If you own a rental property in Maryland, your standard homeowners policy is the wrong product. The moment a tenant moves in, the underwriting assumptions behind an HO-3 — owner-occupied, your belongings, your liability footprint — stop being true, and a denied claim becomes a real risk. The right product is a dwelling fire policy (DP-3 in industry shorthand) written specifically for landlord exposures. At Terrapin we route most Maryland landlord business through our Steadily appointment because Steadily was purpose-built for investors rather than retrofitted from a homeowners product.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Steadily writes DP-3 forms with broader landlord-specific endorsements, multi-unit and portfolio policies for investors scaling past their first property, short-term rental coverage that doesn't conflict with Airbnb/Vrbo activity, vacant property coverage during turnover, and a fast-quote API that lets us bind same-day on most clean properties. For our Maryland clients — accidental landlords who moved and kept the house, single-family rental investors in MoCo and PG, hosts running short-term stays near the DC line, and small portfolio investors with 3-10 doors — Steadily is the default first quote, with Tapco as a backup when a property profile sits outside Steadily's appetite.
Why Maryland landlords need specialty coverage (not standard homeowners)
The risks a landlord carries are different from the risks a homeowner carries. As a landlord, you're not protecting the contents of the home (those belong to your tenant); you're protecting the building, the rental income stream, and your personal liability for what happens on a property you own but don't occupy. You also need protection against scenarios that don't exist for an owner-occupant: tenant-caused damage outside normal wear and tear, vandalism by a departing tenant, vacancy gaps between tenants, malicious mischief, and short-term gaps where the property is uninhabitable while you complete repairs.
An HO-3 written for an owner-occupant doesn't have the right shape for any of that. The personal property coverage is dead weight; the loss-of-use coverage assumes you live there and need to move out; the liability is keyed to your residency, not your role as a landlord. And critically, most HO-3 carriers will deny claims if they discover the property is consistently rented to tenants — they consider the policy materially misrepresented. The clean solution is a DP-3 policy issued by a carrier whose underwriting expects, rather than excludes, rental occupancy.
What our Steadily appointment offers Maryland investors
Steadily is the dominant carrier in our Maryland landlord book, and they've built the product around the real workflow of property investors rather than the workflow of a captive homeowners carrier. A few specifics that matter in practice:
- Multi-policy portfolios — investors with 5+ doors can consolidate billing and renewal dates, which removes a huge amount of administrative friction.
- Short-term rental endorsements — Airbnb, Vrbo, and other short-stay platforms are explicitly covered (or explicitly priced), rather than carved out as exclusions.
- Vacant property coverage — gaps between tenants, mid-renovation periods, and inherited property are all situations where standard policies cancel; Steadily writes them with vacancy endorsements.
- Fast-quote API — for clean properties, we can bind same-day, often within an hour of receiving address and basic details.
Coverages Maryland landlords should carry
Dwelling fire (DP-3)
The core building coverage — open-peril on the dwelling, replacement cost or actual cash value depending on how you elect, sized to current rebuild cost in Montgomery County labor markets (not what you paid for the property or what Zillow says it's worth). For most Maryland single-family rentals, dwelling coverage lands somewhere between $250K and $700K depending on neighborhood and square footage. We run replacement cost estimators on every property we quote so you're not under- or over-insured.
Loss of rents (fair rental value)
Replaces lost rental income while a covered loss is being repaired. We typically write 12 months of loss of rents because Montgomery County permitting and contractor scheduling routinely push repair timelines past 6 months on significant losses. If your rental income is $3,500/month, 12 months of coverage = $42,000 of replacement income — a number worth having when the alternative is paying the mortgage out of pocket while the unit sits unrepaired.
Premises liability
Defends and pays judgments when a tenant, guest, or service provider is injured on the property. We typically write $300K-$1M of premises liability per location, then stack a personal umbrella on top for landlords with multiple properties or meaningful net worth. The umbrella is unusually cheap relative to the protection it provides — $1M of umbrella over your landlord and personal lines is typically $300-$600/year.
Vandalism and malicious mischief
Tenant-departure damage and intentional acts by non-tenants. Standard HO-3 forms exclude or restrict these; landlord forms include them as named perils with specific terms. This is one of the most-claimed coverages on Maryland landlord policies.
Building ordinance or law
Pays the additional cost of bringing damaged portions of the building up to current Montgomery County code when you rebuild after a covered loss. Older Silver Spring, Takoma Park, and Bethesda housing stock often involves significant code-upgrade cost — electrical, plumbing, insulation, accessibility — and ordinance/law is the coverage that picks that up rather than leaving you holding the bill.
Equipment breakdown
HVAC, water heaters, electrical systems, and major appliances that fail mechanically (rather than from a covered peril like fire). For a rental property where you bear the cost of replacement, equipment breakdown coverage adds modest premium and pays for itself the first time an HVAC condenser fails or a water heater leaks across a finished basement.
Maryland-specific landlord exposures
Maryland and Montgomery County rules add layers of landlord exposure that out-of-state owners and DIY investors often miss. The most important ones:
- Rent escrow program — Maryland's rent escrow statute lets tenants withhold rent into a court-supervised escrow account when serious habitability defects go unaddressed. Insurance doesn't replace lost rent in those situations, so prompt repair and clear documentation matter; a strong landlord policy includes loss-of-rents triggered by covered losses (not by tenant disputes).
- Security deposit rules — Maryland caps security deposits at 2 months of rent, requires interest-bearing accounts, and imposes strict accounting and return timelines. Not an insurance product, but landlord-friendly coverage at least removes one variable from the financial picture.
- MoCo Department of Housing rental license requirements — most non-owner-occupied Montgomery County rentals require an annual rental license with proof of liability insurance. We issue certificates naming the licensing authority on request, same day.
- Baseline flood risk in MoCo and along the DC line — Rock Creek tributaries, Sligo Creek, Cabin John Creek, and other waterways run through dense rental neighborhoods. Standard landlord policies exclude flood. NFIP and private flood coverage is a separate conversation we have on every property near a flood zone.
- Recent eviction law changes — Maryland has tightened eviction timelines and notice requirements in recent legislative sessions, which can extend the period during which a property generates no income. Loss of rents only pays after a covered physical loss, so cash reserves remain the protection against eviction-related income gaps.
Who we write landlord policies for
- Single-family rentals — the most common Maryland landlord profile, often a former primary residence kept as a long-term hold.
- 2-4 unit MoCo properties — duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes in Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Bethesda, Rockville. DP-3 with multi-unit endorsements through Steadily.
- Short-term rental hosts — Airbnb and Vrbo operators in Bethesda, Silver Spring, Takoma Park, and the DC line, where short-stay demand is strong.
- Portfolio investors (3+ units) — small portfolio operators who benefit from consolidated billing and a single annual renewal review.
- Accidental landlords — clients who moved for a job, kept the house, and now need to convert from HO-3 to DP-3 without a gap in coverage.
Cross-link to our full carrier roster to see how Steadily fits with the other 11 appointments, or browse the related city-level pages: Rockville, Bethesda, and Silver Spring are the three highest-volume landlord markets in our book.