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CheeeeeeseGromit t1_jarea9h wrote

According to the Howard County online map, it's a huge (60+ acres) privately owned lot, with a 9818 square foot house plus 2000 square foot basement!

Here is the tax assessment for the property: Maryland DAT

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Engineered-Failure t1_jasi1mw wrote

I wonder why SAC owned it at one point.

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phil_g t1_jasps68 wrote

If I understand the deed history here, this land was part of a parcel bought by a church in 1993. The church then split the parcel in two and put an agricultural easement on one of the new parcels in exchange for being able to build on the other parcel. Both parcels were bought by the Soccer Association of Columbia in 2002. They then put soccer fields on the buildable parcel and, in 2004, sold off the parcel with the easement, which is the one we're looking at here. They still own the parcel with the soccer fields; it's the Lucido Fields at Covenant Park.

I'm not sure why SAC bought both parcels when they only needed the one, but perhaps it was part of a deal with the church. "We don't want to sell both parts separately, so if you want the one, you have to take both and then figure out what to do with the other yourself," perhaps.

Also, as a side note, the church still owns a chunk of the buildable parcel, but I can't tell how the parcel's ownership has been transferred. It was definitely sold to SAC, so probably at some point SAC subdivided the parcel further and sold a chunk back to the church. I can't find the deeds for that, though, and I don't feel like trawling through the deed indexes to try and find anything relevant.

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[deleted] t1_jargrch wrote

[deleted]

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fowl_territory t1_jarljwz wrote

FYI it looks like it's zoned for agriculture, not residential, so they are basically only taxed on the house and an acre of their land. To do that they have a number of ag requirements they are meeting to not pay the higher tax rate. That also means the land is less valuable because you can't subdivide it into lots.

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CheeeeeeseGromit t1_jarjign wrote

Where do you see that?

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lovelyrita202 t1_jark97e wrote

Oh I see the value now. So they probably pay something.

Weirdly It’s also listed as a Special Tax Recapture: AGRICULTURAL TRANSFER TAX And also list a church as owner.

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phil_g t1_jarzwel wrote

The church isn't an owner. The current owners are Robert and Lisa Berg. The property description is "PAR B 62.971 A, 4580 CENTENNIAL LN, COVEN BAP CHUR OF W COLU", because it was originally created in the 1990s (I think) when land owned by a church was divided into two parcels, this one being the ~63 acre parcel "B". The lot has been sold several times since then; the current and previous owners appear to have been private individuals.

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