Questions to Ask Before Hiring a General Contractor in the Eastside Area

There is no licensing of general contractors in Washington State. Instead, they register.

There is no test of skill, no experience requirement, and no continuing education requirement. A new contractor who just completed his first framing project last month and another who has been supervising crews in Bellevue for the last thirty years both carry the same piece of paper.

That means the screening is your responsibility. Here are the questions that do the screening, in order from cheapest to costliest.

What questions should you ask before hiring a general contractor?

Ask sixteen questions in four phases: registration and bond before you even make contact, scope and allowances at the bid stage, payment terms and release of liens in the contract, and crew and supervision before they start work. The ones that keep your money safe are the ones that require documents, and most homeowners ask them last.

That is the order. Four of these questions can be done in ten minutes on a computer and will weed out all but the safest bidders after three weeks of building a relationship with them. Start there.

Stage one: before you call anyone

1. What is your L&I registration number, and is the registration active?

Washington does not license general contractors, it registers them. Use the Verify a Contractor lookup at lni.wa.gov and check three things, not one: that the registration is active, that the $30,000 surety bond is current, and that the workers’ compensation account is in good standing. A lapsed bond makes the registration invalid.

That last point is the one people miss. Homeowners check the status line, see “active,” and stop reading. The bond and the workers’ compensation account are separate fields on the same record, and a contractor whose bond lapsed last quarter is not legally registered to work no matter what the top of the page says.

Every legitimate contractor in the state prints their number publicly. Ours is JHANBHL789JN, and it is in the footer of every page on this site. Look it up. Then look up everyone else’s.

2. How much is your bond, and what does it actually cover?

Under RCW 18.27.040, general contractors post a $30,000 continuous surety bond and specialty contractors post $15,000, amounts that rose from $12,000 and $6,000 on July 1, 2024. If a contractor quotes you the old numbers, they have not renewed since then.

Understand what the bond is not. It is not a performance bond, it does not guarantee your project gets finished, and it is not reserved for you. It is a fund that satisfies court judgments, and it is shared across every claimant who wins one against that contractor. On a $180,000 addition that goes wrong, $30,000 split three ways is not a remedy. The bond is a screening signal, not insurance.

3. Is your workers’ compensation account current, and do your subs carry their own?

Washington runs a state-fund workers’ compensation system. A subcontractor who does not carry their own L&I coverage is treated as an employee of the contractor who hired them for premium purposes, and if nobody in the chain is covered, an injury on your property becomes your problem. Check the account status on the same lookup screen.

4. What are your general liability limits?

The statutory minimum is $200,000 public liability plus $50,000 property damage, or a $250,000 combined single limit. That is the floor for registration, not a sensible limit for a job that involves opening your roof. Ask for a certificate of insurance sent directly from the broker, naming you, with the policy period visible. A PDF forwarded from the contractor’s own inbox is worth less than one that arrives from the agency.

Stage two: at the bid

5. Is this fixed price or time and materials?

A fixed-price bid puts the risk of a bad estimate on the contractor. Time and materials put it on you. Neither is wrong. Fixed price suits defined scopes with known conditions, such as a kitchen refresh or a tub-to-shower conversion. Time and materials are honest for genuinely unknown work, like opening a 1968 wall you both suspect is wet. What is wrong is a fixed-price number that quietly behaves like time and materials once work begins, which is what a thin bid with vague scope language produces every time.

6. What allowances are in this number, and what happens when I exceed them?

Allowances are placeholder dollars for items you have not chosen yet: tile, fixtures, cabinets, lighting. They are the most common mechanism by which a $60,000 bid becomes an $80,000 invoice, and nobody has to lie for it to happen. Ask for every allowance to be listed with its dollar figure and a real product example at that price. If the tile allowance is $6 per square foot, ask to see what $6 tile looks like before you agree the number is realistic.

7. What is excluded from this bid?

Ask this one directly and watch what happens. A contractor who has bid the job properly can answer immediately: no landscape restoration, no asbestos abatement if testing comes back positive, no electrical panel upgrade unless the inspector calls for one. A contractor who says “nothing, it is all in there” has either not thought about it or is planning to discover exclusions later, at your expense.

8. Does this number include permit fees and Washington sales tax?

In Washington, residential remodeling is treated as a retail sale, so sales tax applies to the entire contract including labor, not just materials. At roughly 10.3% in Bellevue in 2026, that is about $10,300 on a $100,000 project. It has to appear somewhere. Compare a bid that shows it as a line to one that does not and you are comparing two different numbers.

