What to Ask a Contractor Before Work Starts

The questions below are worth asking because each one has an answer a public record can confirm or contradict. That is the whole test. A question a state register cannot settle is a question about taste or price; these seven are questions about facts, and every one of them is free to check before any money moves.

None of this is an accusation. Most of the mismatches you will find are boring: a license held under a surname rather than a trading name, a renewal that lapsed three weeks ago, a classification that covered the original bid but not the extra you added on the second visit. Finding the boring version early is the point. See how to verify a license for the lookup in each of the ten states this directory covers, and what to do when the record does not match for the case where it is not boring.

1. What is your license number, and what exact name is it held under?

Ask for both, and write both down. The number is what you search with; the name is what you compare against. Oregon's Construction Contractors Board is blunt about the first half: the most accurate way to look up a license is with a CCB license number.

The name half is where people trip. A license very often does not read the way the truck does, and that is normal rather than suspicious. Connecticut licenses people, not companies, so a plumbing record belongs to a named individual and the company is a trade name they work under; if you are hiring a plumber in Stamford, expect the record to be a person. New Jersey's verification portal warns that some licenses are issued in the name of the business, not an individual. Many Virginia and Arizona contractors are sole proprietors licensed under a legal personal name with a registered trade name beside it. California files sole owners surname first, which is why CSLB's own lookup tip is that if you cannot find the license by using the business name, and it contains a first and last name, type the last name first.

A truthful answer is one where the number pulls up a record whose name you can trace to the person standing in front of you, in one step. CSLB's advice for that moment: when the contractor comes to your house to give you a bid, ask to see their pocket license, along with a picture I.D. and make sure the person you're dealing with is the same person on the license. If the number returns a stranger, that is not automatically fraud, but it is a question, and the answer belongs in writing.

2. What classification is it, and does it cover this contract?

A license authorizes a kind of work, not all work. California stamps the trade onto the license itself, and the general building classification has an explicit boundary: a general building contractor also may contract for specialty work, but must hold a specialty license for that work or actually have a specialty contractor do the work. The only exception is if the job requires more than two types of work on a building. A reroof bid on its own, by that rule, needs the roofing classification on the license, or a roofing contractor doing the work. Arizona goes further and puts a scope on the class, commercial, residential or dual, and a commercial-only Arizona license does not permit residential work, which matters when you are pricing an HVAC contractor in Phoenix. Virginia's A, B and C letters are a project-size tier rather than a trade, and the trade sits in the specialty beside it.

The useful version of this question is not "are you licensed" but "what does the license cover, and does that include the part of my job you are quoting me for?" Ask it again when the scope grows. A classification that fitted the original bid may not fit the change order.

3. Is the license current today, or was it current when the card was printed?

A pocket card, a screenshot, an emailed PDF and a line in a quote all say what was true on the day they were made. The register says what is true now, and it is the only one of those that updates. Run the number yourself, on the agency's own site, on the day you sign.

Read the status word and the expiration date as two separate checks, because states disagree about which of the two carries the meaning. California has no expired status at all: a clean license reads CLEAR and the other values are suspensions, so a record can read CLEAR and still be past its date. Minnesota's live word is Issued. Florida states currency in two columns, Current and Active, and a license marked Current but Inactive is a real, renewable license whose holder may not work. Connecticut runs four live statuses, including active in renewal. The state-by-state walkthroughs are in the verify cluster.

4. Bond, insurance, workers' compensation: which do you carry, and what does each protect?

These are three different things, they protect three different people, and none of them is a promise about the quality of the work. Washington makes the point in statute. A registered contractor there posts a surety bond in the sum of $30,000 if the applicant is a general contractor or $15,000 if the applicant is a specialty contractor, and the disclosure statement the contractor has to hand you says what that bond is worth in plain capitals: THIS BOND OR DEPOSIT MIGHT NOT BE SUFFICIENT TO COVER A CLAIM THAT MIGHT ARISE FROM THE WORK DONE UNDER YOUR CONTRACT. The bond is not reserved for you either. RCW 18.27.040 sets an order of priority in which employee wage and benefit claims are paid before a homeowner's breach of contract claim, so a bond can be drawn down by other claimants before your turn comes.

Liability insurance is the cover that pays for damage to your property, and it is frequently not required at all. CSLB says so directly: commercial general liability insurance is not required; however, it covers damage to your property. Workers' compensation is a third thing again, covering injury to the contractor's employees, and in California, if a contractor has employees, they are required to carry workers' compensation insurance. The register may publish none of it. Washington L&I's Verify tool confirms that a contractor has posted a minimum bond and purchased liability insurance, which is why a check on an electrician in Seattle answers more than the same check does in Florida, Virginia, Connecticut, Arizona or New Jersey, where the license file carries neither figure. That is a gap in the state's file rather than a finding about any contractor, and it is exactly why you ask for the certificate yourself. The fields to read on one are in how to check a contractor's insurance.

