Is door-to-door soliciting legal in Maryland?

Maryland’s Door-to-Door Sales Act covers goods or services costing $25 or more sold at your home. The seller must give you a completed contract or receipt at the time you sign, in the same language they used to pitch you, showing the date and the seller’s name and address, and stating your right to cancel.

You have three business days to cancel. Skipping any of those disclosure steps is itself an unfair or deceptive trade practice, which matters: it gives you a claim even when the underlying sale was legitimate.

If what you signed on the porch was a home improvement contract - roofing, siding, windows, solar - Maryland gives you five or seven days depending on your age, not three. Doorstep home improvement sales are the ones most likely to be high-pressure and highest-dollar, and the state deliberately gave them a longer window.

§ 6-402 makes it a crime to enter property that is conspicuously posted against trespass, by signs placed where they can reasonably be seen or by the blue paint markings the statute authorizes. Penalties escalate with repeat visits - up to 90 days and $500 for a first offense, more for a second within two years.

§ 6-403 covers unposted property: once the owner tells you to stay off or to leave, staying is wanton trespass. Between the two, the practical rule in Maryland is that notice is everything - which is why a sign that says “no trespassing” does more work than one that says “no soliciting”.

Anyone going door-to-door in Howard County to offer or sell must first register with the Office of Consumer Protection and carry a county-issued ID card, under Howard County Code § 14.700. General soliciting is limited to 9:00 a.m. to sunset; food peddling gets 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The county is also refreshingly blunt about the limits of a sign: it tells residents that ignoring a “no soliciting” sign is not a criminal offense that police or any other agency enforces. You can still order someone off your property.

A county that licenses every solicitor and still can’t enforce your sign is the whole problem in one sentence.

Montgomery County requires a Door-to-Door Vendor License for anyone traveling dwelling to dwelling selling goods or services, and vendors must display their state business license and operator ID while working. The county license does not cover Gaithersburg, Rockville or Takoma Park - those cities license separately.

Rockville requires its own annual Hawker, Peddler, Solicitor License for anyone going house to house selling goods, services or food, and the city is explicit that a Montgomery County license is not a substitute. Enforcement runs through the city’s Code Enforcement Division.