The Homestead Tax Credit and Your $5,485 Tax Bill (Part 30 of 30: The Fort Washington Files)
This is Part 30 of The Fort Washington Files from Donnell Williams Jr. and DMV Prime Properties, the final part of a thirty-part series built entirely on what 689 Fort Washington listings actually did in 2026.
The median Fort Washington home that closed this year carried an annual property tax bill of $5,485. Inside a monthly mortgage payment, that is roughly $457 a month, every month, for as long as the house is owned.
There is a Maryland credit that exists specifically to keep that number from climbing too fast, most homeowners do not file for it, and a second credit with a similar name gets confused with it constantly. Both are worth understanding, and this post separates them.
What $5,485 looks like across the zip code
The median is a starting point, not a description of any one house.
Across the 361 closed Fort Washington sales in Donnell's Bright MLS export, the median annual tax was $5,485 on a median sale price of $470,000 and a median above-grade size of 1,716 square feet. The subdivision medians spread widely around that: Devon Hills Condo at $2,830, Pinewood Hill at $3,387, Prophecy at $4,015, Rosedale Estates at $4,266, Fort Washington at $4,662, Tantallon South at $5,497, Tantallon Square at $5,632, Fort Washington Estates at $6,374, Aragona Village at $6,892, Tantallon Hills at $6,963, Tantallon on the Potomac at $7,043 and Tantallon North at $9,411.
That is a range from under $3,000 to over $9,000 a year within a single zip code. Part 21 of this series walked through it in detail. The point here is simply that the credit conversation matters more to some owners than others, and it matters most where the assessed value is largest.
What the Homestead Tax Credit actually does
The Homestead Tax Credit does not reduce a tax bill. It caps how fast the taxable assessed value of a principal residence can increase from one year to the next.
That distinction is the whole thing. If assessments rise sharply, the credit limits how much of that increase can flow into the taxable value in a given year. The rest is excluded, and the owner is taxed on the capped figure rather than the full assessed figure.
It applies to a principal residence only. It does not apply to a second home, an investment property, or a house that has stopped being the owner's primary residence.
The 3 percent figure, and the caveat that comes with it
Per the State Department of Assessments and Taxation's published County and Municipal Homestead Credit Percentages table effective July 1, 2024, the State of Maryland cap is 10 percent, Prince George's County is listed at 3 percent, and Charles County is listed at 7 percent.
A 3 percent county cap against a 10 percent state cap is a meaningful difference on a home whose assessment is moving.
Here is the necessary caveat, and Donnell would rather a reader hear it from him than discover it later. Prince George's County's own finance page describes the Homestead credit differently than the SDAT table does. Anyone relying on the 3 percent figure for a financial decision should confirm the current, applicable percentage directly with SDAT before acting on it.
SDAT can be reached at sdat.homestead@maryland.gov, at 1-866-650-8783, or at 410-767-2165 in the Baltimore area.
It is a one-time application, and it is not automatic
This is where homeowners lose money quietly.
The Homestead Tax Credit requires a one-time application to SDAT. It is not applied automatically to every principal residence. A homeowner who has never filed the application is not receiving the cap, no matter how long they have owned the home.
The good news is that it is one filing rather than an annual renewal. The application is submitted once, and the credit follows the property for that owner's principal residence.
For a buyer who just closed on a Fort Washington home, this belongs on the first-month checklist alongside changing the locks and setting up utilities. For an owner who has been in the house for years and has never checked, it is worth a phone call to find out.
The other credit, and why people mix them up
The Homeowners' Property Tax Credit is a completely different program. Similar name, similar subject, different mechanism, different eligibility, different deadline.
The Homeowners' credit is income-based. Combined gross household income cannot exceed $60,000. Net worth, excluding the value of the home itself and qualified retirement accounts, must be under $200,000.
The deadline is October 1 each year, and SDAT advises filing by April 15. Unlike the Homestead credit, this one is not a one-time filing.
So the two differ on every axis that matters. Homestead caps assessment growth for any principal residence regardless of income and is filed once. Homeowners' is an income and asset tested credit against the bill itself, and it is filed on an annual cycle.
A homeowner who qualifies for both should file for both. A homeowner who files for one and assumes it covered the other has done half the job.
