3 Questions to ask your General Contractor

Before you sign the contract

• Ask for their license # and then look it up:

  • The number one most important thing to ask your potential contractor is for their license number. That’s only half the job though because you have to look up the license number and check for any major complaints. Verify the license is active and not suspended or revoked. Verify that the license number is associated with your contractor’s name and not someone else. Ask your contractor if they have held other licenses, maybe for another company they owned before. and if so, look it up.  Ask if they have owned other companies and then look those up. Check Linked-In. You should do a lot of research before you hire the contractor. Oh and don’t be fooled if they dress really nice or seem like “the nicest person ever.” You still need to look them up. You can also call the town planning department and ask about the contractor. It may seem like overkill but there are a lot of shady people and you want to be sure of the person you are entrusting your project with. For more info visit the CSLB at www.cslb.com

• Ask about their team structure:

  • Often overlooked but very important is to understand how the project will be structured. Is there a foreman? If so, ask to meet the foreman and then look up the foreman online. Here’s why...Let’s say you hire a licensed contractor to renovate your house and you checked his license and everything looks good. Then one day something goes wrong on your project. Maybe workers stop showing up or large change orders start to appear. At this point you investigate what’s going on and find out that the company you hired actually hired another licensed contractor to run the job. It’s legal to do that but the problem is you didn’t hire this other contractor. You look them up and find out they have many complaints on their license or it’s suspended. This could all be avoided! For more visit CSLB.

• Ask for their insurance policies - Yes plural

  • Ask your potential contractor for their insurance policies number(s) and then call the insurance companies to check if the policies are active and confirm the contractor is insured for the amount they told you. Verify that they have Bond Insurance as well as General Liability Insurance and Worker’s Comp Insurance. Licensed Contractors are required by law in California to have workers comp insurance and to be bonded. Finally, you should call your home owners insurance company and check in with them about your project. For more information please visit the CSLB website    www.cslb.com