Contractor records
Remodeling contractors with clean board records
Why we publish no list of “clean” contractors, what each of seven licensing authorities shows the public (checked September 5, 2026), and how to check a contractor’s discipline yourself.
Written by HyreRemodel Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The finding
We cannot publish a list of remodelers with clean board records, and an empty discipline field is not a clean record.
Of our 22,183 license records, only Utah’s 703 have discipline retrieved: 32 with board actions, 671 with DOPL’s time-limited “no actions.”
Elsewhere the field is empty because we have not retrieved it; even 44 suspended or revoked Arizona licenses show nothing. Check the contractor on the board’s own lookup.
An empty field is not a clean record
Our license files have a discipline field. On 22,151 of 22,183 records it is empty. For 21,480 of those, empty just means we never filled it in.
Only in Utah does empty match something the board said: DOPL’s time-limited “no actions” string. Treating the two as the same is how a directory ends up misleading people.
Arizona settles it. The Registrar of Contractors’ search, queried in August 2026, marks 35 of our Arizona records suspended and 9 revoked. Those 44 licenses are not in good standing, yet their discipline fields are empty, because we took status from the search and not the complaint history the same registrar publishes.
A list that read “empty” as “clean” would put a revoked contractor on it. Our complaints field is also empty on all 22,183 records (0 filled in). That is missing retrieval, not proof that nobody complained. Absence of a record is not a finding about the company.
What a “clean board record” would have to mean
People search for “contractors with no complaints.” No board in this study publishes that, and we cannot compute it.
A complaint is an allegation, and boards can keep it confidential until they find probable cause, cite the contractor or take formal action. Under Fla. Stat. §455.225(10), a Florida complaint stays confidential until ten days after probable cause, or until the licensee waives confidentiality. Nevada discloses only complaints that ended in discipline.
California discloses some complaints under Business and Professions Code §7124.6: those referred for accusation, or for investigation after a supervisor found a probable violation serious enough for suspension, revocation or prosecution. It never discloses complaints resolved in the contractor’s favor.
North Carolina’s board says a complaint is a public record, but “the information that remains on the license record is the resulting Board decision,” and a disciplinary action “will be disclosed upon request.”
So the public record, where there is one, is discipline: citations, accusations, suspensions, revocations, stipulations, docket numbers. A clean board record can only mean a license whose board publishes discipline, which we retrieved, and which came back with no actions inside the board’s own disclosure window.
That gives three tests, and failing any one excludes a firm: the board publishes, we retrieved it, and the empty result is the board’s, not ours. For a named firm there is a fourth: a live re-check on the board. We could not clear the fourth on September 5, 2026.
Four things that get mistaken for each other
Directories fold these into one badge. Mixing them up turns an empty web page, or our empty field, into a character reference.
- Complaint
- An allegation. Boards can keep it confidential until probable cause, a citation or formal action. Florida’s rule is statutory (§455.225(10)). Nevada’s is too (NRS 624.327), restated in its consumer-complaint PDF. California discloses only what §7124.6 requires, never complaints resolved in the contractor’s favor.
- Discipline
- What is left on the public record when a complaint goes somewhere: a citation, accusation, suspension, revocation, stipulation, consent order or docket number. A “clean board record” can only be a statement about this, inside the window the board discloses.
- License status
- Active, inactive, suspended, revoked, probation. Status can be recorded without discipline. Arizona proves it: we hold status on every Arizona record, including the 44 suspended or revoked, and discipline on none.
- An empty field in our records
- A default. In Utah it matches DOPL’s time-limited “no actions” string. On the other 21,480 records it matches nothing a board said. Ranking on it would rank our missing data.
What each board shows the public, checked September 5, 2026
Publishing and retrieving are different jobs. Five of the seven authorities (Utah, California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida) publish discipline a homeowner can look up without a records request. North Carolina discloses on request. Texas has no state remodeling board. We have retrieved discipline from one of them.
Utah DOPL: retrieved
Licensee Lookup & Verification showed “Information Current as of 09/03/2026” (September 3, 2026). Each contractor record shows either “YES View Actions” with a docket or “NO DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS WITHIN THE TIME FRAME ESTABLISHED IN UTAH CODE 63G-4-106 AND 107.”