Where the confusion does real damage
The most common version Donnell hears goes like this. A homeowner says they already have the homestead exemption, so they do not need to look at anything else, when what they actually did was nothing at all, or what they actually filed was the other program years ago.
The second most common version runs the other way. A homeowner hears about an income limit of $60,000, decides they earn too much to qualify for anything, and never files the Homestead application, which has no income limit attached to it.
Both mistakes are free to avoid. One phone call to SDAT settles which applications are on file for a given property.
The tax line belongs in the buying conversation
For a buyer, the practical use of all of this is at the offer stage rather than after settlement.
The tax figure attached to a listing reflects the current assessment on the current owner's situation, including any credits that owner is receiving. A new owner's bill can look different. That is exactly why the spread in the subdivision table above, from $2,830 to $9,411, should be verified property by property rather than estimated from a median.
Donnell is a broker rather than a tax advisor, an attorney or a lender. Nothing here is tax advice, the figures cited come from SDAT's published materials and from closed listing data, and every homeowner and buyer should confirm their own situation with SDAT, with the county, and with a qualified tax professional before making a decision based on it.
The charge that is not a tax, and still shows up
One more line item belongs in this conversation because buyers routinely mistake it for part of the tax bill.
WSSC Water administers a front foot benefit charge in its Prince George's County service area. It repays the cost of running water and sewer lines to a lot, it is billed annually for a defined term, and it attaches to the property rather than to the owner. Maryland requires disclosure of private deferred water and sewer assessments on residential transfers, including the amount and the remaining term.
Amounts and term lengths vary by property, and no figure for them appears in Donnell's data, so this post does not quote one. What matters is that a buyer asks whether a charge exists on the specific property, what it is, and how many years remain, and gets the answer in writing before settlement rather than in a bill afterward. Neither the Homestead credit nor the Homeowners' credit affects it.
Thirty parts, one export, and what it showed
This series began with a single question: what actually happened in Fort Washington this year, according to the record rather than the narrative.
The answer across 689 listings tracked through September 17, 2026 came down to a handful of durable findings. Nearly three in ten listings that left the market, 144 of 505, left without selling. Those failed listings were not overpriced per square foot, at $267 against $273 for closed sales. They were larger homes priced at an absolute number the local buyer pool could not reach, and half of them cut price by a median of $25,000 and still did not sell.
Time was the other spine of the story. Of the 361 closings, the 100 that sold within a week came in below original list only 13.0 percent of the time, while past 90 days that share reached 94.3 percent. Sellers who never cut, 257 of them, closed in a median of 11 days at exactly 100 percent of original list. The 104 who cut took a median of 60 days and landed at 94.83 percent.
Underneath all of it sat a fairly consistent house: $470,000, 1,716 above-grade square feet, built in 1976, four bedrooms, a basement, 0.28 acres, $265 per square foot, and a $5,485 tax bill. Around that median, the zip code varied enormously, from Devon Hills Condo at a $239,900 median to Tantallon North at $730,000, from Gallahan Estates closing in a median of 1 day to Tantallon Hills at 70, from Pinewood Hill at $190 per square foot to Murray Hill at $355.
What Donnell hopes a reader takes from it
The through line of all thirty parts is that Fort Washington rewards precision and punishes guessing. The zip code median is useful for orientation and almost useless for pricing a specific house, because the subdivision, the decade built, the size and the first-week strategy move the outcome far more than the zip code average ever could.
That is true for a seller setting a number, for a buyer writing an offer, and for anyone relocating here trying to figure out what the money buys. Every one of those decisions gets better with the actual comparables attached.
Bring the real numbers to your real decision
Thirty posts of data are still no substitute for someone pulling the record on a specific address. Donnell Williams Jr. is the broker-owner of DMV Prime Properties at 12815 Old Fort Road in Fort Washington, and this zip code is his home market, his office address and the market he tracks listing by listing. Whether the question is what a home is worth, what to file after closing, or what a budget actually reaches here, he will run the numbers before anyone signs anything. Call 301.818.0313 or email donnell@dmvprimerealty.com.
That closes The Fort Washington Files. Parts 1 through 30 remain available at donnellwilliams.com for anyone buying, selling or considering a move to 20744, and Donnell's philosophy for the whole series has been the same one his brokerage runs on: educate to elevate.
.png)
.png)