Stage three: in the contract

9. What is the deposit, and what is the payment schedule based on?

The payments must be based on finished and inspectable milestones: permit issued, demolition finished, rough-in inspection passed, drywall done, substantial completion. Not on time or on a percentage of elapsed time. No statutory ceiling for residential general contractors’ deposit seems to apply in Washington; the number is negotiable [VERIFY]. Anything over approximately 10% to 20% on a standard remodel would need a good explanation, like ordering custom cabinets which really needs to be done upfront.

Maintain a true retainage through the final inspection and punch list closing. Five to ten percent is a usual amount, the only tool left for leverage when the job ends, and those who object to it the most are exactly the contractors who need it the most.

10. Will you provide the Notice to Customer disclosure statement before work starts?

Under RCW 18.27.114, a contractor on a residential job of $1,000 or more must give you a Model Disclosure Statement, also called the Notice to Customer, before beginning work. You sign it, they keep a copy for three years. It sets out their registration number, bond amount, and expiration date, and it explains your exposure to construction liens.

The consequence of skipping it falls on the contractor: without it, they cannot bring or maintain a lien claim against you. Which means a contractor who does not produce it is either unaware of a basic statutory requirement in their own industry, or has decided the paperwork is optional. Both answers tell you the same thing about how the rest of the job will be documented.

11. Is a subcontractor allowed to lien my property after I have paid the contractor in full?

Yes, in Washington, unpaid subcontractors and suppliers have the right to put up a construction lien against the property, even after paying off the general contractor completely. They have 90 days after completion of the last work or delivery of material for the lien to file the lien claim. Having lien releases from each sub and supplier after each payment is your safeguard.

The hidden danger most homeowners do not see coming is when the lien attaches to their home, not to the contractor’s account. You paid. The money goes to the general contractor. The general contractor did not pay his tile supplier. Now, the tile supplier wants his money from your home. Make sure lien releases are part of the payment plan, both conditional and unconditional.

12. Who pulls the permits?

The contractor should, always. Eastside cities including Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, and Sammamish run applications through MyBuildingPermit.com, and electrical permits go through L&I rather than the city.

If a contractor suggests you pull the permit yourself as the homeowner to save time or money, decline. Pulling it yourself makes you the responsible party for code compliance and inspections on your own project, and it shifts liability from their balance sheet to your house. There is a reason the suggestion comes up, and the reason is usually that the contractor cannot pull it.

13. What is the change order process?

Written, priced, and signed by you before the work happens. No exceptions, including the small ones, because the small ones are where the habit of verbal approval forms. A change order should state the scope change, the cost, and the schedule impact in days. If your contractor’s change order process is a text message and a handshake, your final invoice will be a negotiation.

14. What is the warranty, and what voids it?

Get the term in writing and separate it into two parts: the manufacturer warranty on products, and the workmanship warranty from the contractor. One year of workmanship is common, two is better, and the specific question worth asking is what voids it. Then ask the harder one: who honors it if the business closes? A twenty-year warranty from a company that has been registered for eighteen months is a marketing document.

That is the order. Four of these questions can be done in ten minutes on a computer and will weed out all but the safest bidders after three weeks of building a relationship with them. Start there.

Stage four: before the crew arrives

15. Who works onsite everyday, and who will I be able to reach out to in case something goes wrong?

The individual that sold the work is seldom the same individual that manages the project. Find out the name of the lead carpenter or the project manager, find out how often he/she comes onsite and find out the name of the person you will text in case the tile is delivered to your job site in the wrong color at 7 am. One name. In case you get an answer from a different individual every time, be sure that the information about the project will be lost in transition.

16. Who does what work and which subcontractors are used?

There is nothing wrong with using subcontractors. Most contractors use subcontractors to perform the electrical and plumbing work because they are separately licensed in the State of Washington. You want to make sure that the contractor performs his own carpentry and framing and does not use subcontractors for those services. Find out the names of the plumbing and electrical companies and use L&I to check on their licenses.

What should be done before signing

Go through the L&I Verify a Contractor website and check all three contractors. This process should take about ten minutes, and one of them will be eliminated automatically.

Send the identical six-line email to the rest of the contractors requesting their registration number, certificate of insurance, complete list of all allowances with the amount of money, exclusions list, payment schedule with lien release clause, and name of the individual responsible for daily supervision of the construction site. Speed of response will make better bidders ranking than the bid amounts themselves.

J Hanby LLC has worked across Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Bothell, Woodinville, Sammamish, and Edmonds for more than twenty-five years, and we will answer all sixteen of these questions before you ask them. Call (425) 244-4307 for a free estimate, or read more about our general contractor in Bellevue services, home additions, and demolition services.