New Hampshire to Virginia: residential contractor license reciprocity

Virginia licenses contractors through the Board for Contractors at the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, and the license is issued to a business entity rather than to a person. Every license carries two separate things: a class (A, B or C) that sets the dollar limit on the work, and one or more classifications or specialty designations that set the type of work. Class C covers a single contract or project over $1,000 but under $30,000 and under $250,000 of work in any 12 months; Class B covers $30,000 to under $150,000 per project and $250,000 to under $1 million a year, and requires $15,000 of documented net worth or equity; Class A has no monetary ceiling and requires $45,000 of net worth or equity. A $50,000 surety bond on the Board's form may be filed instead of the financial statement, and Class C has no financial requirement at all. Homes-only work is the Residential Building (RBC) classification, which covers dwellings and townhouses and their accessory structures and folds in concrete, home improvement, masonry, painting, roofing, landscape and swimming pool work on those properties, but never electrical, plumbing, HVAC or gas fitting and never commercial buildings; smaller repair and remodeling firms may instead take the Home Improvement (HIC) specialty. The firm names a qualified individual for each designation, who must have one year (Class C), three years (Class B) or five years (Class A) of experience in that work and must pass the Board's RBC technical examination, and Class A and Class B firms also name a designated employee who passes the PSI business examination. All classes need eight hours of Board-approved pre-license education, and licenses run two years from the last day of the month of issuance.

New Hampshire issues no residential building, home builder, remodeler or home improvement contractor license. The Attorney General puts it plainly in the state's own consumer alert on home improvement scams: "in New Hampshire, contractors do not need to be licensed." The Office of Professional Licensure and Certification administers every occupational board in the state, and the statute that lists them, RSA 310:2, runs to more than eighty entries without naming a contractor board; the construction-related ones license the specialists rather than the builder - the Electricians' Board, the Mechanical Licensing Board (plumbers and gas fitters), the Board of Home Inspectors, the Board of Septic System Evaluators, the Installation Standards Board for manufactured housing, and the design professions of architect, landscape architect, professional engineer, land surveyor, natural scientist and forester. The Attorney General's own warning list is a useful summary of the work that still needs a license: electrical work, inspections, plumbing, septic, well pump work, asbestos abatement and lead abatement. A remodeler or homebuilder arriving from another state therefore has no New Hampshire credential to apply for and nothing to transfer, and should go straight to the local building department for permits and inspections. Two things still bind an unlicensed residential contractor. Under RSA 359-G, the residential construction defect law, a contractor entering a contract for the construction or improvement of a residence for more than $5,000 must give the owner a conspicuous written notice, in the statutory all-capitals form, of the contractor's right to resolve alleged defects before the homeowner sues; a homeowner must then serve a written notice of claim at least 60 days before filing, and the contractor has 30 days to offer repair, offer money, propose an inspection or reject the claim. Over all of it sits the Consumer Protection Act, enforced by the Department of Justice's Consumer Protection and Antitrust Bureau, which also enforces the door-to-door sales disclosure rules in RSA 361-B:3.