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We vet for NJ registration, insurance & reputation — no pay-to-rank
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Last updated: August 17, 2026
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Facts verified against NJ Division of Consumer Affairs sources on August 17, 2026
How do I check if a NJ contractor is licensed?
Search the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs verification portal at newjersey.mylicense.com/verification. Two things trip most people up. First, New Jersey does not license home improvement contractors — it registers them, and the number you want is 13 characters beginning 13VH. Second, that registration is issued to a business, so you have to use Business Search. Searching the owner’s name under Person Search returns nothing and makes a perfectly legitimate contractor look unregistered.
Plumbers, electricians and HVAC contractors are different: they hold real state licences on top of the business registration, and the individual licence holder is found under Person Search. Whichever path you use, the status has to read Active before you hand over a deposit.
Somebody knocks on your door in Cherry Hill after a nor’easter and says your ridge vent is shot. Or the HVAC company that has serviced your Voorhees split-level for nine years finally quotes the replacement. Either way, the first question is the same, and it takes about two minutes to answer.
The catch is that most guides to this get the New Jersey specifics wrong — including one currently sitting on Google’s first page and cited in Google’s own AI answer. This guide walks the actual portal, names the exact search path for each trade, and flags the two facts that changed in 2026.
Does New Jersey license home improvement contractors?
No — not yet. New Jersey registers home improvement contractors. It does not license them the way it licenses a master plumber or an electrical contractor. That is not a technicality; it changes what the number in your hand actually proves.
Registration comes from the Division of Consumer Affairs under what used to be called the Contractors’ Registration Act. To get and keep it, a business has to file its formation documents, disclose prior convictions and disciplinary history, and carry commercial general liability insurance of at least $500,000 per occurrence. What it does not involve is a trade exam. Nobody tested whether the person can flash a chimney or size a condenser.
So a valid 13VH number is a floor, not a verdict. It tells you the business is legally allowed to sell you home improvement work in New Jersey and carries insurance. It tells you nothing about workmanship. That gap is exactly why we check registration and insurance and reputation before a company goes in our directory.
How to look up a NJ contractor in under two minutes
Go to newjersey.mylicense.com/verification and pick the right search type before you type anything. That single choice is where most searches fail.
- Choose Business Search for a home improvement contractor. The registration belongs to the company, not the owner. The portal’s own note lists home improvement contractors and electrical contractor businesses among the credentials issued in a business name.
- Choose Person Search for a plumber, HVACR contractor or journeyman electrician. Those licences attach to a human being.
- Search by the 13VH number if you have it. It is exact and it skips every name-matching problem. Ask for it — state law requires the number on contracts, estimates, proposals and advertising, so a contractor who cannot produce it on request has already told you something.
- If you only have a name, search the shortest distinctive fragment. “Garden State Decks” finds more than “Garden State Decks LLC.” Legal entity names rarely match truck lettering.
- Read the status line, not just the hit. A record existing is not the same as a record being current. You want Active.
Contractors working the Philly side cross the bridge constantly, and a Pennsylvania registration does not travel. A company based in Bensalem doing a roof in Collingswood needs its own New Jersey registration, and so does a Delaware outfit working Salem County. If a contractor waves a PA licence number at you, that is not the number you need.
Which trades need more than a 13VH registration
Three trades are genuinely licensed in New Jersey, with exams and experience requirements behind them: electrical, plumbing, and HVACR. For those, the business registration is only half the check. You also want the individual licence, and it lives on a different search path.
| The work | What you verify | Search path |
|---|---|---|
| Roofing, siding, decks, fencing, painting, windows, remodeling | 13VH business registration only | Business Search |
| Electrical | 13VH registration plus an electrical contractor licence from the Board of Examiners of Electrical Contractors | Business Search for the contractor business; Person Search for a journeyman |
| Plumbing | 13VH registration plus a master plumber licence from the Board of Examiners of Master Plumbers | Person Search |
| HVAC and refrigeration | 13VH registration plus a master HVACR licence; technicians handling refrigerant also need federal EPA Section 608 certification | Person Search |
| Any job the contractor is financing for you | A separate Home Repair Contractor licence from the NJ Department of Banking and Insurance | DOBI, not Consumer Affairs |
That last row catches people out. If the contractor arranges the payment plan themselves rather than taking cash, a card, or installments inside 90 days, the state expects a lender-side licence from DOBI as well.
