Fraud follows volume. It is not attracted to bad laws or weak markets. It is attracted to a lot of money moving quickly through a category that ordinary people do not yet know how to evaluate. That is exactly the position New England is in right now, and California ran the experiment first.
The Short Version
California's ADU boom produced the most documented contractor fraud wave in the country: one Sacramento builder abandoned more than 450 homeowners before filing Chapter 7 with $12.8 million in liabilities, and a San Diego-area company took at least $15 million from more than 100 families by arranging construction loans in their names and building almost nothing. The safety nets failed predictably. The deposit cap was already law and was ignored. The contractor bond was $25,000, shared among every claimant. And the licensing board had closed more than ten thousand complaints without investigation, so the license records homeowners checked looked clean when they were not. Massachusetts and Maine permit deposits of up to one third of the contract price, and New Hampshire has no state contractor registry at all. The protections that actually work are ones you write into your own contract: escrowed funds, milestone draws tied to verified completion, and lien releases collected every single time.
What Happened in California
The prepayment collapse
Anchored Tiny Homes was a Sacramento ADU builder ranked #224 on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. Its CEO described a hundred-million-dollar business in media interviews. It had a polished website, model units, a sales staff, and press coverage. Homeowners signed contracts and paid deposits, commonly 30 to 50 percent of the total project cost. For some, work never began. For others it started and stopped. Calls went unreturned. The office closed.
The company filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy listing roughly $12.8 million in liabilities against about $1.2 million in assets. California revoked its contractor license in December 2024. More than 450 homeowners were left with unfinished or never-started projects. One Rohnert Park couple reported putting down $200,000.
The financed shell
Multitaskr, a Chula Vista company, ran a more dangerous version. Instead of collecting deposits, it arranged construction loans in homeowners' names, collected the loan disbursements, and built almost nothing. Reporting on the case describes homeowners whose only delivery was a portable toilet in the yard. More than 100 homeowners were affected, with reported losses of at least $15 million. They filed multiple civil suits against the company and the lenders that funded it, alleging fraud, conspiracy, negligence, intentional misrepresentation, and elder abuse. The state revoked the license and barred four corporate officers from contracting for five years. The CEO filed personal bankruptcy listing $3.9 million in liabilities. That bond was also $25,000, split more than 100 ways.
Understand the difference between the two cases, because it matters more than the dollar figures. In the first, homeowners lost savings. In the second, they were left holding a loan secured against their home, with monthly payments, for a building that does not exist. That second structure is the one spreading, and it travels well across state lines.
The money that was never there
California ran a genuinely useful state program reimbursing up to $40,000 in ADU predevelopment costs. It was popular. It ran out. The program page has carried the same notice since December 28, 2023, stating that the latest round of funding was fully allocated. Then the state added a sentence every homeowner in every state should memorize: if anyone approaches you saying they can help you get an ADU Grant, it is a financial scam, and the agency asks that you stop contact and forward the names and phone numbers.
More than two years later, "$40,000 ADU grant" is still a high-traffic search term, and pages written in 2022 still rank for it. Phantom money is one of the most effective doors a fraudulent operator has, because it gets a homeowner to lower their guard and hand over financial documents before anyone has verified anything. New England has its own patchwork of ADU financing programs, and the same rule applies to all of them: verify the program directly with the agency that runs it, never through the person who wants your business.
Why the Safety Nets Failed
Every one of these failures exists in some form in every state, including yours.
The law was already on the books, and it was ignored
California caps the down payment on a home improvement contract at $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less. On a $275,000 ADU, the legal maximum deposit is $1,000. Violation is a misdemeanor. The builders in these cases took 30, 40, and 50 percent anyway. A statute is not a lock. It is a consequence that arrives after your money is gone.
The clean license record was not the real record
This is the finding that should change how you do diligence. NBC Bay Area's investigation found that between 2020 and 2024, California's licensing board closed at least 10,719 complaints without investigation, and a complaint that is not investigated never appears on the contractor's public page. The mechanism is simple and unintuitive: when a contractor settles with the complaining homeowner, the board generally does not investigate, and the complaint stays invisible. A builder can quietly settle a string of angry customers and keep a spotless public record. In the Anchored case, the board later confirmed it had three undisclosed complaints on file at the moment one family signed. By July 2024 it had 55. Most were never public.
Credentials that look like verification are not verification
Inc. 5000 rank measures revenue growth. It does not audit whether that revenue produced finished buildings. Awards, press, model units, and a large sales team are all things a company buys.
