Is a General Contractor Required to Be Licensed in Texas?

No. Texas has no state license, no state registration, and no state registry for general contractors, home builders or remodelers. Anyone in this state can print a business card that says “general contractor” tomorrow morning and start bidding your job legally that afternoon.

That is an uncomfortable thing for a contractor to publish. We are publishing it because the alternative — letting you assume a licensing board is protecting you when none exists — is worse. What follows is what is actually regulated in Texas, what the City of Houston does and does not check, and the specific things you can verify yourself for free before you sign anything.

What Texas Does Not License

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is the agency that licenses most Texas trades. Its list of regulated occupations runs to more than forty programs. None of the following appears on it:

• General contracting
• Home building and remodeling
• Roofing
• Concrete and foundation repair
• Framing, masonry, drywall, painting, flooring, siding, windows and doors
• Decks, fencing, gutters, insulation, tile, cabinetry and general handyman work

You do not have to take our word for the absence. The Legislature says it out loud. A 2025 House committee analysis of a roofing bill states plainly that “Texas does not currently require a state-issued license for reroofing contractors.” A 2013 analysis of a foundation repair bill described “the absence of state standards for people operating as, or representing themselves to the public as, foundation repair contractors.”

There used to be a registry. It is gone.

The Texas Residential Construction Commission was the only state body that ever registered Texas homebuilders. It lost its statutory authority on September 1, 2009, when the Legislature failed to pass House Bill 2295 and its authorizing Act expired. Under the Texas Sunset Act an abolished agency gets one year to conclude operations, so the TRCC wound down through September 1, 2010 and transferred its records to the Comptroller of Public Accounts. Nothing replaced it.

This is why you should treat the phrase “state licensed general contractor” as a red flag rather than a credential. There is no such license to hold. A contractor using that phrase is either confused about their own industry or counting on you not knowing. If you see it, ask which agency issued it and wait for the answer.

What Texas Does License

Plenty. The trades that carry real risk to life and property are licensed at the state level, and those licenses are verifiable by anyone in about ninety seconds.

The mistake almost everyone makes: plumbers are not TDLR

Plumbers are licensed by the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, a completely separate agency, under Occupations Code Chapter 1301. They do not appear in the TDLR license search. Homeowners search TDLR, find nothing, and conclude their plumber is unlicensed — or worse, a contractor waves a TDLR search result around as proof of a plumbing license it could never contain.

TSBPE license types you may see on a residential job: Responsible Master Plumber, Master Plumber, Journeyman Plumber, Tradesman Plumber-Limited, and Plumbing Inspector, plus endorsements for medical gas piping and residential fire sprinklers. Ask which one, then check it.

A note on roofing

Roofing has no Texas state license at all. The Roofing Contractors Association of Texas runs a voluntary credential program, and a roofer may legitimately hold it — but RCAT is a private trade association, not a state agency. RCAT’s own site puts it bluntly: “Anyone can call themselves a roofer in Texas and they are not required to be knowledgeable, insured, licensed, or even registered with the state.” Treat an RCAT credential as a positive signal, not as a license.

What the City of Houston Actually Requires

Houston is the more useful question, because city permitting is where the only real paper trail on your project gets created.

General contractors: nothing. The City’s own Building Code Enforcement materials state it directly — “General Contractors are not required to be licensed” — and a building permit “may be purchased by the owner, agent, contractor.” There is no Houston GC license to ask for either.

Trades: registration of the state license is mandatory to pull permits. This is the part that gives you leverage:

• Electrical. Anyone performing electrical work inside Houston must register with the Electrical Inspections section, and electrical permits are issued only to registered master electricians. A homeowner cannot pull an electrical permit.
• Plumbing. Texas Master Plumbers must register their state license with the City to obtain permits. There is a separate Homeowner’s Plumbing Permit, but only if you own and occupy the property as your homestead and are doing the work yourself.
• Mechanical / HVAC. The contractor’s license, insurance and registration all have to be in good standing before an inspection will be issued.

Notice what that means: the City checks insurance for trade registration even though the state does not require it. If a permit was pulled at your address by a registered trade contractor, someone verified something.

The catch: you cannot look up a Houston registration

There is no public searchable registry of Houston-registered contractors. What the City publishes instead are static PDF rosters that go stale — the registered mechanical contractor list carries a 2021 date and expirations that ran out in 2022 — along with a disclaimer that the City does not endorse contractors or verify accuracy.

