The Maryland transaction, county by county

Maryland is two layers. There is a statewide baseline that applies everywhere, and there are county requirements stacked on top of it, and the second layer is where files actually go wrong. A coordinator working from a single statewide checklist will be wrong in both directions: missing county items on some files, and chasing items that do not apply on others.

Here is the shape of both layers, as the rule packs carry them.

The statewide baseline

Two items apply to essentially every residential file.

• The Maryland disclosure and disclaimer statement. Sellers either disclose known defects or deliver a disclaimer, and the choice has consequences. This is the item most often assumed handled because it is so routine.
• Lead paint disclosure on pre-1978 homes. Conditional, which is exactly why it gets missed. A checklist that does not know the year the property was built cannot tell you the item is required, so it silently is not on the list.

Everything else worth tracking is either county-level or transaction-type-level.

Montgomery County

Montgomery files run on GCAAR paper: the GCAAR offer to purchase and the GCAAR residential contract of sale are the critical documents on the offer side, alongside the Maryland disclosure and disclaimer statement and lead paint where the property predates 1978. An HOA or condo disclosure addendum comes in where the property sits in an association.

From ratification to close, the items that consume real calendar time:

• Title company coordination, opened early rather than when someone remembers
• Montgomery County transfer tax, tracked through to the settlement statement
• The HOA resale certificate, allowing ten to fourteen days. This is the single most common source of a Montgomery County delay, and the lead time is a floor, not an estimate
• Inspection and financing contingency tracking, both agent-visible
• The final walkthrough, twenty-four to forty-eight hours before closing, not a week before

On the listing side the pack expects the Maryland seller disclosure, the Bright MLS input form, at least twenty-five property photos, lockbox and showing instructions, HOA documents, and a signed listing agreement.

The resale certificate is not paperwork. It is a ten-to-fourteen-day clock that starts only when someone orders it.

Prince George's County

The defining difference is the PG County addendum, required on all residential contracts. It is not conditional and it is not optional, and a file assembled from a generic Maryland checklist will not have it.

The seller disclosure set is also different in kind: the pack expects Maryland forms plus PG County forms, not the state forms alone. On the offer side there is also a buyer representation agreement, lead paint where applicable, pre-approval or proof of funds, and earnest money wire instructions.

Two more county-specific items:

• Rental license check on new listings, which catches people coming from other counties
• PG County transfer and recordation tax, tracked to closing

Contract-to-close otherwise looks familiar: title search ordered, inspection contingency tracked, HOA resale certificate where an association is involved.

What this means operationally

The practical consequence is that "Maryland" is not a useful unit for a checklist. The useful unit is county plus transaction type, because a Montgomery listing, a Montgomery buyer offer and a Prince George's buyer offer have genuinely different required sets.

Three habits follow from that:

1. Determine the county and the transaction type before building the file, not while working it. Every downstream requirement hangs off those two facts.
2. Order the association package on day one. In both counties it is the longest-lead item under your control, and it is the one whose lead time cannot be compressed by effort.
3. Treat conditional items as first-class. Lead paint on pre-1978 homes and the rental license check are both invisible on a generic list, and both are the kind of omission that surfaces at the worst moment.

A note on scope

The requirement sets above are the ones our county rule packs actually carry, and the packs cover Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Fairfax County and Washington DC. We do not publish requirements for jurisdictions we have not built, because a confident-sounding checklist for a county nobody verified is worse than no checklist.

Compliance content also changes, and forms, taxes and disclosure timing should be verified with counsel for your jurisdiction. Treat this as a working map of where the differences live, not as legal advice.