The legislative fix stalled
California's AB 559, sponsored by the licensing board itself, would have clarified that ADUs are home improvements under contractor licensing law and raised penalties for violations causing significant consumer loss. The board reported more than 400 complaints about contractors failing to complete ADU projects. The bill passed the Assembly 76 to 0 and cleared three Senate committees unanimously. On September 3, 2025, it was ordered to the inactive file, and it has not been enacted.
Verify before you rely. Several contractor and industry pages still describe AB 559 as current California law. It is not. The same caution applies to any statute, program, or protection a contractor cites at you: confirm its current status with the agency or the statute itself before you build a decision around it.
The Six-State Reality Check
Here is the part that should get your attention. In one specific and important respect, most New England homeowners are more exposed than the Californians in those stories, not less. Every state in this region has different rules, and the differences are not cosmetic.
| State | Who registers or licenses | Written contract required | Deposit rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | HIC registration through OCABR, plus Construction Supervisor License for structural work | Over $1,000 | Up to 1/3 of contract price, or actual special-order material cost, whichever is greater |
| Rhode Island | CRLB registration, R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 5-65 | Over $1,000 | No fixed statutory percentage. Negotiate it yourself |
| Connecticut | DCP Home Improvement Contractor registration, CGS ch. 400 | Yes, both signatures, start and end dates | No fixed statutory percentage in the Home Improvement Act. Negotiate it yourself |
| New Hampshire | No state general contractor or home improvement registry. Trade licenses only, through OPLC | Not mandated by a state home improvement statute | No state cap |
| Vermont | OPR residential contractor registration at $10,000 or more, 26 V.S.A. ch. 106 | Required before taking a deposit at $10,000 or more | No statutory percentage. The Attorney General suggests 10 to 30 percent |
| Maine | No general contractor license. Plumbers and electricians licensed | Over $3,000 | Capped at 1/3 of contract price |
Massachusetts
Residential home improvement work on owner-occupied one-to-four family homes is governed by M.G.L. c. 142A. Contractors generally must be registered as a Home Improvement Contractor through the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, and structural residential work generally also requires a Construction Supervisor License. Ask for both numbers and verify both. Written contracts are mandatory over $1,000, with required terms including a payment schedule. Massachusetts provides a Home Improvement Contractor Guaranty Fund offering limited relief to homeowners harmed by a registered contractor; an unregistered one gives you no access to it. Violations of c. 142A can also be pursued as unfair or deceptive practices under c. 93A, which carries multiple damages and attorney's fees.
Rhode Island
Anyone in the business of building, remodeling, altering, or repairing residential structures must register with the Contractors' Registration and Licensing Board. Registration is required down to a $500 contract threshold, and anyone advertising as a contractor must be registered regardless. Rhode Island gives you two unusually useful levers. All contracts over $1,000 must be in writing, and the registration number must appear on contracts, advertisements, and permits. And an unregistered contractor cannot obtain a building permit in any of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns, which makes the permit counter itself a verification checkpoint. Registrants must carry liability insurance, currently a $500,000 certificate naming the CRLB as certificate holder. The Board investigates homeowner complaints, issues fines, and runs a dispute resolution process for residential structures, and that avenue exists only if your contractor is registered.
Connecticut
Home improvement contractors must register with the Department of Consumer Protection under the Home Improvement Act. Contracts must be in writing, signed by both parties, with start and completion dates and notice of your three-business-day right to cancel. A contractor who is not registered cannot legally enforce the contract against you, which is meaningful leverage. Connecticut also maintains a Home Improvement Guaranty Fund that can reimburse a homeowner holding a court judgment against a registered contractor, subject to a statutory cap per claim. Confirm the current cap with DCP before relying on it.
The Connecticut wrinkle nobody warns you about. Under CGS section 20-419, "home improvement" expressly does not include building a new home. A detached, newly constructed ADU may sit closer to Connecticut's separate New Home Construction Contractor registration and its separate guaranty fund than to the home improvement regime. A garage conversion and a new backyard cottage may not be governed by the same statute. Call DCP, describe your specific project, and get an answer on which registration and which fund apply before you sign. Do not accept the contractor's characterization of it.
New Hampshire
New Hampshire does not issue a state general contractor license and does not register home improvement contractors at the state level. The Office of Professional Regulation licenses individual trades, notably electricians, plumbers, and gas fitters. Accountability for general construction sits with your municipal building department, your written contract, and civil law. Consumer protection runs through RSA 358-A, enforced by the Attorney General. Construction defect claims run through RSA 359-G, which requires a homeowner to serve a written notice of claim on the contractor at least 60 days before filing suit, provided the contractor preserved that right in the written contract. Note what that chapter is and is not: a defect dispute framework, not a licensing or deposit statute. Some contractor-marketing pages misdescribe it as a home improvement contract law. It is not.