What does work is the Sold Permits Search, which covers a rolling three-year window and lets you see the permits actually pulled at an address. Going back further requires an open-records request. Use it on your own address after work is complete, and use it on a prospective contractor’s recent job addresses if they will give you any.

So What Should You Verify Instead?

With no licensing board in the loop, vetting shifts entirely onto you. These are the checks that carry weight, in the order we would do them.

1. Insurance, because Texas does not require it

Workers’ compensation is not mandatory for private employers in Texas. The Texas Department of Insurance says so directly: private employers “can choose to carry workers’ compensation insurance coverage (subscribers), but it is not required in most cases.” Only governmental entities must carry it. There is likewise no Texas statute requiring a residential contractor to carry general liability insurance.

So a contractor who carries both is making a voluntary choice that costs them real money, and one who does not may be perfectly legal while leaving you exposed if a framer falls off your roof. Ask for a certificate of insurance sent directly from the agent, naming you, with coverage dates that span your project. A PDF forwarded by the contractor proves nothing; carriers issue these on request in a day.

2. The trade licenses on your job

Get the actual license numbers for the electrician, plumber and HVAC contractor and check them yourself. Two searches, two different agencies:

• TDLR license search for electricians and HVAC. One caveat that trips people up: it returns active licenses only. A blank result means “not currently licensed,” which could be an expired, suspended or revoked license rather than one that never existed.
• TSBPE public license search for plumbers. The portal is branded “Texas Health Professions Council,” which looks wrong but is correct.

3. Whether the business legally exists

The Texas Comptroller’s Franchise Tax Account Status Search is free, needs no login, and shows the legal name, SOS file number, registered agent and officers, and standing. A contractor whose status reads “franchise tax involuntarily ended,” or who does not appear at all, is a genuine red flag. (The Secretary of State’s own entity search charges $1.00 per search; the Comptroller tool answers the more useful question for free.)

4. Liens and lawsuits

In Harris County, the County Clerk’s real property records let you search the contractor’s name as grantor for recorded liens, and the District Clerk’s party inquiry shows district court cases. Neither is complete — smaller disputes sit in county civil and JP courts — so a clean result is not proof of a clean history.

5. A written warranty with a term in it

Not a sentence in a sales conversation. A clause in the contract stating what is covered, for how long, and how a claim is made, separate from the manufacturer warranties on materials.

The Protections You Do Have

Texas gives homeowners real statutory protections. They are procedural, and they only help if you know about them before there is a problem. This is general information, not legal advice — if a dispute is developing, talk to a construction attorney.

The Residential Construction Liability Act, Property Code Chapter 27. Before you can sue a contractor over a construction defect, you have to give written notice by certified mail, return receipt requested, at least 60 days beforehand, describing the defects in reasonable detail. You must also hand over the evidence showing the nature and cause of the defect — expert reports, photographs, recordings. The contractor may then request to inspect, and gets up to three inspections during the 35 days after receiving your notice. Skipping the notice step can get your case dismissed, and rejecting a reasonable repair offer can cap what you are able to recover.

Retainage, Property Code Chapter 53. During the work and for 30 days after it is complete, you are required to reserve 10 percent of the contract price. This is the mechanism that protects you if your general contractor takes your money and does not pay a subcontractor: a sub can place a lien on your home even though you paid the GC in full. If you properly reserved the 10 percent and stopped paying once you received a notice, your exposure is generally limited to that retainage. If you reserved nothing, you are exposed to the amount you should have held.

Homestead protection. For a lien to attach to a Texas homestead, the contract has to be in writing, signed by you and your spouse if you are married, executed before any labor or materials are furnished, and recorded in the county. Residential construction contracts also have to include a statutory disclosure explaining these rights. A contractor who wants to start on a handshake is skipping the step that protects you both.

How We Answer These Questions

H&H Construction LLC is a general contractor working in Houston and the surrounding counties. We cannot show you a state contractor license because Texas does not issue one. What we can put in front of you: certificates of insurance direct from our agent, the license numbers of the licensed trades on your job so you can check them yourself, permits pulled in your address at the City, a written warranty term in the contract, a schedule of values so you know what each payment buys, and references from recent work.

If another Houston contractor tells you they are state licensed, you now know enough to ask the follow-up question. That is the whole point of this page.

Ask us for any of the documents above before you ask us for a price. A contractor who hesitates on a certificate of insurance is telling you something useful.