Part 2 · Finding the right contractors
Researching and narrowing the list
“Licensed, bonded and insured” sounds like one thing. It is three different things, two of them are narrower than you think, and one of them may not exist at all.
A common homeowner question at this point
How do I actually check someone? And if they are licensed, is that enough?
A phrase worth unpacking
“Licensed, bonded and insured.” It appears on trucks, business cards and websites, and in the discussions read for this guide it was taken as a single reassuring credential meaning checked and covered.
It is three separate things. They cover different risks, they are verified in different places, and one of them is frequently not verified by anyone at all. Understanding the difference matters.
“The state has checked this company, confirmed it carries insurance, and there is money set aside if something goes wrong on my job.”
A license exists. A fixed bond exists, which is not insurance and is not sized to your project. And “insured” is, wherever the state does not require it, a claim you have to verify yourself.
None of this means contractors are dishonest. It means the phrase is doing less verification work than you think, and checking properly is the difference between assuming and knowing.
Ask AI Mickey about this chapter
Want help checking someone? Ask — it will walk you through the lookups and explain what each one proves. It will never tell you a specific contractor’s license status; only the official source can do that. It knows the homeowner research and Lior’s experience behind this guide, and the complete 15-chapter guide — and it knows you are on Chapter 6. There is nothing to sign up for and no email required.
One: the license
The Contractors State License Board states that a license is required if “the project requires a building permit or uses any additional workers or the total cost (labor and materials) of one or more contracts on the project is $1,000 or more.”
And CSLB states this directly: “Work on a larger project, may not be broken down to smaller amounts of less than $1,000 in an attempt to meet the $1,000 exemption.”
Source: Contractors State License Board, cslb.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.Check the license at the source: CSLB’s own “Check a License” tool at cslb.ca.gov. Not a directory that says a contractor is licensed. Not a certificate handed to you. The state’s own lookup.
What the lookup shows you
Do not just confirm the license exists. Read the record:
- Status — active, expired, suspended. Check the date it expires.
- The business name and entity type — does it match the name on the proposal you were handed, exactly?
- Classifications — which kinds of work this license covers. See below.
- Bond information — the bond, its number, amount and dates.
- Workers’ compensation — the policy, or an exemption on file.
- Personnel — who is actually on this license.
- Complaint disclosure — what the Board discloses about the license.
What the lookup does not show
It does not show general liability insurance — no carrier, no policy number, no coverage amount. The state tracks the bond and workers’ compensation status here, not the contractor’s liability coverage. That gap is the whole of section three below.
The classification question: which license?
Homeowners ask whether there is a license. Which one matters too, because the classification defines the kinds of work the license covers. California issues a general engineering license (Class A), a general building license (Class B), a residential remodeling license (Class B-2) and a long list of separate specialty “C” classifications — and they are not interchangeable. CSLB publishes the current list; read it against the work your project actually involves.
“A general building contractor may take a prime contract or a subcontract for a framing or carpentry project. However, a general building contractor shall not take a prime contract for any project involving trades other than framing or carpentry unless the prime contract requires at least two unrelated building trades or crafts other than framing or carpentry, or unless the general building contractor holds the appropriate license classification or subcontracts with an appropriately licensed contractor to perform the work.”
Source: Contractors State License Board, Description of Classifications (current edition), reproducing Business and Professions Code §7057(b), cslb.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.In plain terms: a general building contractor is built for projects involving several trades. A single-trade job is normally the specialty contractor’s territory. You do not need to master this — you need to look at the classifications on the record and ask, if it is not obvious, whether the license fits the work you are asking for.
Two: the bond
CSLB: “The bond must be in the amount of $25,000.” It is “filed for the benefit of consumers who may be damaged as a result of defective construction or other license law violations, and for the benefit of employees who have not been paid wages that are due to them.”
Source: Contractors State License Board, bond requirements, cslb.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.Three things follow from that:
- It is not insurance. It is a fixed surety amount tied to the license, not a policy covering your project.