The one sentence worth keeping from Washington L&I is about the opposite case: unregistered contractors carry no bond or insurance to protect consumers.

5. Who is pulling the permit?

Ask it early, get the answer into the contract, and be careful about volunteering. In California the contract is required to cover the point, along with the work, price, when payments will be made, who gets the necessary building permits, and when the job will be finished. Virginia goes further and requires the written contract to carry a statement of assurance that the contractor will comply with all local requirements for building permits, inspections, and zoning, which is a useful thing to point at when you are hiring a general contractor in Virginia Beach.

The reason this is not a paperwork detail is what happens when you pull it yourself. CSLB is unambiguous: when you sign a building permit application as an owner-builder, you assume full responsibility for all phases of your project and its integrity. An owner-builder must pull all building permits. Your project must pass codes and building inspections, and is also responsible for supervising, scheduling, and paying subcontractors. So when the person quoting you the work suggests that you take out the permit to save time or money, understand what is being moved onto you. If you are hiring a general contractor in Los Angeles, the permit question and the license question are the same question asked twice.

Florida attaches a deadline to it. Under section 489.126 of the Florida Statutes, a contractor who takes an initial payment of more than 10 percent of the contract price on residential work must apply for permits necessary to do work within 30 days after the date payment is made, except where the work does not require a permit under the applicable codes and ordinances and start the work within 90 days after the date all necessary permits for work, if any, are issued. The statute attaches criminal penalties that scale with the amount taken. It is worth knowing before a deposit goes to a roofer in Jacksonville.

6. What goes in writing, and what does my state require to be in it?

Several states answer this for you, and where they do, the required contents double as a checklist. Only the four states below are stated here, because these are the ones whose rule we read at the source.

• California. In California, there must be a written contract for all home improvement projects over $500 in combined labor and materials costs. The contract has to identify the contractor and give their address and license number, and changes belong on a written change order: if you have added or subtracted work, substituted materials or equipment, changed the completion date, etc., make sure to note it in writing on a "change order," and include any price changes.
• Connecticut. Section 20-429 of the General Statutes makes the written contract a condition of enforceability: no home improvement contract shall be valid or enforceable against an owner unless it is in writing, is signed by both parties, contains the entire agreement and the date, carries the name and address of the contractor and the contractor's registration number, sets out cancellation rights, and states a starting date and a completion date. The department also asks consumers to verify licenses and registrations before you hire anyone.
• Virginia. The board's regulation lists what a residential contract must contain, including the amounts and schedule for progress payments, including a specific statement on the amount of the down payment, and contractor's name, address, license number, class of license, and classifications or specialty services. It also requires the contract to carry notice of the Virginia Contractor Transaction Recovery Fund, the state's backstop, which the companion guide covers in full.
• Washington. Contracts of one thousand dollars or more on four or fewer residential units require the contractor to give you a disclosure statement naming the registration, its expiration date and the bond, and a contractor who did not provide it may not bring or maintain any lien claim under chapter 60.04 RCW based on that contract.

7. What is the deposit, and when does the rest get paid?

California caps it. CSLB states the rule as a flat figure: that down payment should never exceed 10 percent of the contract price or $1,000, whichever is less. That is the only hard dollar ceiling on a deposit we found published across the ten states this site covers, so do not assume yours has one. What the other agencies publish is a schedule rule instead. Washington L&I: it's okay to agree to a down payment, but continue to pay only as parts of the project are completed, according to a signed plan, and get 3 written bids. Virginia requires the schedule and the down payment figure to be written into the contract in the first place, which is a weaker rule than a cap but a much easier one to hold someone to.

Two habits close the gap where no rule exists. Keep payments behind the work rather than ahead of it, and pay by a method that leaves a record. Neither depends on your state having written a statute.

Ask, then check, then sign

The order matters more than the wording. Ask for the number and the legal name, search the number on the agency's own site, read the status and the date and the classification, ask for the certificate of insurance from the broker rather than from the contractor's phone, settle the permit question, get the scope and the payment schedule in writing, and keep the deposit small. Oregon's CCB is worth reading before any of it, if only for the line that heads off an unnecessary panic: if you cannot find the contractor by name, do not assume they are unlicensed.

Where a check does turn up something real, the routes differ sharply by state, and one of them requires 30 days of written notice to the contractor before you are allowed to file at all. That is the subject of when a license turns out to be false, and Oregon's consumer protection page is where its version of that clock is published.

What this site settles before you ask anything

Every company listed here has already been matched to the official register for its trade and state, and every listing prints the credential number and the date it was last checked so you can repeat the search yourself. That answers questions one, two and three as of the day the data was built. It does not answer four through seven, which are about your contract and nobody else's. The rules we apply, state by state, are on the methodology page.