How to Vet a Contractor in 15 Minutes: License, Bond, Ownership, and the Questions That Expose the Rest
Short version: fifteen minutes of public records beats any sales pitch. Check the registration, bond, and insurance on L&I’s Verify a Contractor tool; check when the legal entity was actually formed and who owns it at the Secretary of State; scan court and complaint records for patterns. “25 years in business” can survive a sale, an out-of-state acquisition, and three owners — the filings can’t lie about it. Then let five estimate questions do the rest: who performs the work, who pulls the permit, how payments stage, what the written warranty says, and which local addresses they’ll point to.
The 15-minute public-records check
Washington makes contractor vetting unusually easy, because the important facts are public and searchable. Before any bid gets serious consideration, run the company through three lookups:
- 1. L&I's Verify a Contractor tool (about 5 minutes). The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries runs a free public lookup — search "L&I verify contractor" — where every registered contractor appears. Check that the registration is active, that the business name and UBI number match the name on your bid exactly, and look at the bond and insurance information on file. This is also where lawsuits against the contractor's bond show up — a bond claim history is one of the loudest signals in the whole process. No registration, or a name that doesn't quite match? Stop there.
- 2. The Secretary of State business search (about 5 minutes). Washington's corporations search shows when the legal entity was formed, whether it's in good standing, and who its governors (owners/officers) are. This is where marketing claims meet paperwork: a company advertising decades of history but formed as a legal entity two years ago has a story you want explained. Look also for a trail of similar names — serial re-formation under slight variations is a classic pattern after bond claims or bad reputations.
- 3. Court and complaint records (about 5 minutes). Washington's public court search shows civil suits involving the company, and the state Attorney General's office logs consumer complaints. One old dispute means little — contractors get sued sometimes. A pattern of homeowner suits or bond claims means everything.
Fifteen minutes, zero dollars, and you now know more about the company than most of its customers ever learned. The pattern you're looking for isn't perfection — it's consistency: the name on the truck, the bid, the registration, and the corporate filing should all be the same entity, active, in good standing, with a bond that isn't a litigation magnet.
The single highest-value habit we can give you: make the name match. The name on the yard sign, the bid, the contract, the L&I registration, and the Secretary of State filing should all be one entity. Nearly every contractor horror story we hear from homeowners starts with a mismatch nobody checked — a bid from one name, a contract with another, and a registration belonging to neither.
Why '25 years in business' can mean almost nothing
Longevity claims are the most common credential in exterior contracting — and the least verifiable as spoken. Here's what a years-in-business claim can quietly survive:
- A sale. Companies are bought and sold. The name, phone number, and "since" date continue; the people whose work built the reputation are gone. The claim is technically true and practically empty.
- Ownership churn. A brand can pass through several owners in a decade. The reviews you're reading may describe a different company in everything but the letterhead.
- An out-of-state move or acquisition. National consolidators buy local names precisely because the local name carries trust. The "local company serving your community for 25 years" may now route to a call center three time zones away.
- Serial re-formation. The most cynical version: a company builds complaints under one name, dissolves, and re-forms under a near-identical one — carrying the marketing history forward and leaving the legal history behind.
None of this makes longevity claims worthless — it makes them checkable, and the check is the point. The Secretary of State filing tells you when the current legal entity actually began and who owns it now. If the filing and the slogan disagree, ask the company to explain the gap. A business with an honest story — a founder who re-incorporated, a genuine succession — will tell it readily and the records will back it up. Evasion about who owns the company today is a complete answer in itself.
The same discipline applies to review counts, "top contractor" badges, and manufacturer credentials: verify them at the source. Manufacturer contractor tiers, for instance, are listed on the manufacturers' own locator pages — thirty seconds to confirm, and a meaningful signal, since those programs involve the manufacturer's own training and audit requirements rather than the contractor's self-description.
The questions that expose the rest
Records tell you the company is real and traceable. The remaining risks — quality, communication, accountability — surface through questions asked at the estimate. Five earn their place:
- "Who will actually perform the work — employees or subcontractors — and who supervises them?" Both models are common and both can produce excellent work; plenty of the best exterior work in this region is done by specialized subcontract crews. What you're testing is the answer's honesty and specificity. A contractor who tells you plainly how their crews are structured, who your point of contact is, and how the work is checked has nothing to hide. One who gets vague about who shows up at your house does.
- "Who pulls the permit?" On permitted work, the answer must be: they do, under their registration, with inspections built into the schedule. A contractor steering you toward pulling an owner-builder permit for work they're performing is shifting liability onto you — walk.
- "What does your payment schedule look like?" Reasonable projects stage payments against milestones — a deposit, progress payments, a meaningful balance due at completion. Demands for most of the money up front are a risk you don't need to take, whatever the explanation.
- "Can I see your workmanship warranty in writing, and the itemized scope?" Not the length — the document. What's covered, what voids it, and which legal entity stands behind it. Pair it with a bid itemized enough that another contractor could price the same scope.
- "Can you give me addresses of completed local projects?" Photos travel; addresses don't. A contractor with real local history can point at real local houses — and a drive past two of them tells you more than a portfolio page.
Run all of this on us, too — we mean that literally. Look up our registration, our filing, our bond history; ask us every question on this list at your estimate. A vetting process this cheap and this fast only fails when homeowners skip it, and the contractors worth hiring are the ones who come through it clean and don't flinch at being checked.
