Baltimore Market

House beautiful, this isn't: The yard is overgrown, the windows are boarded up, there's a big gash in the first-floor ceiling and the roof has holes. Mark Whitten was delighted. The real estate investor, who looks for homes he can flip to landlords and rehabbers, figured he could immediately find a buyer for the vacant North Baltimore rowhouse, probably someone who would fix it up and rent it out. "I'm going to make an offer and try to get this property under contract today," Whitten, 29, said as he walked through the derelict home last week.

Smokers, step away from those cantaloupes. Starting this Sunday, the Baltimore Farmers' Market & Bazaar will be smoke-free, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts announced Wednesday. It's the office's attempt to promote healthful living in the city and one more measure to curb smoking in the state, which already has the fourth-lowest percentage of adult smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This declaration was made so that farmers and patrons can have a clean environment," said BOPA Executive Director Bill Gilmore in a statement.

You can thank asparagus. The Baltimore Farmers' Market & Bazaar opens Sunday, its earliest opening date ever. Until 2003, when it was moved up to the first week in May, the opening came in early June. Bill Gilmore, executive director of Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, says the market's earlier opening is a response in part to its increasing popularity. "We've had such a huge increase over the years," Gilmore says. But farmers also pushed for the change. This might sound counterintuitive to marketer-goers whose senses remain dulled until they see the season's first strawberries.

Gauging the trajectory of the real estate market in the Baltimore region has become a hyper-local exercise — it depends on precisely where you live. While a handful of communities roared back so much last year that the number of home sales actually topped the market peak of 2005, many others are still free-falling years after the housing bubble popped, raising the possibility that the promise of revitalization during boom times truly was a mirage, a Baltimore Sun analysis found.

Vertis Holdings Inc. of Baltimore said Thursday that it filed for voluntary bankruptcy protection as part of an effort to reduce approximately 60 percent – or $700 million – of its debt. The company, which offers advertising inserts and direct marketing solutions, is embarking on a "pre-packaged" bankruptcy plan, where the debtor and creditors have already negotiated a reorganization plan, which includes $600 million in financing from Morgan Stanley and GE Capital. The company expects to emerge from bankruptcy in about two months.

By the time she reads this article, Bridget McNamee ought to be one happy woman. On the morning of the night that McNamee and her fiance, Gareth Port, were to be married, he put aside a "to-do" list that was chock-full of chores he needed to have accomplished before the 5 p.m. ceremony in Nottingham — chores such as "get a haircut" and "buy cigars. " Instead, with his best man in tow, the 29-year-old was at the Towson Town Center. He was waiting for the brand new Tiffany store to open its doors for the first time so he could buy a bauble for his bride-to-be.

Baltimore County's newest farmers' market will bring about 20 area farmers to the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. today and every Wednesday through the summer. Shoppers will find beef, bison, breads, ice cream, fresh flowers, fruits and vegetables at the newest of 13 markets throughout the county. "This is an attractive new location, especially for people who don't make it down to Towson," said Chris McCollum, agriculture liaison for the county's Department of Economic Development.

Frederick-based BlueRidge Bank said Tuesday it opened a Baltimore area branch in Towson. The bank, which was established in April 2008, also hired Tim Daly to lead the new office as executive vice president and Hugh Robinson as senior vice president. Daly previously served as senior vice president for Chevy Chase Bank's commercial banking division for the Baltimore market, while Robinson was executive vice president and senior lender at Bay National Bank in Baltimore. BlueRidge Bank has nearly $100 million in assets.

Buyers in the Baltimore metro area hustled to get a home before a federal incentive worth thousands of dollars expired last month, fueling sales and reversing a long slide in prices — if only temporarily. Home sales rose 35 percent in April compared with a year earlier, one of the biggest increases since Metropolitan Regional Information Systems began tracking the metro area in the late 1990s. The number of contracts signed — pending sales that will close later if all goes well — rose even more strongly, up about 50 percent over a year earlier.

Robert Victor Dallmus, the retired owner of a paper goods business who served stall vendors in Baltimore's market system and area seafood houses, died of Parkinson's disease complications Dec. 14 at Oak Crest Village. The former Towson resident was 93. Born in Baltimore and raised near Clifton Park, he was a 1934 Polytechnic Institute graduate. He earned a degree at the old Baltimore College of Commerce. During World War II, he was a boatswain's mate in the Coast Guard and was stationed in Puerto Rico, St. Lucia and Trinidad, among other places.