Questions to Ask a General Contractor Before You Hire in Jacksonville, FL | Sunshine State

Hiring a general contractor is one of the biggest financial decisions a Jacksonville homeowner will make, often bigger than the car in the driveway, sometimes bigger than the mortgage itself. Yet most people walk into that first consultation with nothing more than a gut feeling and a couple of online reviews to go on. That's how homeowners end up with stalled permits, vanishing deposits, or a "team" that turns out to be three different subcontractors who've never worked together before.

The good news: the right questions, asked before you sign anything, do almost all the vetting work for you. Below is the checklist we wish every Jacksonville homeowner had in hand before their first contractor meeting, covering licensing, money, permitting, and the one question most people forget to ask until it's too late.

Why the Right Questions Matter Before You Hire a General Contractor

Florida's construction market rewards confidence, and not every contractor projecting it has earned it. A quick conversation can't tell you whether a company is licensed, whether its insurance is current, or whether the crew showing up on day one is the same crew that quoted the job. Structured questions, asked in the same order, of every bidder, turn a sales pitch into a comparison you can actually trust.

"My goal is not just to do a good job but make sure my customer understands and is happy with the final result," says John Belizario, founder of Sunshine State Professional Services. That standard only works if the homeowner knows what to ask for in the first place, which is exactly what this guide walks through.

Is Your General Contractor Actually Licensed and Insured in Florida?

This is the single most important question, and the easiest one to get a vague answer to. Ask for the contractor's Certified General Contractor (CGC) license number directly, then verify it yourself rather than taking their word for it, Florida's licensing board makes this a two-minute lookup. Ask for proof of current general liability insurance and workers' compensation coverage, and ask what happens if a worker is injured on your property while they're uninsured. The honest answer should never be "that won't happen."

How to Verify the License Yourself

Don't stop at asking the question, confirm it. We've broken down exactly how to verify a contractor's license in Florida before you hire, including the specific state database to check and the red flags that show up when a license has lapsed or was never issued for general contracting work in the first place.

Who Is Actually Doing the Work  In-House Team or Subcontractors?

Ask this plainly: "Who shows up on-site, and do they work for you directly?" Some companies operate as a coordination layer, handing every trade off to a different subcontractor they've never worked with before. Others, like a true full-service outfit, keep engineers, estimators, project coordinators, and project managers under one roof. Belizario describes it this way: "Together we have engineers, estimators, project coordinators, project managers,  it's basically everybody like a family working together to give you a really nice product." That kind of continuity matters when something needs to be decided on the fly, a beam that doesn't line up, a permit condition nobody expected, because the people making that call already know your project.

What Does the Deposit and Payment Schedule Look Like?

Before you write a check, ask exactly how much is due up front, what it's tied to, and when the next payment is triggered. Florida law puts real limits on what a residential contractor can collect before a permit is pulled and work begins, and a legitimate contractor should be able to explain those limits without hesitation. If a bid asks for more than the law allows, or can't explain the payment schedule in plain terms, that's a question worth pressing on before you sign anything.

We cover the specifics, deposit caps, permit-timing requirements, and what to do if a contractor stalls after taking your money,  in our breakdown of Florida's contractor deposit law.

How Will Permits, Inspections, and Code Compliance Be Handled?

Ask who pulls the permit, whose name it's under, and who's responsible for showing up to inspections. This isn't a formality, an improperly permitted addition or ADU can turn into a legal and insurance headache when you go to sell the home, or when an inspector flags work that was never signed off. A contractor who manages the full permitting relationship, including the Notice of Commencement filing that Florida law requires, is telling you they've done this enough times to know where homeowners get tripped up.

What's the Realistic Timeline, and Who Do I Call If Something Goes Wrong?

Every bid will have a timeline. Fewer will tell you, honestly, what happens when that timeline slips, a supply delay, a failed inspection, a permit revision. Ask directly: "If we fall behind schedule, who contacts me, and how often?" The answer tells you whether you're about to have a single point of contact who owns the outcome, or a rotating cast of subcontractors each pointing at someone else.

Push a step further and ask what the update cadence looks like once work is underway, weekly check-ins, a shared project log, same-day answers to texts, rather than assuming "we'll keep you posted" means anything specific. Homeowners who've been through a bad renovation almost always describe the same failure: not that something went wrong, but that nobody told them until it was expensive to fix. A contractor who can name a specific communication process, unprompted, has usually had to build one because a past project taught them why it matters.

What Should Raise a Red Flag During the Initial Walkthrough?

The first walkthrough tells you almost as much as the written bid. Watch for a contractor who won't put a firm number on paper and instead talks in ranges that widen every time you ask a follow-up question. Watch for reluctance to name specific past projects you can drive by or call the homeowner of. And watch for pressure to sign same-day, a legitimate contractor with a full schedule has no reason to rush a decision that's going to affect your home for years. "We don't define our customers, we try to get as much as we can and we're looking to help people, being impactful for the community," Belizario says of the approach that's guided Sunshine State's growth. That community-first posture tends to show up in small ways during a walkthrough: a contractor who answers questions fully instead of redirecting back to the sale.

Can They Handle the Whole Project, Start to Finish?

Many Jacksonville homeowners start out planning a single remodel and discover, mid-project, that they also need a permitted home addition, an accessory dwelling unit, or a full gut renovation instead of a patch job. Ask up front whether the contractor can scale with the project or whether you'll need to find, vet, and coordinate a second company halfway through. A full-service renovation contractor in Jacksonville that keeps design, permitting, and construction under one roof removes that risk entirely, and it's worth asking, plainly, whether the company you're vetting actually offers that or just says it does.

If financing is part of the conversation, it's also worth asking what options exist for financing a Jacksonville renovation before you assume you need cash in hand to start. And if your project follows storm damage, ask whether the contractor has experience navigating a claim, we've detailed what's involved in storm damage insurance claims in Jacksonville so you know what timeline your insurer is working against.

Jacksonville Homeowner FAQ: Vetting a General Contractor

None of these questions are meant to catch a contractor in a lie, they're meant to surface the answer before the contract, not after the deposit clears. Belizario put it simply, reflecting on why he built the company this way in the first place: "I started as a subcontractor and then I decided to learn a little bit more, investing on myself and in the business,  get the license, become a general contractor." A contractor who can answer every one of these questions plainly, without hedging, is one who's built a business that can survive the scrutiny.

If you're planning a renovation, addition, or ADU in Jacksonville, Fernandina Beach, or anywhere in Northeast Florida, bring this list to your first conversation with Sunshine State Professional Services, we'd rather answer every one of these questions up front than have you find out the hard way. Request a free estimate to get started.