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To obtain a California contractor's license, you'll need to determine which specific license yous need, fill up out an application, laissez passer an exam, and submit supporting documents.

Below, we'll embrace exactly how to get a contractor's license in California as well as who needs a contractor's license and why licenses for contractors exist. If you take a question about licensing, it's likely answered in our commodity.

Read more: The Ultimate State-by-State Guide to Contractor License Requirements

1. Identify the license classification you need

Before you apply for your license, you lot need to brand sure y'all're applying for the correct one. There are 3 general types of contractor licenses in California. The blazon of work you lot do determines which license you need.

Class A General Engineering Contractor License

The CSLB requires a Class A General Applied science License for any contractor "whose main contracting business is in connectedness with stock-still works requiring specialized applied science knowledge and skill." This includes land leveling, earthmoving, excavating, trenching, paving, too as cement and concrete work.

Projects typically requiring Class A licenses could include overpasses, underpasses, bridges, airports, power plants, pipelines, railroads, and highways.

These are large-calibration, public works-type projects. Projects like these will have off nether one or more engineers' licenses, usually employed by a large construction company or applied science house.

Class B Full general Building Contractor License

The CSLB requires a Class B General Building License for whatever contractor "whose principal contracting business is in connection with whatsoever structure built, existence congenital, or to exist built, for the support, shelter, and enclosure of persons, animals, chattels, or movable belongings of any kind, requiring in its construction the utilize of at least 2 unrelated building trades or crafts, or to do or superintendent the whole or any part thereof."

Hither's the gist: Class B is a California license for general contractors. If you are behest on and taking prime number contracts, yous'll need a Class B license. With a Class B license, General Contractors can take the framing contract on a projection, but the project must likewise include ii unrelated trades every bit well.

Class C Speciality Contractor License

The CSLB requires contractors specializing in a particular trade to deport a Class C Specialty Contractor License. This license applies to electrical, plumbing, and HVAC subcontractors, to name a few.

CSLB designates over twoscore unlike categories of Class C licenses. They include:

  • C-5 Framing and Rough Carpentry
  • C-9 Drywall
  • C-10 Electrical
  • C-27 Landscaping
  • C-29 Masonry
  • C-33 Painting and Decorating
  • C-36 Plumbing

If you're taking a prime contract on a project that does not require two or more unrelated trades, you'll be fine with a Grade C license, provided y'all agree the license for that specific work.

Larn more near the CSLB and how it works.

2. Come across the bones licensing requirements

The general licensing requirements in California are pretty straightforward. To qualify for a license in California, y'all must:

  • Be 18 years or older
  • Have the feel and skills necessary to manage the daily activities of a construction concern, including field supervision (or have representation with the necessary skills and feel to serve equally your qualifying individual)
  • Have four years of verifiable feel at the journeying level, or equally foreman, supervisor, or contractor in the classification you're applying for
  • Secure a $15,000 bond to protect consumers against defective adroitness and employees from non-payment. If you're using a qualifying individual, their bond's value is fix at $12,500.

In that location are no boosted financial requirements. This is to protect consumers from contractors flying under the radar by claiming they don't earn plenty acquirement to qualify for a license.

Contractor education & credits

There are no educational requirements outside of those required to encounter the journey level in your trade.

However, the CSLB may provide credit in the grade of piece of work experience for up to three years for vocational grooming or an applicable apprenticeship. Yous can as well receive a credit for up to i ½ years for an Acquaintance of Arts in edifice or construction management, or iii years for a bachelor's degree meeting certain requirements.

Note from the CSLB: "Please be enlightened that there are no schools or application preparation organizations that are affiliated with or agents of CSLB, although some may have visitor names that are confusingly similar to CSLB. If yous observe that an organization has misrepresented itself as being CSLB, y'all should submit a complaint to CSLB or the California Department of Consumer Diplomacy. Official CSLB examination report guides are available gratuitous of charge on CSLB'southward website and are mailed to applicants when they are scheduled for exams."

California contractor licensing schools

  1. Discover a community higher with a construction program about yous
  2. Research private schools with the California's Bureau for Individual Post-Secondary Teaching (BPPE). Search for approved schools.

3. Fill out the licensing application

The kickoff pace in becoming licensed in California is to determine that yous're eligible. In that location'due south a not-refundable $450 awarding fee, so be certain you meet the requirements before applying, else you could exist out some cash.