- It is not sized to your job. The figure is the same whether the contractor is doing a small bathroom or a large addition. On a substantial remodel it is not a safety net for the value of the work.
- It is not only for you. The same bond stands behind consumers damaged by defective work and unpaid employees.
The bond is worth checking, but do not use it as a substitute for the license-status check above. Confirm the license itself is active on CSLB’s current record. And do not read the bond as protection proportional to what you are about to spend.
Three: “insured”
This is the one with the real gap in it.
CSLB tells homeowners: “Commercial general liability insurance is not required; however, it covers damage to your property,” and advises you to “Ask to see a copy of the Certificate of Insurance or ask for the name of the contractor’s insurance carrier and agency to verify.”
There is one entity-specific exception: a licensed limited liability company with five or fewer members of personnel of record must carry liability insurance with a cumulative limit of at least $1 million.
Sources: Contractors State License Board, “Finding the Right Contractor” and LLC information pages, cslb.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.Read that carefully. Outside the limited liability company case above, general liability insurance is not a state requirement, and the state does not verify it for you. When a company says “insured,” that is a claim about themselves — not a verified fact, and yours to confirm.
Do not accept a certificate handed to you as the end of the matter. Ask for the name of the insurance carrier and agency, and verify coverage with the carrier directly. A certificate on its own does not tell you whether the policy is in force today — coverage can lapse or change after a certificate is issued. A certificate alone does not prove the policy is still active. Verify current coverage using independently obtained contact information for the carrier or agency.
Four: workers’ compensation, and why it matters to you
It is easy to assume a license means workers’ compensation coverage. California’s requirement is narrower than that, as set out below.
CSLB: “All active C-8 Concrete contractors, C-20 Warm-Air Heating, Ventilating and Air-Conditioning contractors, C-22 Asbestos Abatement contractors, C-39 Roofing contractors, and/or C-61/D-49 Tree Service contractors are required to carry workers’ compensation insurance or a valid Certification of Self-Insurance, whether or not they have employees.”
A contractor in any other classification who has no employees may file a signed exemption and legally carry none.
Source: Contractors State License Board, workers’ compensation, cslb.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.California law extends the workers’ compensation requirement to all licensed contractors regardless of classification. The date was originally January 1, 2026; Senate Bill 1455 (approved and filed September 22, 2024) moved it to January 1, 2028. The current text of Business and Professions Code §7125 reads: “This section shall remain in effect only until January 1, 2028, and as of that date is repealed.”
So today, the exemption still exists. Check the actual record for the actual contractor rather than assuming either way.
Sources: California Business and Professions Code §7125 and Senate Bill 1455 (2024), leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.Why this is your problem and not an administrative detail: if someone is hurt working on your property and there is no cover behind them, the question of who pays does not disappear. CSLB warns owner-builders in exactly those terms — “If a worker is injured while working on your property, you could be asked to pay for injuries and rehabilitation through your homeowner’s insurance policy” (CSLB, Owner-Builders pamphlet, verified August 10, 2026). Chapter 4 covered the owner-builder trap; this is the same risk seen from the insurance side.
So ask, plainly: do you carry workers’ compensation, or do you have an exemption on file? Will anyone other than you be working on my property? Both are fair questions and neither is an accusation.
Look it up — but look it up at the source
Here is a live demonstration of why this matters, and it is not a hypothetical.
Los Angeles County’s Department of Consumer & Business Affairs page on hiring a contractor currently states: “They license contractors who do home improvements or repairs costing $500 or more” and “Licensed contractors must post a $12,500 bond with the CSLB.”
Both figures are out of date. The license threshold is $1,000 and the bond is $25,000, as verified from CSLB above.
Source: dcba.lacounty.gov, hiring a contractor page. Checked and found still showing the superseded figures on August 10, 2026.This is not an attack on a county agency; keeping public pages current is genuinely hard, and the page is helpful in other respects. It is the clearest possible illustration of a rule worth carrying for the rest of your project: “I looked it up” and “I looked it up at the source” are not the same sentence.