New Hampshire homeowners: your contract is the entire protection. You have the least statutory backstop in the region. No state registry to check, no state deposit cap, no state guaranty fund. Your contract, your payment structure, and your own verification work are not one layer among several. They are all of it. Read the next four sections twice.
Vermont
Since 2022, residential contractors must register with the Secretary of State's Office of Professional Regulation when the estimated value of labor and materials is $10,000 or more. Registrants must carry minimum liability insurance of $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, and must execute a written contract before receiving a deposit or commencing work above that threshold. Vermont is explicit that registration protects against fraud, deception, and breach of contract, and is not a certification of workmanship quality. Complaints go to OPR, or to the Attorney General's Consumer Assistance Program for matters outside OPR's jurisdiction. The Attorney General's own consumer guidance suggests a deposit of no more than 10 to 30 percent. Take the low end.
Maine
Maine does not license general contractors, though it does license plumbers and electricians. What Maine has instead is one of the better-drafted consumer statutes in the country: the Home Construction Contracts Act, 10 M.R.S. chapter 219-A. Any home construction or repair work costing more than $3,000 must be under a written contract signed by both parties, with both receiving a copy before work begins. Required terms include the total contract price, estimated start and completion dates, a description of work and materials, an express warranty of good workmanship, a written change order clause, and a dispute resolution election. The down payment may not exceed one third of the contract price. The Attorney General publishes a free model contract that meets the statute, which you are entitled to copy and use. Maine also makes home construction or repair fraud a crime under 17-A M.R.S. section 908.
The Deposit Trap, Stated Plainly
Three of the six New England states allow, or effectively allow, deposits far larger than anything California permitted. Massachusetts and Maine cap at one third. New Hampshire has no state cap at all. Vermont requires a written contract before a deposit but sets no statutory percentage.
The legal maximum is not the correct number. It is the ceiling on what a contractor may ask, not a description of what a reasonable one needs. A legitimate builder with supplier credit and working capital does not need a third of your money before mobilizing. Anchor your negotiation at roughly 10 percent, or at the documented actual cost of genuinely special-order materials with receipts attached, and put everything after that on milestones. If a builder tells you the law allows one third, agree with them, and then explain that the law also allows you to hire someone else.
Watch for deposits wearing costumes. "Pre-construction fee." "Design deposit." "Material reservation fee." "Permitting retainer." "Slot reservation." If money leaves your account before work begins, it is a deposit, whatever the invoice calls it, and it counts against your cap and your comfort level.
What to Ask For, in Order
Every item here is cheap. Together they are the difference between a project and a police report.
- Verify registration or licensing yourself, at the source. Not a screenshot, not a PDF the contractor emailed, not a badge on a website. Massachusetts: OCABR, plus the Construction Supervisor License. Rhode Island: the CRLB. Connecticut: DCP. Vermont: the Secretary of State's OPR. New Hampshire and Maine: there is no general contractor registry to check, so verify the trade licenses of the electrician and plumber, verify the business registration with the Secretary of State, and lean harder on every step below.
- Match the name on the credential to the name on the contract, exactly. One of the most common structures in these collapses is a contract signed with an entity that is not the registered entity. If the contract says "ABC Builders LLC" and the registration says "ABC Construction Inc.," stop and get an explanation in writing.
- Ask the question the public record will not answer. In writing: "In the last four years, have any consumer complaints been filed against you or against any entity where you were an owner or officer, and were any resolved by settlement?" You are asking specifically because settled complaints often never publish. A truthful contractor answers in one sentence. An evasive answer is data.
- Get the certificate of insurance from the insurance agent, not from the contractor. Call the agency listed and confirm the policy is active and the limits are real. Confirm general liability, and workers' compensation if they have any employees. If an uninsured worker is hurt on your property, the exposure can land on you.
- Ask for three references from projects completed in the last 24 months, plus one project that went badly. Everyone has one. A builder who claims otherwise is new or lying. Then actually call. Ask: did it finish on schedule, did the final number match the contract, were permits pulled and inspections passed, were the subcontractors paid.
- Pull the permit history yourself. Building department records are public. If a builder claims a dozen completed ADUs in your town, the permit record either supports that or it does not. In Rhode Island this doubles as a registration check.