Details sit behind reCAPTCHA v3 with no shareable link, so a named-firm check could not be cited. DOPL also runs a Disciplinary Actions and Citations search (blocked by Cloudflare for us this session) and posts monthly discipline newsletters.
California CSLB: publishes, not retrieved
Check a License exists “to verify information, including complaint disclosure.” Under §7124.6 (amended Stats. 2022 ch. 293, AB 2916, effective January 1, 2023), citations show for five years after compliance, accusations ending in suspension or stayed revocation for seven, unstayed revocations indefinitely, and letters of admonishment for one or two years.
The free data portal lists licensees but not discipline. The Complaint Disclosure / Legal Action File is a separate paid order through CSLB Data Services, listed with the Action Codes file at a non-refundable $235. We have not bought it. All 4,820 California discipline fields are empty.
Arizona ROC: publishes, not retrieved
The posting list offered, as of September 2, 2026, a current-contractors file of 57,886 records and a Disciplinary Actions CSV for March 3 to September 2, 2026 (71.77 KB). The CSV itself warns that some discipline is temporary and that good standing must be confirmed on Contractor Search.
Each license record also shows complaints from the prior two years, with a complaint ID and outcome. roc.az.gov/contractor-search returned a Cloudflare challenge this session, and the registrar’s search app loaded no citable record. We loaded neither the CSV nor the complaint pane, and name no firm from either.
Nevada NSCB: publishes, not retrieved
The license search (linked from the homepage as “Verify Contractor License”) searches by license number, company, or principal or qualified individual. The board’s consumer-complaint PDF: “Complaint disclosure is restricted by law to cases which resulted in disciplinary action taken by the Board.”
That restates NRS 624.327: investigation files are confidential; the charging document and discipline record are public. Monthly hearing-outcome PDFs are posted (the May 2026 one is live). We have not parsed them and name no firm from them.
Florida DBPR: publishes, not retrieved
The licensee search (page timestamp 9/4/2026) has a “View License Complaint” link on each license. DBPR’s FAQ: “The only complaints that appear on this screen are complaints for which probable cause has been found or where the subject of the complaint has waived his/her right to confidentiality and complaints against unlicensed persons.”
We took roster and status from this search, not the complaint pane. Open investigations will not appear there.
North Carolina NCLBGC: on request only
nclbgc.org/license-search/ now redirects to the board portal, which searches by class, license number, qualifier, company, name, phone and address, with no discipline field. The contractor FAQ: “A disciplinary action will be disclosed upon request.”
Quarterly newsletter summaries list final decisions and consent orders. We did not request a file or parse the newsletters, and name no firm from them.
Texas is left out because TDLR does not license residential general contractors, so there is no remodeling discipline page to open. Five of six boards publish something a homeowner can look up today; we have retrieved one. The gap is on our side, not in their registers.
What we have actually retrieved
Our count from 22,183 license files, measured September 5, 2026: the discipline field is filled in on 32 records, all Utah. Each holds the board’s own “YES View Actions” flag with a docket citation, and the 32 match, one for one, the “YES” rows in the DOPL files we retrieved on August 29–30, 2026.
Utah’s other 671 records are empty but not missing: each matches a DOPL record showing the time-limited “no actions” string. Utah is the only state where empty means “the board said no, inside its window.”
California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and North Carolina account for 21,480 records, all with empty discipline fields. That is missing retrieval.
We did retrieve other fields there. All 4,820 California records are active, and 919 carry board notices (workers’ comp events, license reissues, salesperson letters). Those are administrative, not discipline. In Arizona we hold status (active, inactive, suspended, revoked) but no discipline.
Records with discipline filled in, by authority, counted September 5, 2026 from data/remodeling-data/licenses/. Zero means not retrieved, except in Utah. The bar counts retrieved discipline, not clean contractors.
Utah, and why we still name no firms
Utah passes the first three tests: the board publishes, we retrieved the field, and empty is the board’s empty.
On August 29–30, 2026 we held 703 Utah licenses for 703 companies: 32 with “YES View Actions” and a docket, 671 with the time-limited “no actions” string. All were listed Active, expiring November 30, 2027. That is still not a clean-record list, for three reasons.
