{"id":37,"date":"2026-08-31T04:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T04:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/2026\/08\/31\/five-questions-to-ask-before-you-hire-a-general-contractor\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T04:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T04:51:37","slug":"five-questions-to-ask-before-you-hire-a-general-contractor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/2026\/08\/31\/five-questions-to-ask-before-you-hire-a-general-contractor\/","title":{"rendered":"Five questions to ask before you hire a general contractor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Licensing, insurance, subcontractors and warranties: what to check before you sign anything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Are you licensed and bonded in this county?<\/strong> Ask for the number and check it yourself. It takes two minutes online.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. What is your general liability cover, and can I see the certificate?<\/strong> $1M is the floor for residential work; $2M is normal for commercial.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Which parts of this job are subcontracted?<\/strong> There is nothing wrong with subcontracting, but you should know who is actually on your site and who manages them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. What does your warranty cover, and for how long?<\/strong> Separate the manufacturer&#8217;s material warranty from the contractor&#8217;s workmanship warranty. They are not the same thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. Can I speak to two clients from the last twelve months?<\/strong> Not a testimonial page \u2014 a phone call. Ask them what went wrong and how it was handled, because something always goes wrong.<\/p>\n<p>A contractor who answers all five without hesitating is one worth shortlisting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Licensing, insurance, subcontractors and warranties: what to check before you sign anything. 1. Are you licensed and bonded in this county? Ask&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[15,17,16],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hiring-tips","tag-hiring","tag-insurance","tag-licensing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scintillawpthemes.com\/demo\/swp-construction-pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}