For contractor licensing, the source is CSLB. For permits and zoning, it is the building department that governs your address — which Chapter 4 showed you how to identify.
The referral you already have is not a check
A referral from a friend or family member is not enough. Re-check the contractor today. Circumstances change — the license status, the insurance, the people, the size of the company, how many jobs they are running. A recommendation from three years ago is a recommendation about a company that may no longer exist in the same form.
Recent references and current work are worth more than an old referral. Which leads to the part of checking that is not a lookup at all.
References, and the site visit that is worth more
Ask for recent references — and ask for work in progress, not only finished projects. A completed job shows you the result on its best day. An active site shows you how this company actually operates: whether it is organized, whether materials are protected, whether the neighbors are being considered, whether it is clean.
When you speak to a past client, the useful questions are not about whether they were happy. They are about specifics:
If someone is not licensed
An unlicensed contractor cannot use the courts to collect payment: no person acting as a contractor “may bring or maintain any action…for the collection of compensation…without alleging that they were a duly licensed contractor at all times during the performance.” And “a person who utilizes the services of an unlicensed contractor may bring an action in any court of competent jurisdiction in this state to recover all compensation paid to the unlicensed contractor.”
Source: California Business and Professions Code §7031, leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Verified August 10, 2026.That sounds like strong protection, and in one narrow sense it is. But recovering money through a court is a slow, expensive, uncertain process that happens after your house has already been damaged or left unfinished. Formal remedies come after a problem. The checks in this chapter are meant to reduce risk before hiring. This guide will not tell you what to do about a specific situation — that is a legal question for a lawyer.
Your free contractor verification checklist
Run this on every contractor you are considering, before anyone comes to your house. Tick as you go; write what you found, not just that you looked.
My Contractor Verification Checklist
Free, complete and yours. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent anywhere — if you type into it, print or copy it before you close the tab. Print one per contractor.
Contractor name and license number
The lookups
What I found, in my own words
Anything that did not match, anything I want to ask about, and the date I checked.
References and current work
Questions I still want answered
Carry these into the first meeting — that is the next chapter.
Still not sure about something? Ask AI Mickey — it knows this guide and where you are in it.
The whole guide, on one page
Part 1 — Before you talk to anyone
- 1Where do I start?The first move is not choosing a professional. It is getting clear on what you want.
- 2Turn your wish list into a clear project briefA clear brief everyone receives, so each professional starts from the same requirements.
- 3Budget and quality levelWhy early budget expectations can miss, and how to build a more useful budget.
- 4When you need plansWhat to do first, when plans come in, and how to avoid spending heavily too early.
Part 2 — Finding the right contractors
- 5Finding contractors with no referralWhere to look when you do not have a referral, and how to write an inquiry that gets answered.
- 6Researching and narrowing the listYou are hereHow to check someone properly, and what a license does and does not prove.
- 7The first call and the first meetingWhat to ask, what to watch, and how to get useful answers.
Part 3 — Proposals, comparing, signing
- 8Getting three comparable proposalsSend the same scope to each contractor and compare what is included, excluded and allowed for.
- 9Comparing bids apples to applesHow to compare the scope, allowances, exclusions and assumptions behind different totals.
- 10Before you signThe second check, the contract, and the payment rules California law requires.
Part 4 — Building and finishing
- 11Preparing for constructionLead times, dust, living arrangements and the decisions to make before work starts.
- 12Communication during constructionLior’s communication method for keeping the project clear and documented.
- 13Change orders and the unforeseenHow to distinguish a hidden condition from scope that was missing from the original bid.
- 14When it starts going wrongHow to document a problem, lower the temperature and know when to get professional advice.
- 15Finishing, and the file you keepHow to close out the job, handle the punch list and keep the records you may need later.
Before you go on
You should now have a short list of people who check out on paper, and a set of questions the checking itself raised.
Paper only gets you so far. The next chapter is the part homeowners dread most — the call and the meeting, where you have to actually talk to someone — and it starts by removing the fear of asking a stupid question.