To become a general contractor in North Carolina, you must register through the North Carolina Licensing Board for General Contractors and wait to be approved. To clarify, the North Carolina Secretary of State does require that all businesses register and obtain a business license to work in the state. North Carolina does not require formal education for general contractors.
However, you must be over 18 and have a high school degree or equivalent. Upon meeting those requirements, you may then apply to be a general contractor. If you still want to attend college or trade school, focus your studies in an area that will support a career in construction. Obtaining formal degrees in architecture, engineering, mechanics, and construction management may be helpful but are not necessary.
Learn as much about the construction industry as you can. The more experienced, the better. General contractors manage projects, but they also know how to confront plenty of obstacles on a job site. As you gain exposure to different areas of construction, you will become more successful in general contracting, since getting any kind of entry-level experience is crucial for the learning process. North Carolina has three different limitations of licenses, which are based on the financial information and project value that you provide to the board.
Note that electricians, plumbers, and specialty trades require different licenses. Before applying to become a general contractor in North Carolina, here are some important requirements to know. Following approval by the board, those applying to be a general contractor in the State of North Carolina will need to take and pass an exam by PSI.
All companies operating in North Carolina will need to register for a business license, which may also include showing copies of the following documents: Articles of Organization, Articles of Incorporation, and Certificate of Authority.
All business registration must be handled by the North Carolina Secretary of State. Find more information, including which cities and counties may require a certificate of insurance, here.
Any business with employees in the State of North Carolina will need to pay unemployment insurance taxes, pending conditions.
Therefore, if, in the example above, ABC Builders does not hold a license with the Board but nevertheless enters into a contract with Mr. Jones to construct a house upon land owned by Mr. Jones to pay it a dime after it completes construction of the house. Pangs of guilt or his internal moral compass may compel Mr. Jones because the contract is considered void due to ABC Builders' failure to be properly licensed. This is a striking—and, for the unlicensed general contractor, a very harsh—rule.
The North Carolina courts have noted the harshness of the rule while, at the same time, repeatedly enforcing it, holding that it is the public policy of North Carolina that those acting as general contractors be properly licensed. Not surprisingly, many unlicensed general contractors confronted at the end of a project with the prospect of not getting paid for their work or not getting paid their last draw have pleaded with the courts to allow an exception to the general rule based on the specific circumstances of their case.
But the courts have found very few, if any, exceptions to the general rule. Thus, recovery has been denied to unlicensed general contractors where:. The North Carolina Court of Appeals has even held that a general contractor who contracts to construct a dwelling on the contractor's own property for sale to another person must be denied recovery, as the statute applies regardless of who owns the land upon which the dwelling is built.
However, the Court of Appeals also held in that case that:. This is not tantamount to holding, as [the contractor] suggest[s], that any person is prevented. As the language of the statute suggests, the. Thus, if an unlicensed seller-contractor enters into a contract with a buyer for the seller to build a house on the seller's land and then convey the land and the house to the buyer, the seller will not be able to enforce the contract.
However, the result in this situation would likely be that the seller would just refuse to convey the house and the land if the buyer has indicated the intent to not pay anything. Indeed, even if the seller-contractor in our hypothetical built the house first without a prospective buyer a "spec-house" and, only after completion of the construction of the house, entered into a contract with a buyer to sell the land and the house, the reasoning from the North Carolina case quoted above would still not allow the seller to enforce the sales contract against the buyer because the seller-contractor still needed a license.
While it was building the house "on [its] own behalf," it was not building it for the purpose of actually occupying it as the contractor's residence. A recent North Carolina Court of Appeals case allowed an unlicensed contractor to recover from the owner. In that case, the Court of Appeals focused not on whether the contractor had been hired to erect improvements for the owner, but rather on whether the contractor had engaged in supervising the other contractors.
The other contractors had contracted directly with the owner and another party had contracted with the owner to coordinate the work. Thus, the unlicensed contractor attempting to recover had not actually supervised the other contractors or the overall project.
Because the contractor had not engaged in supervising the overall work of the entire project, the Court held that the contractor was not a general contractor and, therefore, was not subject to the statute's requirement that the contractor hold a general contractor's license. This is a significant departure from previous interpretations of the statute by North Carolina courts that had focused on whether the contractor had contracted with the owner to erect improvements on the owner's property, not on whether the contractor had exercised a certain degree of control over the project or other contractors.
This opinion—when evaluating whether an unlicensed contractor can recover—appeared to focus on the "superintend or manage" prong of the definition of general contractor in Section and overlooked the "contract with another to construct" prong of the definition. Licensees whose Qualifier did not complete the CE requirement by November 30 will be ineligible to renew. Safeguarding life, health and property. Promoting public welfare for our citizens. Proposed Permanent Rules Click Here. New license applications are now available online.
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