Abandoned Homes in Baltimore Are Now Being Fought Over in Bidding Wars

You may be wondering why Chicago's home prices are rising faster than Baltimore even though our real estate tax have ramped like crazy (partially to offset the cratering of office valuations since the pandemic). It's "supply". Not enough housing has been built in our city.

Abandoned Homes in Baltimore Are Now Being Fought Over in Bidding Wars

America’s housing affordability crisis is leading more home buyers and flippers to give dilapidated Baltimore homes a fresh look

Thousands of Baltimore vacant homes, which for decades dragged down neighborhoods and repelled investment, are now in demand.

By Nicholas G. Miller, WSJ

Aug. 16, 2026 8:00 pm ET

High housing costs elsewhere are driving demand for Baltimore’s vacant homes, helping the city cut its vacancy rate by nearly a third over the last decade.

BALTIMORE—With its boarded-up windows and peeling facade, the vacant building didn’t seem like the kind of house that would prompt a bidding war.

But after competitors doubled what he had wanted to pay, Chris Waldron, a plumber and part-time property investor, reluctantly raised his auction card to offer $45,000 for the chance to fix up and then resell the property. His winning bid, a bargain next to housing prices elsewhere, was steep compared with what Baltimore’s vacant homes used to command.

The purchase is part of one of the most improbable reversals in Baltimore’s history and for any of America’s beleaguered housing markets: Thousands of Baltimore vacant homes, which for decades dragged down neighborhoods and repelled investment, are now in demand.

While not every neighborhood is participating in the city’s housing recovery, the demand has helped Baltimore cut its vacancy by nearly a third over the last decade and jump-started plans to eliminate the problem entirely by 2038.

There are plenty of reasons for the success. The city and state have committed unprecedented levels of funding. Nonprofit developers have adopted a strategy of rehabilitating entire blocks at once, and violent crime has plummeted.

But one force is increasingly critical to Baltimore’s turnaround: the housing affordability crisis everywhere else.

Housing costs in Maryland and on the East Coast have made Baltimore’s cheap homes far more attractive, giving investors and community developers the demand they need to take on complicated rehabs.

Baltimore’s median home price is $235,333, compared with $381,333 nationally, according to Zillow.

Plumber Chris Waldron stands in a dilapidated house he purchased at auction in Baltimore.

Chris Waldron, a plumber, walks through a house he purchased at auction.

The day after the auction, Waldron visited his new asset for the first time. “What did I get myself into?” he asked, finding kitchen equipment, furniture, clothes, bottles, a family picture, and wooden planks with nails pointing upward coating the floor.

But Waldron was already plotting where a new bathroom would go. The plan: spend $130,000 and five months fixing up the property and sell it for over $300,000.

For decades, Baltimore owed the intractability of its vacant housing crisis to simple economics: It cost more to rehab a vacant home than that renovated home could be sold for. Once-stately row homes became crumbling shells, lowering property values, sparking fires, drawing crime and discouraging investment.

In the last few years, city and state leaders have launched a $3 billion plan to eliminate vacancy, offering subsidies for nonprofit developers and home buyers and repair grants for homeowners.

“Vacant housing was everywhere,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in an interview. “When people see a bunch of vacants, no one wants to live there. No one wants to invest there.”

A number of postindustrial cities, including Detroit and St. Louis, have attempted similar strategies to reduce blight, but Baltimore’s recent progress stands out. For decades, the number of vacant homes hardly moved from 16,000. Now, that number has fallen below 12,000.

The uptick in home buyers started during the pandemic, when low interest rates drew capital into the residential market, driving up prices and helping renovation projects pencil out.

Even after rates rose, buyer demand continued in Baltimore as home prices skyrocketed elsewhere. People from Washington, D.C., and the surrounding suburbs have opted for Baltimore as a more affordable alternative.

Alex Queen, a former Los Angeles resident, moved back to her native Baltimore after losing bidding war after bidding war for homes in California. She and her family bought and moved into a vacant home rehabbed by nonprofit developer Parity Homes.