D’Auria & Son Heating and Air — a worked example
HVAC is the clearest case of the two-credential rule, so it makes a useful walkthrough. A company replacing a furnace or condenser in Camden County needs the business registered under 13VH and a master HVACR licence behind the work — two records, two search paths, two different tabs of the same portal. When a heating and air company goes into our directory, that is both checks, run by hand, before the profile goes live.
What a 13VH number tells you — and what it doesn’t
Read the record like a checklist. Four fields carry almost all the signal.
Why your contractor might not show up
A blank result is not proof of anything. Google’s AI answer for this question currently leans on a Reddit thread that says if a contractor does not appear, they are not registered. That is one possibility out of five, and it is not always the likeliest.
- You used the wrong search type. Person Search will never return a home improvement registration. This is the single most common cause and it takes one click to rule out.
- The legal name differs from the trading name. Plenty of established South Jersey outfits are registered under a family surname or an old entity while the trucks say something else entirely.
- The registration lapsed on a calendar date, not because anything went wrong. See the renewal window below — a check run in May or June catches contractors who simply filed late.
- They are out of state and never registered here. Common with storm-chasing crews that appear after a nor’easter and are gone by the time the ridge cap fails.
- They genuinely are not registered. There is no small-job exemption and no dollar threshold for the registration requirement. If the first four are ruled out, this is your answer.
Several widely-read pages — including one ranking on page one for this exact question — state that New Jersey home improvement registrations renew every two years. They don’t. The Division of Consumer Affairs runs an annual cycle: renewals open online in mid-January and close at the end of March, with a short late window through April carrying an extra fee. Registrations that are not renewed flip to expired around the first of May.
Practical consequence: if you run a lookup in May, June or July and see expired, do not assume misconduct. Ask when they filed. If you run it in February, an Active status may be the outgoing year’s — ask for the current certificate.
What changed in 2026: New Jersey is moving to real licensing
This is the part almost nothing online reflects yet, and it is the reason “licensed” and “registered” are about to stop being interchangeable.
New Jersey enacted the Home Improvement and Home Elevation Contractor Licensing Act as P.L. 2023, c. 237, signed in January 2024. It renamed the old Contractors’ Registration Act to the Contractors’ Business Registration Act, and it created a new State Board of Home Improvement and Home Elevation Contractors with the power to license individuals, test them, and discipline them.
Two pieces are already live. Businesses are now HICBs rather than HICs, and to obtain, renew or reinstate a registration they must carry workers’ compensation insurance unless legally exempt, hold additional security in the form of a compliance bond, letter of credit or equivalent, and keep the commercial general liability cover that was always required. The Act’s education and training requirements took effect February 1, 2026.
The piece that is not live is the individual licensing mandate. It does not switch on a calendar date — it takes effect six months after the new Board formally promulgates its regulations, and as of mid-2026 those regulations had not been published. So registration remains the operative system today. Which means: keep asking for the 13VH number, and expect a licence number to matter alongside it at some point after the Board finishes its rulemaking.
A contractor who already carries workers’ comp and a compliance bond has cleared the newer, higher bar rather than the old minimum. That is a fair question to ask in 2026 and a genuinely useful way to separate established South Jersey companies from crews assembled last spring.
Three checks the state portal cannot do for you
The portal confirms a registration existed when it was filed. It does not confirm anything is true today. Three things you have to verify yourself.
- The insurance is current. Ask for a certificate of insurance sent directly from the agent, not a PDF forwarded from the contractor. Check the policy dates and that the named insured matches the registered business exactly. Policies lapse mid-registration all the time.
- The permit gets pulled. Your township construction office issues it, and here is the lever most homeowners don’t know they have: municipalities are barred from issuing construction permits to contractors who are required to be registered and are not. If a contractor pushes to skip the permit, the reason may not be the fee. Cherry Hill, Evesham, Gloucester Township and Deptford all run their own construction offices with their own submission requirements.
- The contract is written and complete. Home improvement contracts over $500 must be in writing in New Jersey and must carry the registration number along with the scope, total price, payment schedule and start and completion dates. A handshake and a number on a napkin is not a contract, and it removes the paperwork you would need if this goes wrong.
What happens if you hire an unregistered contractor
The exposure is theirs on paper and yours in practice. A contractor who works unregistered faces civil penalties of up to $10,000 for a first offence and up to $20,000 for each one after that, and a knowing violation is a crime of the fourth degree in New Jersey.
