Permit Market Report

Howard County Residential HVAC

Q2 2026 (Apr 1 to Jun 30, 2026) · Published August 2026 · Source: Howard County public permit records

Howard homeowners pulled 1,037 residential HVAC permits between April and June. Those filings represent 801 distinct jobs, because the county files one piece of work as several permits, and 148 contractors put their name on them. This report is who did that work, at what kind of property, and how the quarter compares to the one before it.

801
Residential HVAC jobs permitted
148
Contractors filing in this market
64%
Share held by the top 10
$628,950
Median assessed value of homes served

Who is doing the work

# Contractor Jobs Share Median home value Owner occ. Share vs Q1 2026 Rank
1 CONSTELLATION HOME 188 24.7% $636,200 93% -3.0 held
2 ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS ASSOCIATES LLC DBA CROPPMETCALFE 118 15.5% $636,900 96% +8.3 held
3 HORIZON SERVICES MD LLC 48 6.3% $555,250 97% -0.9 held
4 NRG ENERGY/ DBA/ AIRTRON 30 3.9% -1.5 held
5 LEN THE PLUMBER 25 3.3% $581,700 96% +2.3 ▲10
6 ANTHONYS ELECTRIC 24 3.1% $520,800 100% +1.6 ▲3
7 B & B AIR CONDITIONING & HEATING 17 2.2% $655,000 93% +0.8 ▲3
8 AMERICAN RESIDENTIAL SERVICES 14 1.8% $765,500 100% +0.6 ▲4
9 MICHAEL AND SON SERVICES, INC. 14 1.8% $453,000 88% +1.0 ▲12
10 UNITED AIR TEMP 12 1.6% $597,700 92% +0.6 ▲7
11 ASC HEATING AND AIRCONDITIONING INC 11 1.4% $743,650 100% +0.5 ▲3
12 EHRHARDT QUALITY PLUMBING 10 1.3% $646,750 100% -0.4 ▼5
13 BLUE DOT SERVICES 9 1.2% $824,300 89% -0.3 ·
14 F.H. FURR PLUMBING, HEATING, AIR CONDITIONING, & ELECTRICAL 9 1.2% $583,350 83% -0.9 ·
15 HEIL PLUMBING 9 1.2% $942,300 100% +0.4 ·
+ 133 more contractors, ranked 16 through 148 224 29.4% · · · ·
A dash means no assessment record matched that property. Rank change is withheld below ten jobs, where it measures the size of the tail rather than the firm.

CROPPMETCALFE is taking share

CROPPMETCALFE ran 118 jobs against 113 in Q2 2025, holding volume flat while the market fell 18%; in a shrinking market, knowing which firms are still winning is worth more, not less. Quarter on quarter it went from 45 jobs to 118, taking 8.3 points of share. CONSTELLATION HOME still leads at 24.7%, but grew slower than the market and gave up 3.0 points doing it.

Len The Plumber's job count here is a floor. Howard prints the license-of-record business on a permit, and part of this firm's Howard work files under a prior employer's registration, so it sits on a separate row outside this table.

Twelve months of HVAC volume

Jobs permitted per month, Jul '25 through Jun '26. The quarter above sits inside this line, and it is down 18% against the same quarter last year (979 jobs then, 801 now).

Jul '25
394
Aug '25
268
Sep '25
229
Oct '25
294
Nov '25
220
Dec '25
274
Jan '26
208
Feb '26
210
Mar '26
245
Apr '26
273
May '26
287
Jun '26
241

How concentrated this market is

The 10 busiest contractors account for 64% (490) of the 762 HVAC jobs naming a contractor. The other 138 firms split the rest, most of them filing fewer than ten jobs a quarter.

Check the data yourself

Every figure here comes from Howard's own permit records. Three from this quarter, verifiable on the county portal:

Each number above links to its record. Search all of them at https://dilp.howardcountymd.gov/CitizenAccess/

This table is a snapshot and does not move. The Howard County hvac contractor list is the current one, updated as filings land.

This table, every week, for your county

Tradewinds reads Anne Arundel, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll, Frederick, and Prince George's on the same schedule, for every trade. New filings land the week they are pulled, matched to the property and its assessment record.

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Methodology and data notes

Scope

  • Residential HVAC permits filed in Howard County, 2026-04-01 to 2026-06-30. Residential comes from the county's own property label where published, then the permit description, then the parcel's state assessment class.

Jobs, not filings

  • Howard files one piece of work as several permits, one per trade: a heat pump replacement is a mechanical permit plus an electrical permit for the circuit. Permits on one property within 45 days count once, credited to the trade permit. 1,037 filings collapse to 801 jobs.
  • Where a job's only filing is electrical, that contractor is credited: Howard treats the electrical permit as the permit for a like-for-like swap.

Issued work only

  • A job counts when Howard records it issued or completed; cancelled, withdrawn, and in-review applications are excluded. Where one filing was cancelled and another issued, the job counts once, to the issued filing.
  • Status is the county's current record as of 2026-08-21, not its state during the quarter: we do not model status history. Dates are what each permit carries on the county's record list; we hold one per permit and do not separate application from issue date.

Share and change

  • Share is over the 762 jobs naming a contractor; 39 name none and leave the denominator rather than being assigned.
  • Change is in percentage points, not job counts: Howard ran 663 jobs in Q1 2026 against 801 now, so raw counts track the season, not the firm.

Property attributes

  • Median home value is the state assessment per property served, one observation per job. Owner occupancy compares the tax mailing address to the property address, over decidable properties only.
  • 148 permits here carry an address we could not match to a parcel; they count as jobs but contribute no value or occupancy figure. A median computed from fewer than five observations is withheld rather than printed.

Known limitations

  • A contractor is credited from the name the county prints on the permit. Howard prints the license-of-record business, so a professional whose registration still names a prior employer files under that name, and a firm's true total can sit on more than one row. Every count here is a floor for the firm it names.
  • Assessed values are state tax assessments and run below market prices. Parcel data refreshes roughly yearly, so values and attributes lag current conditions.
  • Trade classification is a deterministic keyword classifier over the permit type and work description. Misreads are possible on unusual descriptions, so counts should be read as close estimates, not audited totals.
  • This is one quarter of one county. The twelve-month line above is there so the quarter is read against a season rather than a straight line through three points.