It's one of the three most-affluent counties in all of the counties of the U.S.
They may be affluent, but they're also DUmb as oysters.
For two or three years, for some reason I've never been able to figure, I was getting two or three junk e-mails a week from the Howard County Association of Realtors. I filtered them so they went to "Junk e-mail", but it still bugged me that I got so many. They weren't advertising property, or sending information about property in Howard County, they were all solicitations for me to pay dues and join the association. I had to look them up to know it was Maryland.
Aside from buying property, I've never had any contact with a realtor in my life, and I'm certainly not one myself. Except for their grimy Baltimore airport, and the route taken by the limo to D.C., I've never even been in Maryland. I tried clicking on "unsubscribe", to no avail. I started replying to each one asking to be taken off the list, no response, no effect. Finally, I looked up the e-mail addresses of their board members. Each time I got an e-mail, I'd forward it to each board member, along with a friendly request for them take me off their list. Nothing. I changed my requests to be progressively less friendly.
Shortly before my requests to the board members reached the point of illegality, the e-mails suddenly stopped. I never heard a word from anyone at the Howard County Association of Realtors. If I'm ever forced to move to Maryland, the chance of which is less than zero, I would buy my home only from an agent who has no connection whatever to the Howard County Association of DUmbass Realtors. I wonder if Vinnie or Spunkly are members.