Licensed Contractor

Only if you like your home and want to keep it. A license does more than just ensure that the
person you're dealing with isn't a fly by night operator, it gives you important legal protections
that truly could mean the difference between keeping and losing your home. Here are just a
few of the potential problems:

1. Unlicensed individuals are considered your employees. That means you are required to provide
them with workman's compensation insurance. If you do not provide this insurance not only are you in
violation of the law, you could be held responsible for paying their salary for the rest of their life should
they get hurt.

2. Unlicensed individuals have no liability insurance. That means no protection of your investment
from faulty materials or workmanship. Theft from the job site isn't covered and a worker's carelessness
that leads to injury or property damage could leave you holding a very large bill.

3.Unlicensed individuals leave you unprotected against a mechanic's lien. If the contractor you
hired to do the work doesn't pay his suppliers they can put a lien on your house.

4.Individuals not licensed do not have bonding protection on their jobs through the state fund,
which means you don't have this protection.

Unlicensed individuals can not apply for permits on the job you hired them for. Without a
permit, not only are you again breaking the law, you are afforded none of the protections the
permitting process offers you.

Your job will not be covered by your homeowner's insurance because insurance companies
won't cover bootleg work.

You may encounter problems when you attempt to sell your house. Some counties may even
require you to rework the job, costing you twice.

Officials can, and do, even require the entire removal of the non-permitted structures.

5.Permitting is done to ensure that the building codes are met. Building codes are there to ensure
that the job is done correctly. The unlicensed individual probably doesn't even know what the codes are,
and is even less likely to follow them.

6. If the codes aren't followed and the job isn't done correctly severe injury to you or your family
could result from using the incorrect materials or through faulty workmanship.

7.People often "poo-poo" the building codes when it comes to "simple" projects like a deck or
garage but it is no laughing matter when an improperly built garage or deck collapses, leaving a family
member buried under five or six hundred pounds of wood.

The bottom line is that there are lots of reasons not to hire a unlicensed contractor but only
one reason to... price. We think the safety and well being of our families are worth a little
extra. How about your family?