The “no” expires. Utah Code §63G-4-106 makes an agency remove disciplinary actions from its website within ten years of the final order. §63G-4-107 lets a person petition for removal after five years if they completed the order, have not repeated the violation and pay a fee, or sooner with a related criminal expungement.
So a firm with a 2014 revocation that aged off the website would sit among our 671 “no” records. Older actions remain public records under GRAMA; they are just off the website.
The lookup cannot be cited per firm. LLV has no shareable per-license link, and details sit behind reCAPTCHA v3.
On September 5, 2026 it reported information current as of September 3, 2026, but a named-firm check needs a live browser session we cannot cite.
Our rule: if we cannot confirm a named firm against the live board, we do not name it.
671 identical “no” results are not a ranking. No second public-record measure orders them in a way we could defend, and we use no review scores or self-reported revenue. An alphabetical list would be a directory of absences, and a sample without a live check would be a sample of our August files.
What Utah does show is the method. 32 of 703 Utah remodelers we researched, about one in twenty-two, had a published action inside DOPL’s window on the August dates.
That describes our sample, not a Utah industry rate. If you are hiring in Utah, run LLV yourself, read the docket, and ask DOPL under GRAMA if you need more than the website shows.
Why the other six states cannot support a clean-record claim
| State | Records | Board publishes discipline? | Retrieved here? | Why excluded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 4,820 | Yes: Check a License, BPC §7124.6 | No | Empty means not retrieved. Check CSLB. |
| Florida | 7,130 | Yes: DBPR licensee search, after probable cause | No | Empty means not retrieved; open complaints are confidential under §455.225(10). |
| Arizona | 4,932 | Yes: complaints on the search, plus the posting-list CSV | No | 44 licenses already suspended or revoked with empty fields. |
| Nevada | 3,494 | Yes: license search and hearing-outcome PDFs | No | Empty means not retrieved; complaints disclosed only after discipline. |
| Texas | 955 | No state GC board | Not applicable | 805 San Antonio and 150 El Paso city registrations, not TDLR. See Texas. |
| North Carolina | 149 | On request, plus newsletter summaries; no discipline field on the search | No | The board discloses discipline “upon request.” We did not request it. |
Our records measured September 5, 2026; board sites checked September 5, 2026. “Publishes” describes the board’s public site; “Retrieved here” describes our files.
Texas is a different kind of exclusion: the state licenses no residential general contractor, so its 955 city registrations carry no board discipline and are not comparable with a CSLB or DOPL license. See states without contractor licensing.
What a firm would need before we listed it
A newsletter PDF, a GRAMA response or “disclosed upon request” is not enough. A homeowner has to be able to pull the same record we pulled.
An empty default is not a retrieval. Today only Utah passes.
In Utah, empty matches DOPL’s time-limited “no actions” string. Everywhere else in our records, empty matches nothing the board said.
An August snapshot is not a statement about a company today. We could not complete that re-check on September 5, 2026, so we name no one.
License number, class, board status and retrieved discipline. No review scores, no self-reported revenue, no “years in business” we did not read off a register, no composite score.
Utah’s §§63G-4-106 and 107, California’s five- and seven-year windows, Florida’s probable-cause confidentiality: a clean window is not a clean history. If we cannot state the window, we do not say “clean.”
El Paso and San Antonio registrations are not TDLR licenses and are not comparable with CSLB, ROC, NSCB, DBPR, DOPL or NCLBGC.
Arizona’s 44 records prove it. If a future retrieval still leaves those fields empty, the retrieval has failed, not the companies.
How to check a contractor’s discipline yourself
A discipline check is what we would run before naming a firm. You can run it for the one in front of you, before you sign rather than after the deposit clears.
The legal business name (not the name on the truck), the state, the license number and the class. “Licensed and insured” on a card is not a number. If they will not give one, stop.
Use the links above or the license lookup directory. Review sites, the BBB and our records are not the board. Save a dated screenshot.
A suspended or revoked license with a quiet complaint pane is still not in good standing. Our 44 Arizona records fail on status alone.