Bree Jones, the founder of nonprofit developer Parity Homes, opens the door to a home under construction in Baltimore's Harlem Park neighborhood. A home renovated by Parity Homes in Harlem Park, and one of the developer’s properties before renovation.Jrphotomedia

Baltimore used to address its vacant issue on a citywide basis, sprinkling funds across neighborhoods. Vacant homes breed more vacant homes nearby, and going one by one, the city couldn’t keep up.

Instead, public officials and nonprofit developers are now taking what they call a “whole-blocks” approach, gaining control of as many properties on a block as possible, rehabilitating them all at once and adding community gardens and streetlights.

Doing so has turned a vicious cycle into a virtuous one in which the rehabilitation of blocks draws residents and businesses, which provide demand for the renovation of nearby blocks.

A revival in East Baltimore

BALTIMORE

Green Mount Cemetery

Projects planned

or under construction

Completed projects

JOHNSTON SQUARE

NEIGHBORHOOD

Planned

greenspace

Parks and greenspace projects

200 meters

Note: Project statuses as of March, 2026.

Sources: ReBUILD Metro (development projects); Open Baltimore (Johnston Square boundary); OpenStreetMap (base map)

Drew An-Pham/WSJ

That process has been most successful in neighborhoods that already have anchor assets to support demand.

Ella Miller and Alex Kovach bought a home in one such area, East Baltimore’s Johnston Square, where nonprofit developer ReBUILD Metro has halved the number of vacant homes in recent years. The neighborhood is close to downtown and Johns Hopkins Hospital, where Miller works, and to subway, light-rail and train stations.

“Johnston Square is at the perfect location,” Kovach said.

Alex Kovach and Ella Miller with their cat, Meow, inside their newly renovated Johnston Square home. Alex Queen and her family in their new home.Bree Jones

But the city’s concentrated investment strategy means that some neighborhoods most in need of attention have received very little.

Carrollton Ridge in southwest Baltimore, with historically some of the highest homicide rates in the city, still has about 750 vacant homes, 40 more than it had 10 years ago.

“It’s not getting any investment when it comes to vacant housing,” said Derwin Hannah, a community leader. “You’re looking at a community with nothing.”

Two men walk past dilapidated row houses in Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge neighborhood, one with ivy-covered walls.

The Carrollton Ridge neighborhood of Baltimore still has about 750 vacant homes, 40 more than it had 10 years ago.

Derwin Hannah, a southwest Baltimore advocate, sits outside the Samuel FB Morse Recreation Center and The Food Project building.

Derwin Hannah, a southwest Baltimore advocate, says Carrollton Ridge isn’t getting investment for its vacant housing.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, blocks of crumbling shells, charred from the frequent fires that plague Carrollton Ridge, played host to an open-air drug market. Some had trees growing through fallen roofs, one had a wasp nest peeking out the window, and many had red diamonds indicating they were at risk of collapse.

Even in the neighborhoods that are receiving investment, continued progress could become more difficult. Speculators are swooping in, seeing an opportunity to buy a shell for cheap and wait for home values to rise, said Bree Jones, founder of Parity Homes.

Last year, New York real-estate investors were alleged to have committed fraud in receiving loans to acquire hundreds of Baltimore vacant properties. Many of the mortgages defaulted, creating a foreclosure crisis that threatened to drag blocks back down.

Mural artist Yewande Kotun Davis painting a mural next to a community garden.

Mural artist Yewande Kotun Davis paints next to a community garden in Baltimore’s Johnston Square neighborhood.

Still, Baltimore residents in transformed neighborhoods report a new feeling in the city. For Regina Hammond, a resident of over four decades in Johnston Square, the change is hard to believe.

A community garden has replaced a drug market, a library stands where an unofficial dumping ground once accumulated milk crates, and formerly deserted blocks now have families moving in.

“There was nothing but rows and rows of boarded-up houses,” Hammond said. “Now it’s a whole different story.”