- Ask who pulls the permit. If the contractor asks you to pull it as the homeowner or owner-builder, walk away. It makes you legally and financially responsible for the whole project: code compliance, supervising and paying subcontractors, materials, and potentially employer obligations including workers' compensation and liability for injuries on your site. It also strips away the consumer protections that exist specifically to protect you from the contractor. It does not save you money. It transfers their risk onto your deed.
- Ask for the subcontractor and supplier list. You want to know who will have the right to place a lien on your home. A builder who refuses to tell you has told you something.
- Ask what happens to your plans if the relationship ends. If the builder owns the drawings, you cannot take the project to another contractor without starting over, which converts a dispute into a hostage situation.
What the Contract Has to Say
A written, signed contract before any work begins is a legal requirement in most of this region and a survival requirement in all of it. At minimum, insist on all of the following.
- The registration or license numbers on the face of the contract, with the legal entity name and a physical address, not a P.O. box.
- A fixed contract price, with every allowance broken out and labeled as an allowance. Allowances are where budgets quietly detonate.
- A payment schedule tied to defined, inspectable milestones, never to calendar dates. "Due upon passed framing inspection" is a milestone. "Due June 1" is not. No payment should ever exceed the value of work actually completed and materials actually delivered to your site.
- A deposit stated in dollars on its own line, complying with your state's rule, with the statutory citation next to it.
- A written change order clause requiring both signatures, with price and schedule impact stated before the work is done. Maine's statute requires this language. Adopt it everywhere.
- Estimated start and substantial completion dates, with a defined consequence for abandonment.
- Your cancellation rights in the form your state requires. Connecticut requires notice of a three-business-day right to cancel.
- An express warranty of good workmanship, and compliance with the applicable state building code.
- Explicit assignment of who pays permit, utility connection, septic, and inspection fees, and who owns the plans if the relationship ends.
- A lien waiver protocol, described further below.
- A dispute resolution election. In Massachusetts, note that the arbitration clause requires separate signatures by both parties to be valid. In New Hampshire, expect the RSA 359-G notice language. Read what you are agreeing to before you initial it.
A free benchmark worth borrowing: the Maine Attorney General publishes a model home construction contract built to satisfy the state statute. Even if you are not in Maine, it is a useful benchmark for what a compliant residential construction contract looks like.
Structure the Money the Way the State Does
The most valuable thing California produced during this whole episode came from a government memo, not a lawsuit. When the state housing finance agency reviewed the grant files caught up in the contractor fraud allegations, it described how it protected its own money. Every grant dollar had to sit in a managed construction escrow account held by a third-party lender or nonprofit partner. Draw requests were reviewed by that third party, which confirmed the work was actually completed and properly documented before releasing funds. No funds went to the builder except against completed, invoiced work. When the project finished, the partner had to produce the certificate of occupancy, and if they could not, the money went back to the state.
The sentence that tells you everything: the agency reported that a handful of homeowners had bypassed the managed escrow and paid contractors directly. Those are the ones who needed rescuing. The state protected its money with escrow, third-party verification, and a certificate of occupancy requirement. Protect yours the same way.
- Use a funds control or construction escrow service, or a construction loan with formal draw inspections. Your money sits with a neutral third party. If you are financing the ADU, ask your lender specifically about draw inspections before you choose the loan.
- Tie every draw to a verified milestone, confirmed by an inspection or a photo-documented site visit, not by an invoice alone.
- Hold back 5 to 10 percent until final inspection, certificate of occupancy, and delivery of final lien releases.
- Pay by check or transfer to the registered business entity. Never cash. Never to an individual's personal account. Never to a name that does not match the registration.
- Never prepay for materials that are not on your site. If a builder needs your money to buy lumber, you are financing their working capital and carrying all of the risk.
The Second Way to Lose
You can pay your contractor in full, on time, in good faith, and still lose money to a lien. It happens when the general contractor takes your payment and does not pay the subcontractors and suppliers. Those parties have a claim against your property, not against him.
The mechanics differ across New England and the deadlines are strict, so confirm specifics with a construction attorney in your state. Two regional details are worth knowing now. Massachusetts liens are governed by M.G.L. c. 254 and require a written contract as the foundation of the claim, which is one more reason a handshake deal is bad for everyone; the most common deadline for recording a Notice of Contract is 90 days after the last day anyone furnished labor or materials, shortened if a Notice of Substantial Completion or Notice of Termination has been recorded. Rhode Island requires anyone in direct contract with the owner to issue a Notice of Possible Mechanic's Lien at the start of the project, and a claimant's recovery is measured against a 200-day lookback from the recording of a Notice of Intention. If you are a Rhode Island homeowner and no one hands you that notice at the start, ask why.
