Youre young and strong and have the financial means to build your own house. You have a truckload full of tools and some experience with a hammer, so you think, hey, Im going to build my own house and be my own Contractor.

Admirable if not enviable, but if you plan to use that experience in the attempt to one day getting your own contractors licenseyou can pretty much forget it.

Yes, it may take you ten to twelve months to build your dream house, and you may have done some, most, or even all of the work yourself. But a house built does not a contractor make.

The basic requirement to qualify for a California contractors license is four years of experience at the journeyman level. In order for someone to qualify for a license using only owner/builder experience you would need to build twenty or more homes a year, for many years. That would be near to impossible for an owner/builder to accomplish. Additionally, most people who want to use owner/builder experience really only have limited experience because they have sub-contracted out parts of the project. So if you were to submit that ten to twelve months of experience to the Contractors State License Board you would likely be awarded three to four months of total experience.

The documentation required when submitting that owner/builder experience and the poor return youd be given for your hard work, is why I would suggest not using owner/builder experience in the pursuit of obtaining a contractors license.

Copyright Phil Cocciante

Phil Cocciante worked in construction for 6 years before he worked at the Contractors State License Board as an Application Technician. He took the experience gained while working at the CSLB and started his own Contractors Licensing Service. http://www.contractorlicenseservice.com

You can contact him at phil@contractorlicenseservice.com