Before signing the contract on a new-construction home, most buyers read online reviews of the builder. Reviews are the wrong records. The State of Florida and your county keep better ones, and nearly all of it is free and checkable in an afternoon.
Who actually holds the builder's license, whether the state has disciplined them, what they built and how inspections went, and whether the state has ever paid another homeowner for their conduct — all of it is public. The same three records matter just as much on the other end, when something has already gone wrong and you are deciding what to do about it. Here is how to pull each one yourself.
Start with the state licensing lookup run by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Search the business name from your contract or proposal, and also search the individual's name if you have one.
You are looking for three things:
Is the license active, and was it active when your work was done? The record shows status over time, not just today. A license that lapsed or was suspended during your project is something you want to know now. Florida law attaches serious consequences to contracting without a valid license, including limits on the contractor's ability to enforce its own contract.
Who is the qualifying agent? In Florida, a company does not really hold a contractor's license; a licensed individual "qualifies" the company and is legally responsible for its work. Write that person's name down. Companies change names; the individual's license record follows them. If you are vetting a builder before buying, search the qualifier's name separately and see what other companies they have qualified.
Is there a disciplinary history? The record shows public complaints and disciplinary actions; complaints generally become public only after the state finds probable cause, so what you see is the vetted end of the pipeline. Read them. A disciplinary action is the state's own finding after a process, and the underlying file can usually be requested. One caution in both directions: a clean record does not mean good work, and a single old complaint does not mean bad work. Read what is there and weigh it like the adult decision it is informing.
Your county building department keeps a file on every permitted project, and many Florida counties let you search it online by address. Search your address, or the address of the home you are considering.
The permit file tells you what the sales office cannot: the permits pulled, the contractor named on each one, the inspections and their results, and the certificate of occupancy or completion. When you read it, check three things. Does the contractor on the permit match the company on your contract? Did the inspections happen, and did any fail? And what are the dates, particularly the certificate dates at the end?
Those dates matter more than they look. Florida's hardest construction-defect deadline, the statute of repose, is seven years, and it runs from fixed events in the permit file, not from when you discovered a problem. If you are past the buying stage and into the something-is-wrong stage, the permit file is where the real deadline math starts, and it is worth having a lawyer run that math early.
If the online record is thin, you can request the full paper file from the building department as a public record. It costs little and often contains inspection details the web portal omits.
Florida maintains a fund that compensates homeowners for certain losses caused by licensed contractors, generally after a judgment, arbitration award, or restitution order the contractor did not satisfy. When the fund pays a claim, it pays against a specific contractor, and that is a public record you can ask about through DBPR.
A paid fund claim is a strong signal: it means another homeowner was harmed badly enough, and the contractor made it right so little, that the state stepped in. The absence of one means much less. The fund is narrow, many wronged homeowners never qualify, and most contractors with genuine problems have no fund history at all. Treat a paid claim as a red flag; do not treat a blank record as a green one.
You will have done, in an afternoon, the first factual work of the case: who was responsible, whether they were licensed, what the county saw, and what the state already knows. And you will have the dates that determine how much time you actually have, which in Florida construction cases is almost always less than homeowners expect.
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Request a Free Case ReviewRelated: What public records can — and can't — tell you about a home builder · Repose vs. limitations