How to Vet a Florida Contractor: The 6-Point Checklist

Florida's Attorney General is currently investigating a roofing company after more than 128 homeowner complaints — customers who were promised insurance-covered roofs and ended up with liens on their homes, unfinished work, or foreclosure notices. None of them thought they were hiring a scammer. The good news: almost every one of these cases would have been caught by the checklist below. Every check is free and uses official state records.

1. Verify the license — on the state's site, not theirs. Look the contractor up at MyFloridaLicense.com (Florida DBPR). Confirm the license is current and active, matches the exact business name on your contract, and check the complaint/discipline history on the same record. A screenshot or a number printed on a business card proves nothing — licenses get suspended, borrowed, and faked.
2. Get a Certificate of Insurance — naming you. Ask for a COI listing you (the homeowner) as the certificate holder, showing general liability of at least $1M per occurrence ($2M is standard for roofing and structural work). A legitimate contractor's office can email this in minutes, directly from their insurer. Fabricated certificates are one of the most common tricks used by post-storm scammers — a COI issued to you by the insurance agency is much harder to fake.
3. Get three written estimates. Not for haggling — for calibration. If one bid is dramatically lower, it usually means missing scope, missing permits, or a contractor who plans to "discover" costs later. Written estimates also give you an on-paper record of exactly what was promised.
4. Cap the deposit at 10%. Under Florida Statute 489.126, a contractor who takes more than a 10% deposit must apply for permits within 30 days and start work within 90 days after permits issue. Scammers take large deposits precisely because they never intend to pull a permit. Structure the rest as milestone payments tied to completed, inspected work.
5. The permit is pulled by the contractor — in the contractor's name. If someone asks you to pull an "owner-builder" permit for work they are doing, walk away. That maneuver shifts all legal responsibility for the work onto you and is a classic mark of an unlicensed operator hiding from the building department.
6. A written contract with the essentials. Scope of work, itemized price, payment schedule tied to milestones, start and completion dates, who pulls permits, lien releases at each payment, and a cleanup clause. Florida law gives you protection only for what's on paper.

Why reviews alone aren't enough

Star ratings are the first thing everyone checks — and the easiest thing to manipulate. Read the actual review text for patterns, compare across platforms, and treat reviews as one signal among six, not the whole vetting. Every listing on Florida Spot shows its live Google rating and review count synced from Google itself — businesses can't edit or curate them — and every listed business holds a 4.8-star or higher rating. That's your starting pool, not your finish line: run the six checks on anyone you hire.