Maryland Home Improvement Commission (MHIC)
ZFR Constructions holds an active Maryland Home Improvement Commission (MHIC) contractor license. MHIC is the state agency that licenses, regulates, and provides recourse for Maryland homeowners hiring residential contractors. Every salesperson and contractor working on your home is required to be MHIC-licensed.
You can verify our license, complaint history, and insurance status directly with MHIC by searching our license number (displayed in the footer of this site) at dllr.state.md.us/license/mhic.
Insurance coverage
We carry comprehensive insurance that covers your property, our crews, and any third party impacted by work on your home:
- Commercial general liability — $2,000,000 per occurrence, covering property damage, bodily injury, and completed-operations claims.
- Workers' compensation— every employee and direct crew member is covered per Maryland workers' comp law. Subcontractors we engage are required to carry their own coverage and provide a Certificate of Insurance before a single tool comes on site.
- Vehicle and tools coverage — commercial auto and inland marine, in case our equipment is involved in any incident at your property.
- Surety bond— bonded through MHIC's Guaranty Fund, which is the consumer-recourse fund Maryland maintains for licensed contractors.
We'll furnish a current Certificate of Insurancefor any project — most commonly required by HOAs, condo boards, or your real estate agent before listing. Just ask, we'll have it issued the same day.
Permits and inspections
For any scope that requires a building, electrical, plumbing, or mechanical permit, we pull the permit ourselves and coordinate inspections with the local Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ). You sign as the property owner; we handle the paperwork, drawings, fees, and inspection scheduling.
We don't do unpermitted work where a permit is required. It puts your homeowner's insurance at risk, can come up at appraisal or resale, and is a violation of Maryland law — none of those are worth the saved week.
Subcontractors
Specialty trades — electrical, plumbing, HVAC, structural — are run through Maryland-licensed subcontractors we've worked with for years. Every sub on your project is verified as currently licensed, insured, and bonded before they start. Their certificates of insurance are on file with us.
Contracts and payment terms
Every project starts with a written, MHIC-compliant contract that specifies scope, materials, timeline, total fixed price, and the payment schedule. Maryland law requires a number of specific disclosures (right of rescission, lien information, dispute resolution) — you'll see all of them in our contract.
For our Pay-at-Closingprogram, the payment terms and lien positioning are documented as a separate addendum so there's zero ambiguity about how and when we get paid out of the home sale proceeds.
Filing a concern
If something on your project isn't right, the fastest path to fixing it is to call your project manager directly. We don't hide from problems and we've never been afraid of a hard phone call.
If a concern can't be resolved with us, Maryland homeowners always have the right to file a complaint with MHIC against any licensed contractor. Their complaint process and Guaranty Fund details are at dllr.state.md.us/license/mhic.