Maryland · Seventh Judicial Circuit
Selling a house in St. Mary's County
St. Mary's County is the peninsula between the Potomac and the Patuxent, at the southern end of Southern Maryland. Cases are filed on Courthouse Drive in Leonardtown, and the Clerk of that court keeps the county's land records.
- 11 Maryland counties
- I read the county's records
- A live phone within a minute
- Sold as-is
Where a case on your house would be filed
Cases on St. Mary's County houses go to the Circuit Court for St. Mary's County, at 41605 Courthouse Drive, Leonardtown, MD 20650. It sits in the Seventh Judicial Circuit. Those records are public, and that’s how I read a docket before I call.
Where the deed lives
Every Maryland county keeps its land records in the Clerk of the Circuit Court’s office. For St. Mary's County that’s Leonardtown. Deeds, mortgages and liens all go there. They’re online too, through MDLandRec, which the State Archives runs. That’s the second record I read.
Where in St. Mary's County I buy
Anywhere in St. Mary's County — Leonardtown, Lexington Park, California, Charlotte Hall, Mechanicsville, Golden Beach, Callaway, Piney Point, and everywhere between them. One note on that list: Leonardtown is the county's only incorporated municipality; everywhere else is a Census-designated place. I haven’t ranked them by size, because I couldn’t verify a ranking from an official source, and a made-up one is still made up.
- Leonardtown
- Lexington Park
- California
- Charlotte Hall
- Mechanicsville
- Golden Beach
- Callaway
- Piney Point
- Tall Timbers
One more thing about St. Mary's County
St. Mary's, created in 1637, is Maryland's oldest county. St. Mary's City within it was the site of the colony's first permanent settlement in 1634 and served as the capital until the government moved to Annapolis in 1694/5. At the 2020 Census the jurisdiction had 113,777 residents.
What I actually do here
I buy directly and as-is. No repairs, no cleaning, nothing hauled out. There’s no commission, because there’s no listing side. I pay the customary buyer’s closing costs, and you pick the date. If a case has already been filed in Leonardtown, you can still sell — settlement just has to land before the sale date, and those dates are set by statute, so you can know them ahead of time, so they are knowable in advance rather than a surprise.