21 Questions to Ask a General Contractor Before You Hire

Portfolios are marketing. References are curated. The interview is where you actually learn how your project will go — if you ask questions where the answers discriminate. After twenty years of hiring and supervising crews, these are the ones I still use, grouped by what they reveal.

Legitimacy (disqualifiers first)

• 1. What's your CSLB license number? Then verify it yourself — classification, status, bond, and workers' comp.
• 2. Who carries your liability insurance, and can I get a certificate naming me? "I'll send it" means maybe. A real policy produces a certificate in a day.
• 3. Do you carry workers' comp for everyone on my job? If not, an injured worker on your property can become your problem.
• 4. Will you pull the permits, under your license? "You can owner-builder it to save money" shifts liability to you — and is a red flag dressed as a favor.

How they run a job

• 5. Who is on site daily — you, a foreman, or subs unsupervised? The honest answer is usually a foreman. You're really asking: who do I call, and how often are you there?
• 6. Which trades are your own crews vs. subcontractors?
• 7. How many projects will you be running at once during mine? Overcommitment is the quiet cause of most schedule slips.
• 8. What does your typical weekly update look like? If the answer is "call me whenever," communication will be whenever.
• 9. What language do your crews work in? Not a gotcha — a planning question. If instructions travel English-to-Spanish through one translator, you want to know who that person is. (In San Diego, this is half of why my practice is bilingual.)

Money (where the predictive power is)

• 10. What deposit do you require? In California the legal max is $1,000 or 10%, whichever is less — the answer tells you instantly whether they follow the law.
• 11. Walk me through your payment schedule. Payments should follow completed milestones, not the calendar.
• 12. How do you handle change orders? You want: written, itemized, signed before work. Here's what good looks like.
• 13. What are these allowances based on? Point at the numbers in the bid. Real allowances have product lines behind them; fantasy allowances have shrugs.
• 14. What's not included in this bid? The single most valuable question on this list. Honest bidders answer specifically.
• 15. Will you provide lien releases with each payment — conditional at payment, unconditional once funds clear? Protects you from a sub the GC didn't pay liening your home.

Track record

• 16. Give me two references from projects like mine — and one from a project that had problems. Everyone has a problem project. What you're buying is how they behaved during it.
• 17. When did your last project run late, and why? "Never" is not a good answer; it's a dishonest one.
• 18. Have you built in my city recently? Local permit familiarity is worth real schedule time.
• 19. Who warranties the work, and for how long?
• 20. What happens if we disagree about quality? Listen for a process, not reassurance.
• 21. How do you feel about my having an independent project manager reviewing the work? Good contractors welcome it — clear decisions and prompt verified payments make their job easier. Bristling at oversight is an answer too. (What that oversight looks like: what an owner's rep does.)

Scoring the interview

You're not looking for perfect answers — you're comparing specificity. Contractors who answer with numbers, processes, and named people run projects that way. Contractors who answer with charm run projects on charm. Take notes, ask every bidder the same list, and read the answers next to their leveled bids. And if you'd rather have a professional run this gauntlet for you, that's literally my job.