Leslie Sarkin said she is fed up with all ground rent owners being depicted as heartless “vultures,” preying on poor city residents and taking their homes over small, unpaid debts.
“I?m tired that [Gov. Martin] O?Malley has made it seem that the landlords are just terrible,” Sarkin told The Examiner. “There?s a lot more to it than what you read in the newspapers. They?re not getting the whole story.”
Sarkin, who lives with her husband, John, in Cedarcroft in North Baltimore, does the paperwork and billing for about 70 ground rents her husband owns. Most of them were acquired by his late father as an investment. The ground rents, a tool from Colonial times designed to make homeownership easier, cost about $1,500 or less, and pay just 6 percent a year, a rate in effect for at least 25 years. After a series of articles by The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City lawmakers sponsored a group of bills to deal with the abuses.
“There are some unscrupulous people out there who do take advantage of people” and kick their tenants out over failure to pay, Sarkin said. She also said the ground rents have outlived their usefulness. “They?re useless ? there?s no sense to have them anymore,” she said. “But the people who did buy them shouldn?t be looked on as vultures.”
Sarkin said she was incensed over the governor?s remarks from March 22, when he signed the emergency measure prohibiting the creation of new ground rents. But as far as she?s concerned, the restrictions in other ground rent bills will have no impact on her business.
Current law already allows a tenant to go three years in arrears on their payments. Nearly half of Sarkin?s tenants are behind in their annual payments, which range from as little as $37.50 to as high as $96.
“You don?t make a living off of this,” Sarkin said. “This was supposed to be mad money.”
She sends out regular notices, as required by law, and she?s giving up suingthem for back payment because it costs “$300 to $400 for a lawyer to get the money back. It?s more trouble than its worth.”
Payers of ground rent can also buy the rents, but Sarkin said most of them decline when they find it will cost them $1,000 to avoid a payment of $60 a year.
“I don?t think $60 a year is a financial burden,” Sarkin said.