None of which helps you when the deck framing fails inspection. You are the one holding unpermitted work that surfaces at closing, a claim your homeowner’s policy may decline, and no realistic route to enforcement against a business the state has no record of. If it does go wrong, complaints go to the Division of Consumer Affairs — but the Division’s leverage over someone it never registered is thin.
Two minutes of searching. That is the whole cost of avoiding it.
South Jersey specifics worth knowing
The statewide rules are the same in Newark and in Ocean City. What differs down here is which failure modes actually show up.
- Post-storm door-knocking. Nor’easters and the remnants of tropical systems bring out-of-state roofing crews down the Black Horse Pike within days. A registration check is the fastest filter available, and it is the one they least expect.
- Shore work carries extra layers. In Ocean City, Sea Isle City, Avalon and the rest of the barrier-island towns, flood-zone elevation and flood-vent requirements sit on top of the ordinary permit. Home elevation contractors carry their own registration category, separate from home improvement.
- Pinelands rules bite in the rural counties. Out in Salem, Cumberland and inland Atlantic County, septic, well and Pinelands Commission review can gate a project a township would otherwise wave through.
- Older housing stock changes who is qualified. Haddonfield, Collingswood and much of Camden County run to pre-1978 homes — lead paint, knob-and-tube, slate. The 13VH number does not distinguish between a contractor who has handled that and one who hasn’t. Ask directly.
If you would rather skip the lookup entirely, that is roughly what this directory is for. Every company we list — MJ Roofing, Liberi Fence, Painting Plus Home Improvement, Garden State Decks, D’Auria & Son Heating and Air and Green Street Services — had its New Jersey registration, insurance and reputation checked by hand before the profile went live. Nobody pays to be ranked here.
Browse by trade — roofing, HVAC, painting — or by town, including Cherry Hill, Blackwood, Monroe, Ocean City and all of Camden County.
Frequently asked questions
Does New Jersey require contractors to be licensed?
New Jersey requires home improvement contractors to be registered with the Division of Consumer Affairs, not licensed. Registration is mandatory with no small-job exemption. Electricians, master plumbers and HVACR contractors are separately and genuinely licensed by their own state boards. A 2024 law will add individual licensing for home improvement contractors once the new State Board completes its rulemaking.
What is the difference between a registered contractor and a licensed contractor?
Registration is an administrative filing: the business proves who it is, discloses its history, and carries insurance. Licensing adds a competency test. In New Jersey a roofer or deck builder is registered, so no exam stands behind the number. A master plumber is licensed, so one does.
What does a NJ contractor registration number look like?
Thirteen characters beginning with 13VH, followed by digits. New Jersey requires it on contracts, estimates, proposals, business documents and advertising, so it should already be printed on anything the contractor has handed you.
Can I verify a NJ contractor’s registration online for free?
Yes. The Division of Consumer Affairs verification portal at newjersey.mylicense.com/verification is free, public and updated in real time. Nobody needs to be paid to run this search for you.
Does a handyman need to be registered in New Jersey?
If they are selling or making home improvements for compensation, the registration requirement applies regardless of how small the job is or what they call themselves. There are narrow statutory exemptions, and a contractor claiming one should be able to say exactly which.
How often does a NJ contractor registration have to be renewed?
Annually. Renewals run online from roughly mid-January to the end of March, with a brief late window in April carrying an additional fee, after which unrenewed registrations show as expired from about the first of May. Guides that say two years are describing another state.
My contractor isn’t in the NJ database. Are they operating illegally?
Not necessarily. Check that you used Business Search rather than Person Search, try the legal entity name instead of the trading name, and consider whether the annual renewal window has just closed. If all three are ruled out, then yes — treat it as unregistered and walk.
Do Pennsylvania contractors need NJ registration to work in South Jersey?
Yes. Any contractor selling or making home improvements in New Jersey has to register here, wherever they are based. A Pennsylvania or Delaware credential does not carry across the bridge.
Once the registration checks out, the harder questions start. We put the ones that actually surface problems in 10 questions to ask any contractor before you sign. If you are pricing a specific job, start with what the work runs down here: roof replacement costs in South Jersey, fence costs, and deck costs.
Skip the lookup. We already ran it.
Every contractor in this directory had their New Jersey registration, insurance and reputation checked by hand before we listed them. No pay-to-rank, no lead auctions, no national call centre.
🛠️ Know a contractor worth featuring? (888) 863-7421 or contact us — serving all 7 South Jersey counties: Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem.
