount, and a required county registry of properties withheld from sale. Prospective only — it does not reach certificates issued before that date.
• Taking effect October 1, 2026 — 2026 HB753, Chapter 777: counties shall withhold from tax sale the dwelling of a homeowner with a terminal illness or medical hardship documented by a licensed health care provider, and the Homeowner Protection Program’s assessed value limit rises from $300,000 to $450,000. This lands before the 2027 sale cycle, so it will govern the next sale.
• Phasing in — 2026 HB1148/SB765, Chapters 718 and 719, create a Legacy Protection Program for heirs of deceased owners, with the Tax Sale Ombudsman forwarding participating heirs to the county’s withholding registry. Relevant if you inherited the property. Parts took effect June 1, 2026; Section 1 follows on July 1, 2027.

If you have a medical hardship or you inherited this house, those two are worth raising with the Tax Sale Ombudsman specifically.

Where We Buy in Anne Arundel County

We buy houses with tax liens, inherited title issues, and deferred maintenance across the county — Annapolis, Glen Burnie, Pasadena, Severna Park, Odenton, Crofton, Arnold, Millersville, Linthicum, Brooklyn Park, Edgewater, Riva, Gambrills, Deale, Shady Side, and the waterfront communities along the South and Magothy Rivers. Older homes with original systems are what we expect, not a reason to walk away.

Questions Anne Arundel Homeowners Actually Ask

My lien sold in June. Can I still live in my house?

Yes. Under § 14-830 you keep possession and all rights of ownership until a court forecloses the right of redemption. A tax sale transfers a debt, not your home.

How long do I have before anyone can file against me?

For owner-occupied residential property, a certificate holder cannot file to foreclose until 9 months after the sale — March 3, 2027 for the June 3, 2026 sale. For other property it is 6 months. Note that the county’s FAQ mentions only the six-month figure; the statute, § 14-833, sets the longer owner-occupied period and it is the one that governs.

Can I sell after the lien has already been sold?

Yes. Your title is still yours to transfer. At closing the title company pays the redemption amount to the county out of the proceeds and the lien clears.

Does a tax sale hurt my credit?

The three major credit bureaus stopped including tax liens on consumer credit reports in 2018. A court judgment is a public record and is a different matter — which is one practical reason not to let the process run to judgment if you have a choice.

Will you send me the delinquent tax list?

No. We do not provide it under any circumstances. The county does not mail one out either — the advertised newspaper listing is the public record.

Do you buy houses with code violations or an inherited title mess?

Yes — those usually arrive alongside tax problems. See our Anne Arundel code violations guide and our Anne Arundel probate guide.

Official Contacts — Verify Everything Here

Maryland’s tax sale statutes run from Tax-Property Article § 14-808 through § 14-854. The sections referenced above: 14-811 (withholding), 14-812 (notice), 14-813 (advertising), 14-820 (redemption rate), 14-827 (right of redemption), 14-828 (amount to redeem), 14-830 (possession), 14-833 (foreclosure), 14-843 (reimbursable expenses).

Who You Are Dealing With

Other Ways We Help Anne Arundel County Homeowners

• Sell a house in Anne Arundel County or in Annapolis, Glen Burnie, Pasadena, or Odenton — for sales with no tax issues
• Selling an inherited house in Anne Arundel County
• Anne Arundel County code violations
• Eviction help in Anne Arundel County
• Tax delinquency in nearby Maryland counties: Baltimore County, Howard County, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County
• ← All tax delinquency solutions

Important Disclaimer

Consistent Homebuyers is a real estate investment firm — not a law firm, not a financial advisor, not a tax preparer. Jacob Simpson is not a licensed attorney or accountant, and nothing on this page constitutes legal, tax, or financial advice.

The county and statutory information on this page is sourced from the Anne Arundel County Office of Finance, the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation, and the Maryland Code as published by the Maryland General Assembly, and was verified on July 19, 2026. Tax sale law in Maryland is changing rapidly — three separate Acts affecting these rules take effect between January 2026 and July 2027 — and individual circumstances vary enormously. Before acting on anything you read here you should:

• Get your own payoff figure in writing from the Anne Arundel County Office of Finance at (410) 222-1735, and ask which redemption rate they applied and why
• Call the State Tax Sale Ombudsman at (410) 767-4994 before assuming you have no options
• Consult a licensed Maryland attorney about your specific situation, particularly if a complaint to foreclose the right of redemption has been filed against your property
• Read the statutes yourself at the Maryland General Assembly website

This page is updated periodically but should not be your only source of information for decisions involving your home and your equity. Verify everything.