If y'all meet the requirements for licensing, you'll need to make full out an Piece of cake-Fill or PDFapplication, or gild a paper application.

The application requires the post-obit data:

  • Total business name
  • Accost data, including:
    • Public mailing address
    • Physical location
    • Concern phone and fax numbers
    • Electronic mail address
  • License blazon or class requested
  • Business entity blazon, including:
    • Sole proprietorship
    • Partnership
    • Limited Liability Company, requiring:
      • $100,000 surety bail
      • $1,000,000 liability insurance policy
      • Identifying data for every officeholder, responsible manager, member, or director
    • Corporation (requires active California Secretary of State registration number)
  • Identifying information for the Qualifying Individual, including:
    • Name, accost, engagement of nascency, social security number, and driver's license number
    • Current or previous CSLB license numbers
    • The percentage of the business concern owned by the Qualified Individual
  • Identifying information for personnel, including:
    • Legal names
    • Dates of nascence
    • Social security numbers
    • Addresses
    • Driver'south license numbers
    • Championship or position
    • Personal phone numbers
  • Work experience breakdown, completed by the Qualified Individual

Mail the completed application and the application fee to:

CSLB Headquarters

Contractors Land License Board

P.O. Box 26000

Sacramento, CA 95826-0026

After the CSLB accepts the application, yous'll receive a fingerprinting packet. Take care of that speedily, as the examination notice should make it inside three weeks. If you have to reschedule the exam, additional fees volition apply.

4. Complete a background bank check

One time the CSLB accepts your application, you'll have to submit fingerprints as part of the criminal background check. The CSLB will contact you with how to get these taken care of, where you can go, and ultimately, how much it volition cost.

Subsequently fingerprinting, a random pick process could require you to verify your piece of work feel. You tin employ an employer, a General Contractor, a foreman or supervisor, equally well as another journeyman for this step in the procedure. That person volition need to verify that yous have the experience required to run a structure business.

Criminal background exclusions

If yous have a conviction for a criminal offense on your record, you may still qualify for a license. The CSLB has the correct to deny a license for any conviction essentially related to the duties, functions, or qualifications of a contractor.

That said, the board may issue a license if y'all've shown sufficient rehabilitation.

If you're qualified, fingerprinted, and verified, you can schedule your CSLB examination.

5. Laissez passer the California contractor licensing exam

Across the bones education and experience requirements, California contractors have to pass a licensing test. Once the CSLB accepts your application, you lot'll have to sign upward for an examination at one of the following locations:

  • Fresno
  • Norwalk
  • Oakland
  • Oxnard
  • Sacramento
  • San Bernardino
  • San Diego
  • San Jose

Regardless of license, you'll have to pass a Law and Business section to ostend that you're familiar with the laws and regulations that govern construction. The other half of the test will cover actual cognition of the trade (or trades, in the Class B case).

Depending on the license type, an additional trade-centric section might be a requirement. This section will ensure that the applicant has practical knowledge of the codes, best practices, and methods for the specific line of piece of work for which they practical.

vi. Submit bonding & insurance documents

If you pass the examination, you'll have more paperwork to practice. You have to submit proof of your bond, worker's bounty, and liability insurance. Y'all'll likewise have to pay an initial licensing fee.

Who needs a contractor license in California?

If you're wondering if you lot require a license in the State of California, the answer is probably yes.

The full general rule is that a person or entity needs a license if they construct or alter whatsoever of the following if the total cost (including labor and materials) is $500 or more:

  • Edifice
  • Road
  • Parking facility
  • Railroad + earthworks
  • Whatsoever other structure

This guideline goes on to state that contractors, subs, and specialty contractors engaged in home improvement must have a contractors license before submitting bids.

Essentially, these guidelines include all contractors. So, if y'all're a General Contractor, y'all must have a license. If you're a painter, yous need a license. If your company installs windows and siding, get a license. In general, the CSLB is very strict on this point. Nonetheless, at that place are a few exceptions.

Exceptions

A handyman service that completes projects less than $500 in value (including the cost of materials) do not need a license. Only they cannot interruption a large job down into smaller $500 projects to skirt this law.

The CSLB gives this example: Suppose you are remodeling the kitchen for a total cost of $six,000. You sublet the flooring work, which is merely $300. The flooring worker is non exempt from licensure, because the overall project cost was over $500.

