Investing · August 30, 2026 · 8 min read
I sat across from a buyer last Tuesday who'd watched approximately nine hundred TikToks about house hacking. He had a spreadsheet. He had a vision. He was going to buy a duplex in Baltimore County, live in one side, rent the other, and have his tenant pay his mortgage.
The spreadsheet said it would work.
Then we plugged in Maryland property taxes.
House hacking—buying a multifamily property, living in one unit, renting the others—is a legitimate strategy. It works. I've represented buyers who've done it successfully in Harford County, Baltimore County, even parts of Anne Arundel. But the Instagram version skips a few Maryland-specific details that turn a theoretical $200/month profit into a real-world $350/month loss.
Let me show you what changes when you move the strategy from a whiteboard to the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
My buyer found a duplex in Dundalk listed at $285,000. Both units were 2-bedroom, 1-bath. Comparable rent in the area: $1,400/month for a similar unit.
Here was his TikTok math:
He was thrilled. I was less thrilled, because we hadn't added anything else yet.
Here's what we added:
New monthly picture: $2,817 in costs, $1,400 in rent, $1,417 out-of-pocket.
That's not house hacking. That's just buying a duplex and living in half of it.
I'm not here to kill the dream. House hacking can work. But it works when you adjust the strategy to Maryland's cost structure and stop pretending property taxes don't exist.
A triplex or fourplex (still FHA-eligible if you occupy one unit) spreads your fixed costs—taxes, insurance, that ancient boiler—across more rental income. I worked with a client in Harford County who bought a fourplex in Edgewood. Lived in one unit, rented three. The math worked because three rents absorbed the overhead and his mortgage payment, leaving his out-of-pocket cost around $400/month for a 3-bedroom unit he'd have paid $1,600 to rent.
Finding fourplexes in good condition near Baltimore is harder than finding parking at Camden Yards in July. But they exist. Start your search here and filter for 3-4 units—I get alerts on these before they hit Zillow.
Single-family home, 4 bedrooms, you live in one and rent the other three to working professionals. It's not a duplex, so the math is messier and the lease structure is more complex, but in markets like Towson or near APG in Harford County, room rentals can pull $700–$900/month each.
You're now a live-in landlord with roommates. It's not for everyone. But the numbers improve fast when you're collecting $2,100–$2,700 in rent against a $2,200 mortgage payment on a $320,000 house.
Baltimore City has pockets—especially east and southeast—where older rowhomes sell for $180,000 and rent for $1,500+. The 1% rule (monthly rent should equal 1% of purchase price) is an oversimplification, but it's a useful filter.
York County, Pennsylvania, has similar opportunities, and PA's property taxes vary wildly by school district—some are lower than Maryland's. A duplex in Spring Grove or Hanover might pencil where a Baltimore County property doesn't.
You're giving up some appreciation potential in exchange for better cash flow. That's a trade-off, not a mistake.
Let me put my teacher hat on for a minute. Here are the line items that blow up house-hacking spreadsheets in Maryland:
Property taxes. Maryland's average effective property tax rate hovers around 1.09%, but Baltimore City is higher, and some counties reassess aggressively. Check the actual tax bill, not the Zillow estimate. Baltimore County's property tax info is here.
Landlord insurance. You're not buying homeowners insurance anymore. You're buying a landlord policy, which costs more. If you're house hacking with an FHA loan, you'll still carry mortgage insurance too until you hit 20% equity.
Utilities that aren't separately metered. If water isn't split between units, you're paying for your tenant's showers. Gas heat on an old duplex with one meter? You're covering both sides all winter.
Turnover. Even good tenants leave. Every time they do, you're covering the full mortgage while you clean, repair, and re-rent. Budget for it.
Maintenance on twice the building. Two kitchens. Two water heaters. Two HVAC systems in some cases. Things break twice as often because there's twice as much stuff.