Wherever you are, the defense is the same. Keep a running list of every subcontractor and supplier on your job. With every payment, collect a conditional waiver or release from the general contractor and from each sub and supplier being paid from that draw. Once the payment clears, collect the unconditional version. Before final payment and before releasing your holdback, collect final unconditional releases from everyone on the list. Use joint checks payable to the contractor and the supplier together on large material orders. And confirm the correct form for your state, because some states specify statutory forms and will not honor custom language, meaning you could believe a lien right was released when it was not.
Paid is not the same as released, and released has to be in writing on the right form.
The Fast Red Flag Scan
If three or more of these are present, stop and get a second set of eyes on the deal.
- A deposit request at or above your state's legal ceiling, under any label.
- A discount offered for paying ahead of schedule.
- Time pressure. "This price is good through Friday." Legitimate builders with real backlogs do not need to close you today.
- Any suggestion that you pull the permit yourself as owner-builder.
- Anyone who says they can get you a grant, especially for a fee, or who builds the pitch around money from a program you have not verified with the agency directly.
- Payment requested in cash, to an individual, or to an entity that does not match the registration.
- No written contract, or a contract missing the registration number, milestone payments, or a change order clause.
- Refusal to name subcontractors and suppliers, or to provide lien releases.
- Work starting before the permit is issued and posted.
- Door-to-door or cold-call solicitation, particularly to older homeowners. Elder-targeted contractor fraud is a documented pattern in every state in this region.
- Awards, rankings, and press coverage offered in place of references and permit records.
- A quote dramatically below the others. In construction, the cheapest number in the pile is usually the one with something missing, and occasionally what is missing is the intent to finish.
If It Is Already Happening
Move now. Evidence gets harder to assemble every month, and several of these agencies have jurisdictional time limits.
- Stop all further payments and freeze pending draws. If you have a construction loan, call the lender that day and instruct them in writing to hold disbursements.
- Put everything in writing. Convert every verbal promise into an email that begins "confirming our conversation." Photograph the site weekly with dates.
- File with your state agency. Massachusetts: the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. Rhode Island: the Contractors' Registration and Licensing Board. Connecticut: the Department of Consumer Protection. Vermont: the Office of Professional Regulation, or the Attorney General's Consumer Assistance Program. New Hampshire and Maine: the Attorney General's consumer protection division.
- Contact your local police department or county prosecutor if money was taken for work that was never performed. Volume of reports is what turns an individual grievance into a criminal referral. Maine homeowners should know that home construction fraud can be charged criminally.
- Talk to a construction attorney before you sign anything the builder offers you. A settlement or release signed under pressure can extinguish claims you did not know you had, and in some systems it is also the reason the complaint never becomes public for the next homeowner.
- Preserve the paper. Contract, change orders, invoices, payment records, lien notices, texts, everything.
What This Region Should Take From It
It would be comforting to file all of this as a California story. It is not. California had one of the strictest homeowner protection regimes in the country on paper: a $1,000 deposit ceiling, a licensing board with a statewide fraud investigation unit, criminal penalties. It still lost hundreds of families, because the protections were reactive and the money moved first.
New England is entering the same growth curve with a patchwork of six different rule sets, three of which permit deposits many times larger than California's, and one of which has no state contractor registry at all. Good builders in this region are busy and getting busier, which is exactly the condition under which unqualified and dishonest operators enter a market and start advertising.
The homeowners who lost everything in California were not careless people. They were people who did the one step everyone told them to do, checked a license, saw a clean record, and reasonably assumed that meant something.
Structure is what protects you when the system does not. Escrowed funds. Milestone draws tied to verified completion. A written contract with a change order clause. Lien releases collected every single time. A permit pulled by the licensed professional doing the work. None of that requires a statute. You build it into your own contract, in any state, regardless of what the legislature has or has not gotten around to.