Also, possessor-builders — those building a structure on their own property — do non need a license. The same exception applies to security alert visitor operators, satellite installers, or any craftsperson selling or installing finished products that do not become part of the structure.

Equally you tin see, information technology's really easier to name the trades and businesses that do not need a license in California than the other way around. The CSLB is extremely articulate on this topic. If you're working on projects valued in backlog of $500 in California, the chances are that you lot need to become through the contractor licensing procedure.

Why you lot need a contractor'south license in California

A general contractor license, and any license a sub might accept to carry, might seem like unnecessary crimson record. Just that'southward but not the case. At that place are many valid reasons why carrying a contractor license in California is important for your business and the state's interest.

A California contractor license makes you look professional

If you lot want to land the jobs that pay the large bucks, you demand to nowadays yourself in a professional calorie-free. Providing your customers with your license ID number buys them some peace of heed.

In short, a license is good for business organisation.

A license ensures y'all're capable

The state doesn't want fly-by-night contractors working in construction, whether information technology exist commercial or residential work. By passing the licensing exam, the land is certifying that you lot know what you're doing.

It ensures y'all're insured and bonded

The land besides needs to ensure that contractors carry the right insurance and bonds for whatever work they're doing. The best style to practise that is to require proof of those compliances in order to go a license.

It's the law

Most chiefly, conveying a general contractor license—or other contractor license types—is a legal requirement in California.

In fact, the country requires contractors, subs, and specialty contractors engaged in home improvement to carry a license before even submitting a bid. Not only are there fines and legal consequences (which nosotros'll go into later in the commodity), but unlicensed contractors might not have mechanics lien rights likewise.

How much does a California contractor'southward license toll?

At a minimum, the total cost for a California contractor's license is $699. That does non include whatsoever extra fees for additional fingerprinting or rescheduling an exam.

  • The application for licensing is $450.
  • The fee for the actual license is $200, and it'due south valid for two years.
  • Yous'll need fingerprints taken to ensure that your criminal background is authentic. The fee for fingerprinting is unremarkably $49. Fees for additional fingerprint rolling are a possibility.
  • If yous take to reschedule your exam for any reason, there is a fee of $lx.

Renewal fees

Once you accept your license, you'll have to maintain it with the CSLB. Active licenses expire every 2 years, while inactive licenses expire every four. The CSLB will ship a renewal application roughly sixty days before your license is due to expire. Y'all need to fill it out and transport it back with the renewal fee.

Timing is everything with your renewal. If you ship your renewal application in on time, an active renewal will cost $450, while timely inactive renewals price $225. If you lot're tardily with your awarding, the fees jump to $675 for active and $337 for inactive.

The CSLB recommends ordering a renewal online if you don't receive a renewal application within 45 days of your license'due south expiration date.

Reciprocity: Transferring a license from another land

If you already hold a license in some other state, California may brand information technology easier for you. The three states that California offers a reciprocal license with are Arizona, Nevada, and Louisiana.

In guild to qualify for reciprocity, yous must exist applying for a license that appears on California's Land Reciprocal Nomenclature List. Y'all must accept held that license in good standing for the previous five years.

Y'all'll and so need to submit a Request for Verification of License, completed by the already-licensed entity. After that, it's an Application for Original Contractor'southward License.

If the CSLB accepts your asking, you'll have to bear witness proof of bonding, the necessary insurances, and pay your licensing fees.

Licensing timeline

Ultimately, it's difficult to provide fifty-fifty a rough timeline to suggest how long information technology will have you to get your license from start to terminate, fifty-fifty if yous laissez passer your test on the offset go. To get an thought of where each CSLB testing location is in the application procedure, you can check the CSLB Processing Times.

Penalties for unlicensed contractors

California takes unlicensed contract piece of work very seriously. They striking you lot where it hurts – both in your wallet and with potential criminal penalties (we'll get to those in a second).

Financial penalties

If you are supposed to have a license, and do not, you likely have zilch recourse for payment.

Nether California police, an unlicensed contractor "may not bring or maintain" any action for compensation for performing whatever deed or contract for which a license is required unless the contractor was duly licensed "at all times" during operation of the job.

Keep the phrase "at all times" in mind. Even if you were licensed when y'all started a projection, if your license expires or is suspended for any reason, the aforementioned penalties apply.

Peradventure fifty-fifty more severe than that is the "disgorgement" principle. Information technology's an ugly sounding give-and-take, just information technology basically only means to "requite dorsum" ill-gotten gains. An unlicensed contractor may be required to disgorge ("give back") whatsoever by compensation.

