Checking a trade license in Texas, and the one job nobody licenses

Texas licenses some of the people who will work on your house and not others, and the split is not intuitive. The trades that touch gas, water and electricity are licensed and searchable. The person coordinating all of them is not licensed at all. Knowing which is which, and where the search boxes are, takes about ten minutes and is the cheapest diligence available to a homeowner.

Electricians: TDLR, and a public search box

Electricians are licensed by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. The department's own electricians page describes the statutory basis — the Texas Electrical Safety and Licensing Act — and notes that the same Act requires TDLR to adopt the revised National Electrical Code as the electrical code for the state.²

The lookup is public. TDLR's license search covers individuals and businesses across every industry it regulates, so one search box serves electricians and air-conditioning contractors both.¹ You need a name or a license number, and it takes a minute.

Air conditioning and refrigeration: also TDLR

Air-conditioning and refrigeration contractors are TDLR's as well. The department's laws-and-rules page for that program cites Texas Occupations Code chapter 1302 as the governing statute.³ Same search box.¹

Plumbers: a different agency, and this surprises people

Plumbing is not TDLR's. The Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners is a separate agency with its own board, its own complaint process and its own license search, and it is still separate today.⁴ Its consumer-information page carries the search link and tells you what to do with it: enter the responsible master plumber's license number to verify that the master plumber license is valid.⁴

That is the specific check worth making. A plumbing company operates under a responsible master plumber, and it is that person's license that makes the company's work lawful, not the name on the truck.

There is one wrinkle in the statute worth knowing rather than being surprised by. Occupations Code §1301.351 requires a plumbing license; subsection (c) carries a specific rule for new one- and two-family dwellings, under which the supervising plumber is not required to provide continuous or uninterrupted on-the-job oversight.⁵ So on a new house, a licensed plumber's supervision is a real requirement but not a continuous-presence requirement. If that matters to you, it is a fair question to ask about how a particular job is staffed.

General contractors and homebuilders: nobody

This is the part that most changes how a homeowner should behave. Texas has no state license for a general contractor or a homebuilder, and no state agency that issues or regulates one. The state did once have a regulator for residential construction, and the Sunset Advisory Commission's page on it records the ending in one sentence: "The Texas Residential Construction Commission was abolished and the Act expired on September 1, 2009."⁶

Nothing replaced it. We went looking for a Texas state page that establishes a license for a general contractor, a homebuilder, a roofer or a general remodeler, and did not find one. That is a negative search result rather than a statement by the state, and it is the honest way to put it: no state page we could open says such a license exists, and the state's own record of the regulator it abolished is the closest thing to an affirmative answer.⁶

The consequence is straightforward: for the builder, there is no license to check, so the vetting is yours to do by other means. Questions to ask any custom builder is the companion to this note; Your rights when you sign a build contract covers what protects you instead.

The insurance one, for after a storm

If a claim brings an adjuster to your house, adjusters and agents are licensed too, and the Texas Department of Insurance publishes a page for checking one.⁷ Note that the actual search runs on a third-party service TDI directs consumers to, rather than on TDI's own domain — the department's page is the trustworthy starting point.

This matters more than it sounds after a hailstorm, when the number of people offering to help a homeowner rises sharply, and when the license question is the quickest one to settle.

The ten-minute version

1. Ask each trade for the license number and the name it is held in — for plumbing, the responsible master plumber.⁴
2. Electrician or A/C contractor: TDLR's license search.¹
3. Plumber: the plumbing board's search, from its consumer-information page.⁴
4. Builder or remodeler: there is no license to search. Ask instead for insurance certificates, references you can call, and the contract documents.
5. Adjuster or agent, after a claim: TDI's lookup page.⁷

A license check tells you one thing only — that the state currently recognizes this person to do this work. It is not a quality rating and it is not a recommendation. It is, however, a fact, and it is free.

Every lookup named here is linked in the source list below, with the date each page was opened.