California: complaints and legal actions, with the §7124.6 time limits. Utah: YES plus the docket, or the time-limited NO. Florida: View License Complaint, only after probable cause or waiver. Arizona: complaint ID and outcome, plus the CSV. Nevada: discipline only. North Carolina: ask the board.
A clean B-class license is not a plumbing license, and a clean CGC does not help if a different qualifier runs the job. See license classes by state.
CSLB discloses citations on other licenses that share a qualifier. Florida links related licenses. Nevada searches by principal. Someone who lost one license and opened another is the same person.
In North Carolina, email the board the license number and ask whether any disciplinary action exists. A newsletter summary does not replace that answer.
There is no state general-contractor license. Confirm the city registration where the permit will be pulled (San Antonio or El Paso in our records, 955 records, not a state list), then the TDLR trade licenses the job needs. See Texas remodeling contractors.
Check the building department that issues the permit, the secretary of state for an active business, an insurance certificate from the insurer dated for your project, and the bond if your state requires one. Then compare bids with the quote comparison worksheet.
Method and limits
22,183 license records in data/remodeling-data/licenses/ and 23,756 company files, measured September 5, 2026. Utah DOPL detail in data/remodeling-data/evidence/ut-dopl-remodeling-2026-08-29/ and …-2026-08-30/. The stale national-metrics.json (540 companies, August 16, 2026) was not used.
These are the companies we researched, in the seven states we chose, on the dates we checked. Counts reflect research effort, not each state’s industry, and nothing here is a discipline rate.
§63G-4-106 removes actions from the website at ten years; §63G-4-107 allows a petition at five. GRAMA can still produce older files. We filed no GRAMA requests.
LLV was reachable on September 5, 2026 and current as of September 3, 2026, but a named-firm record needs a reCAPTCHA session and has no citable link. That is why we name no companies.
CSLB, AZ ROC, NSCB, Florida DBPR and, on request, NCLBGC all make discipline available, as we confirmed on September 5, 2026. When we retrieve it and can re-check named firms, a Utah-style method becomes possible there. Not today.
Nothing here recommends hiring anyone. Even “no published action inside a window” is a description we will not attach to a name until the live board agrees.
Questions
Does an empty disciplinary field mean a contractor has a clean record?
Which states publish contractor disciplinary history online?
Why is California excluded from a clean-record list?
Does Utah’s “no disciplinary actions” mean a contractor was never disciplined?
Does Texas license remodeling contractors?
How do I check a contractor’s disciplinary record myself?
Which boards did you open, and when?
If the board website shows no complaints, is the contractor clean?
Why don’t you publish a ranked list of contractors with no complaints?
Written and audited by
HyreRemodel Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a remodeling contractor and not a sales floor.
We read the statute, the licensing register or the municipal fee schedule ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
This program is new, and the counts below are small: they are what we have actually published, not what we intend to.
- 7
- studies published
- 7
- states in the contractor store we measure against
- 264
- source documents linked from these pages, 101 of them on .gov domains
- 22,183
- license records measured September 5, 2026
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Licensing facts come from the issuing board or the statute that creates the credential. Permit-fee facts come from the municipality that publishes the schedule. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we open the source and record the date.
- Our own store is titled to the states it covers. We hold verified contractor records for seven states. An asset that rests on those records is titled to those states. National claims rest on federal or state-agency data (Census, BLS, EPA), never on our counts.
- Absence of a record is not a finding about the company. A board that does not publish disciplinary history in a form we retrieved is excluded from any “clean record” claim. Unable to verify is not unlicensed. Not required is not not carried.
- Fact, calculation, analysis and recommendation stay labelled. A statute is a source fact. A count we derived from our store is a HyreRemodel calculation. What that count means is analysis. What a homeowner should do next is a recommendation.
- We do not remodel homes, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of September 5, 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
A license is the minimum. The quote is the job.
Nothing on this page recommends hiring anyone. If you have bids in hand, compare them on the same drawings, allowances and exclusions.
HyreRemodel does not do remodeling work and takes no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention.
This page is not a license verification for a specific job, a recommendation to hire, or legal advice. Check the issuing board and your building department.
A snapshot from August 2026 is not a statement about a company’s standing today.