So any money that y'all fronted for materials and labor are now lost. What's even worse? You lot may finish upwardly paying taxes on the coin earned besides.

Criminal penalties

Now on to criminal penalties! A outset crime of unlicensed contractor work is a misdemeanor which can include upwardly to 6 months jail time and/or $5,000 fine. That doesn't include administrative fines that can range anywhere from $200 to $15,000.

A second law-breaking comes with a mandatory 90 day jail time and a fine of either 20% of the total contract toll or $5,000. If that wasn't enough, you tin can face felony charges as well. If you illegally use some other person'southward license or pretend to be licensed, it'southward considered a felony. Then is unlicensed contract piece of work during a declared state of emergency or disaster (unless the rules accept been relaxed past the appropriate governing bodies).

Contractor State Licensing Board (CSLB)

Contractor licensing in California is a function of the Contractor Country Licensing Board (CSLB). Established in 1929, this governing body's main goal is to protect consumers from predatory contractors and wing-by-night crews. The CSLB works to establish trade standards, ethics, and sound business organization practices in the country.

In California, the CSLB works to ensure that contractors aren't taking advantage of consumers. The lath sets the requirements, standards, and testing for licensing. Generally speaking, the CSLB requires almost all contractors to carry a license, with a few exceptions.

Merely that's not all. The Statewide Investigative Fraud Squad (SWIFT) works alongside the CSLB and performs regular stings and sweeps of structure sites to find potential violations. The penalties can exist steep — we'll cover those further down.

Contractor licensing is critical in California

A license is not only some easy-to-come-by slice of newspaper. It's of import, both to the consumer and the contractor.

It protects consumers

The CSLB's entire purpose is to protect consumers from lacking piece of work and inexperienced contractors. If you're considering hiring a contractor, exist sure to cheque their license. Whatsoever projection valued in excess of $500 requires a contractor to hold a license, so don't take any excuse every bit to why they don't have one.

Unlicensed contractors can often undercut the bid of a licensed company considering they don't take to behave overhead expenses, like insurance or bonds. Every bit a event, substantially lower projection estimates may exist a red flag of an unlicensed contractor. CSLB regulations crave licensed contractors to deport insurance and bonds. Without the appropriate insurance, property owners could exist liable for issues that occur on the job.

Without the required bail, the unlicensed contractor can skip town without paying their subs. If these subs have licenses, they could potentially file a mechanics lien on your business firm for coin yous already paid to an unlicensed contractor.

Here are some quick links:

  • Expect upwardly a contractor'due south license number
  • Find a licensed contractor
  • File a complaint

It maintains contractor rights

Equally a contractor, it's disquisitional to bear the appropriate license for your work. If an unlicensed contractor performs work where a license is required, they lose all legal rights to collect payment.

They cannot file a California mechanics lien, bond merits, or any other merits in California for that matter. And missing out on payment isn't the end of it: Yous could wind upwardly in jail.

According to the CSLB, getting caught contracting without the appropriate license is a misdemeanor. A first criminal offense is punishable by up to six months in jail, a $5,000 fine, likewise equally administrative fines between $200 and $15,000. A second crime is a mandatory 90-day jail sentence and a fine for up to 20 percent of the contract up to $5,000.

California is also very articulate on payment disputes involving contractors without licenses. Unlicensed contractors have no remedy for non-payment. Equally an unlicensed contractor, if you perform $20,000 on a project, and the owner chooses not to pay, you have no ground to stand on to recover your money. You can't file a mechanics lien, and you won't be able to take it to court.

Performing work as an unlicensed subcontractor when a license is a requirement in California puts your payments at risk. Savvy GC'due south know this and can take reward of y'all if they choose to, and then be sure to go through the right channels to get your license.

The bottom line on licensing

California takes unlicensed contractor work very seriously. If you are a contractor or sub in California, it'south well brash to not perform any piece of work on a structure project without a valid California contractors license in identify at all times. Without information technology, you could be in trouble.

Summary

Commodity Proper name

Contractor's License California - Understanding the Rules

Description

Without a California contractors license, contractors in California could face fines, penalties, and even misdemeanors or felonies. If you don't want the California Contractors State Licensing Lath (CSLB) knocking on your door - brand sure you've obtained the necessary licensure to perform your work.

Author

Alex Benarroche

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levelset

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