Who Pays Closing Costs in Maryland, DC, and Virginia?
Three houses, same price, twenty miles apart. Sell a $500,000 house in Arlington and the transfer tax bill on the seller is $1,500. Sell it in Frederick County and it is $4,750. Sell it in Washington DC and it is $7,250 — nearly five times the Arlington figure, on an identical sale price.
Who pays what is partly statute, partly local custom, and partly whatever the contract says. It works differently in all three jurisdictions we buy in. Here is how each one actually works.
We have also built a free calculator for each — Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia — so you can put your own price in rather than work from an average.
The short answer
- Maryland — buyer and seller customarily split everything down the middle.
- Washington DC — the seller pays the deed transfer tax, the buyer pays the recordation tax. Same rate each.
- Virginia — the seller pays the grantor’s tax, the buyer pays recordation. The seller’s side is small.
None of that is fixed. Every one of these is negotiable, and in a slow market sellers are routinely asked to absorb more than the custom.
Maryland: split down the middle, by custom rather than law
Maryland stacks three charges on a sale: a state transfer tax of 0.5%, a county transfer tax, and a county recordation tax. Custom is a 50/50 split between buyer and seller, but that is convention, not statute — the contract of sale decides.
The county half is where it gets expensive, and the variation is larger than most sellers expect. On that same $500,000 sale, the seller’s share ranges from about $2,900 in Somerset County to $7,390 in Baltimore City. That is a $4,490 spread inside one state, driven entirely by which side of a county line the house sits on.
Two details catch people out. First, recordation tax is charged per $500 of price or fraction thereof, so a $412,300 sale is taxed as though it were $412,500. Second, and stranger: when the buyer is a first-time Maryland homebuyer, the state transfer tax halves from 0.5% to 0.25% — but the statute puts the whole of the remaining amount on the seller. On a $500,000 Montgomery County sale the seller pays $5,975 either way. The buyer’s share drops from $5,975 to $4,725. The entire discount goes to the buyer.
Run your county: Maryland transfer tax calculator.
Washington DC: a clean split, and a $400,000 cliff
The District is the simplest of the three to explain and the most expensive to be on the wrong side of. The seller pays the deed transfer tax, the buyer pays the recordation tax, and both are charged at the same rate: 1.1% below $400,000, and 1.45% at $400,000 and above.
The catch is that the higher rate applies to the entire price, not just the amount above the threshold. A house selling at $399,999 carries $4,399.99 in transfer tax. The same house at $400,000 carries $5,800. One dollar of sale price costs the two parties $2,800 between them.
If your likely sale price lands within a few thousand dollars of $400,000, that is worth deciding on purpose rather than discovering at settlement.
The DC first-time homebuyer benefit reduces the buyer’s recordation tax to 0.725%. It carries income and price caps and does nothing for the seller.
Run your price: DC transfer tax calculator.
Virginia: the cheapest of the three, unless you are close in
Virginia calls the seller’s transfer tax the grantor’s tax, and statewide it is genuinely small: $0.50 per $500, or 0.1% of the price. On a $500,000 sale that is $500. The buyer separately pays recordation tax at $0.25 per $100, plus a local share.
Northern Virginia is the exception, and it is where we buy. The nine Northern Virginia Transportation Authority localities — Arlington, Fairfax County, Loudoun, Prince William, and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park — add a regional congestion relief fee and a WMATA capital fee, each $0.10 per $100. That takes the seller from 0.1% to 0.3%, tripling the bill: $1,500 on a $500,000 sale in Arlington against $500 in a locality outside the authority.
Tripled or not, Virginia sellers still pay less transfer tax than anywhere in Maryland or DC.
Run your locality: Virginia grantor tax calculator.
Side by side
What the seller pays in transfer and recordation tax on a $500,000 sale, using each jurisdiction’s customary split:
| Where the house is | Seller pays |
|---|---|
| Virginia, outside Northern Virginia | $500 |
| Arlington and Northern Virginia | $1,500 |
| Somerset County, MD | $2,900 |
| Frederick County, MD | $4,750 |
| Howard County, MD | $5,625 |
| Montgomery County, MD | $5,975 |
| Baltimore County, MD | $6,085 |
| Prince George’s County, MD | $6,125 |
| Washington DC | $7,250 |
| Baltimore City, MD | $7,390 |
A Baltimore City seller pays nearly fifteen times what a seller in rural Virginia pays, on the same price, for the same act of signing a deed.
This is not the whole cost of selling
Transfer taxes are simply the part fixed by statute — the part you cannot negotiate away. On a listed sale they sit alongside agent commission, whatever the buyer’s inspection turns up, settlement and title fees, prorated taxes and dues, and the carrying cost of every month the house sits unsold. Added together those are usually the far larger number.
They are also the lines a cash sale removes. Transfer tax you still pay; commission, repairs and months of carrying costs you do not.
Run your own number
- Maryland transfer tax calculator — all 24 counties
- DC transfer tax calculator
- Virginia grantor tax calculator
- All our free home seller tools
8 Day Home Sale buys houses across Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia as-is, with no commission and no repairs, and closes on the date you pick. Request an offer or call (301) 242-SELL.
Rates verified August 2026. General information, not tax or legal advice. Transfer and recordation taxes turn on details a calculator cannot see — exemptions, the wording of your contract, and local practice — so confirm your figures with a title company or settlement attorney before relying on them.