If you're using the rental income to qualify for the mortgage, your lender will want documentation. FHA allows you to use 75% of the projected rental income from the other unit(s) if you can provide a signed lease or an appraisal with a rent schedule.
But here's the kicker: if the property isn't already rented, the underwriter will be conservative. They'll order the appraisal, check comparable rents, and use the lower figure. That TikTok guru's $1,600/month rent assumption might get knocked down to $1,350 by an appraiser who just closed three rentals in the same zip code.
If your debt-to-income ratio is tight, that $250/month difference can kill the deal. FHA's guidance on rental income is here if your loan officer isn't explaining it clearly.
We just published a piece on how FHA is keeping classic FICO scoring through 2027—worth reading if you're planning to use an FHA loan for a house hack, since your credit profile matters more than you think.
I don't want to end on a downer. Let me tell you about a deal that actually worked.
Client bought a duplex in Joppa for $310,000 last fall. Put down 3.5%. Lived in the larger unit (3-bed, 1.5-bath), rented the smaller one (2-bed, 1-bath) for $1,450. Her mortgage, taxes, and insurance came to about $2,500/month. After accounting for vacancy, maintenance, and utilities, her net out-of-pocket was around $1,200/month.
That's not free housing. But it's a 3-bedroom place in a decent school district for $1,200/month, and she's building equity instead of paying a landlord. In three years, if Harford County continues its trend of moderate appreciation, she'll have enough equity to refinance out of FHA's mortgage insurance and drop her payment another $160/month.
That's house hacking in Maryland. It's not magic. It's boring math, local taxes, and realistic rent estimates.
If you're serious about this:
One. Get pre-approved for an FHA or conventional multifamily loan with a Maryland lender who understands rental income calculations. Not all of them do.
Two. Run your numbers with real Maryland property tax rates, real insurance quotes (call an agent, don't guess), and real rent comps. I can pull those for you in any of the counties I serve—Baltimore, Harford, Cecil, Howard, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, Charles, or Baltimore City in Maryland, plus York and Lancaster in PA and New Castle County in Delaware. Reach out here.
Three. Budget for vacancy and repairs before you buy, not after your tenant's refrigerator dies in July.
Four. Be honest about whether you want to be a landlord. It's not passive income when the toilet backs up at 9 PM on a Sunday.
Five. Compare the house-hacking scenario to just buying a single-family home with a lower payment and renting separately if the math is close. Sometimes simplicity wins.
We're in an interesting moment. Inventory is finally climbing after years of drought, which means you have more options and a bit more negotiating room than you did in 2021–2024. Mortgage rates are up around 6.66% as of this week, which has cooled some of the investor competition.
That's good for you if you're an owner-occupant house hacker, because you're not bidding against cash buyers anymore. The downside is that higher rates make the monthly payment math tighter, so you need the deal to pencil even more carefully.
Small multifamily properties in Baltimore County, Harford, and Anne Arundel don't sit on the market long when they're priced right and in decent shape. If you find one that works, move fast. But don't move so fast you skip the math.
I spent 20 years in education before I became a REALTOR®, and the thing I've learned in both careers is that the best decisions come from working the problem all the way through, not halfway.
House hacking works. I've seen it work for teachers, for young families, for military folks stationed at APG or Meade who want to build wealth while they're here.
But it works when you account for Maryland property taxes, landlord insurance, maintenance, vacancies, and all the other unglamorous details that don't fit in a 60-second video.
If you want to run the numbers on a specific property—or if you just want to talk through whether this strategy makes sense for your situation—I'm here. I won't sugarcoat the math, but I will show you what actually works in our market.
Because the goal isn't to house hack. The goal is to build equity, reduce your housing cost, and not go broke doing it.
Katrina Kirton Sherrod, REALTOR® · Samson Properties · Licensed in MD, DC, PA & DE · 443-616-9770 · Katrina@kkstherealtor.com
“Buyers decide in the first eight seconds of seeing a home if they are interested. Get out of the car, walk in the door — sold.” — Barbara Corcoran