Important Steps to Find and Confirm Roofing Contractor License

We can all agree that the roof is a critical part of any building, which is why it’s so important to take proper care of it. As a property owner, this is why you must be very cautious when carrying out any professional roof installation, maintenance, or repair operations. You might not know that you need to pay attention to more than the contractor’s expertise, experience, professionalism, cost, and reputation. To ensure you’re getting the best services possible, you must confirm that your contractor is fully licensed, insured, and authorized to offer roofing services in your state and region.

To help you navigate this potentially frustrating aspect of responsible home ownership, we will take a closer look at how you can determine the license status of potential roofing contractors in the United States and why it’s so important that you do so. Let’s dive right in.

Determining a Roofing Contractor’s License Validity

The internet makes determining your roofing contractor’s license’s validity easier than ever. The trick here is knowing which website to visit and what information to seek. Because each state is responsible for its business licenses, you can choose from multiple state websites. Each site should have a field where you will type in the contractor’s business name, after which it will give you the results you seek. In reverse, you should also be able to type in a license number, resulting in the contractor’s business name.

Because we don’t have the space to cover all the states here, we won’t. If you find any state’s roofing contractor portal, you should be able to view the contractor’s business license. A helpful feature of these official state websites is that they outline all the licensing requirements for that state, meaning that they offer a great way of assessing prospective contractors’ qualifications. 

The United States does not have blanket licensing requirements covering all the various states. This means that each state is responsible for setting the standards contractors should meet and ensuring they maintain them. Some states make it mandatory for roofing contractors to hold home improvement of building contractor licenses. Others will only call for specific roofing contractor licenses, while others leave the matter of contractor licensing to local authorities rather than state bodies. 

While all this might seem rather bothersome, homeowners must understand that there are real potential consequences when hiring unlicensed roofing contractors. These include:

Remember that any contractor working without a license will be breaking the law, no matter how experienced, professional, and affordable they are or what their reputation is. Time will always run out for such contractors, and you might be the unlucky client whose project is thrown into disarray when this inevitably happens. Resist the temptation of hiring an unlicensed contractor based on friends or family connections. You will be more likely to overlook obvious red flags such as their insurance status, work history, and overall suitability for the job at hand. 

Final Thoughts