Why We Are So Adamant About This
The ADU Exchange exists because we believe every yard deserves an ADU, and we know that belief is worth nothing if the families acting on it get robbed in the process. We do not build, permit, or construct. We connect, equip, and guide across all six New England states, which means the only thing we truly have to sell is trust. That is why our Master Code of Ethics and Professional Standards is a governance document rather than a marketing page. Nearly every protection this article told you to demand is something our members are already bound to provide.
| What you should demand | What the Code requires |
|---|---|
| Verify licensing and insurance yourself | Active license status verified at onboarding and re-verified quarterly across all six New England state boards. Any lapse reported within 24 hours. General liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate. |
| Deposits that comply with state law | Payment Draw Ethics, Section 7.3: deposits must comply with the applicable law of the state the project sits in. |
| Progress payments tied to verified milestones | Progress payments tied to verified completion milestones, not calendar dates. Requesting more than 50 percent of contract value before 50 percent of the work is complete is prohibited. |
| A holdback until the job is finished and signed off | Minimum 10 percent retention held until final inspection approval. Final payment is not due until the Certificate of Occupancy is issued. |
| Written change orders before the work happens | All scope changes documented in writing and signed before work commences. Verbal change orders are strictly prohibited, regardless of project size. A running change order log must be available to the homeowner at any time. |
| Honest pricing with no bait-and-switch | Advertising a price known to be materially below actual construction cost, quoting prices that exclude known required costs, or using unrepresentative "starting at" pricing is a Tier 1 violation. |
| Full disclosure of who is paying whom | No referral fee may be offered or accepted between members unless disclosed in writing to the homeowner. Hidden referral fees and undisclosed markups are prohibited. |
| Somewhere to go when it goes wrong | A tiered enforcement model from informal notice through written warning, suspension, permanent removal, and in cases of fraud or severe negligence, public notice. Fraud, unlicensed work, and predatory lending are Tier 1 violations carrying immediate suspension and potential permanent removal. |
Standards without enforcement are suggestions. We audit. We re-verify licenses quarterly. We reserve the right to request contracts, permits, insurance certificates, and project documentation for any project initiated through the platform, and members agree to respond within ten business days. Partners who violate the Code are removed, because a network that will not remove a bad actor is not a network, it is a referral service with a logo.
Every family who builds through this Ecosystem is making one of the largest financial decisions of their life, usually to house a parent, a child, or their own future selves. We would rather lose a member than let one of them end up standing in front of a slab.
Sources
- Anchored Tiny Homes and Multitaskr case facts, contractor bond limits, and licensing board complaint visibility, including the finding that at least 10,719 complaints were closed without investigation between 2020 and 2024: NBC Bay Area investigative reporting, 2024 and 2025, and contemporaneous California reporting
- California down payment cap and progress payment restrictions: California Business and Professions Code sections 7159 and 7159.5; CSLB industry bulletins: cslb.ca.gov
- AB 559 status: California Senate Judiciary Committee analysis, July 8, 2025, and legislative history showing the bill ordered to the inactive file September 3, 2025. Not enacted: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
- California ADU grant program status, scam warning, and managed construction escrow design: CalHFA ADU program page and CalHFA Board of Directors memorandum dated February 25, 2025: calhfa.ca.gov
- Massachusetts contractor requirements, deposit cap, and Guaranty Fund: M.G.L. c. 142A; Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation HIC guidance: mass.gov. Mechanics liens: M.G.L. c. 254
- Rhode Island contractor registration, thresholds, contract and advertising requirements, insurance, and the permit prohibition for unregistered contractors: R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 5-65; CRLB guidance: crb.ri.gov. Lien notice practice: R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 34-28
- Connecticut Home Improvement Act, registration, contract and cancellation requirements, the exclusion of new home construction at section 20-419, and the Guaranty Fund: Connecticut General Statutes ch. 400; DCP guidance: portal.ct.gov
- New Hampshire absence of state general contractor and home improvement licensing, and consumer remedies: RSA 358-A; RSA 359-G, including the 60-day notice of claim: gc.nh.gov
- Vermont residential contractor registration, insurance minimums, and the written contract requirement before a deposit: 26 V.S.A. ch. 106; Secretary of State OPR guidance: sos.vermont.gov; Attorney General consumer guidance: ago.vermont.gov
- Maine Home Construction Contracts Act, written contract threshold, one-third down payment cap, and required terms: 10 M.R.S. ch. 219-A; Attorney General consumer law guide and model contract: maine.gov; 17-A M.R.S. section 908
- ADU Exchange member obligations: The ADU Exchange Master Code of Ethics and Professional Standards, Version 1.0, effective March 2026, Articles III, VII, VIII, X, and XI
Disclaimer: The ADU Exchange is an education and connection platform. We do not build, permit, or construct ADUs, and we are not attorneys, financial advisors, or lenders. This article is educational only and is not legal advice. Case facts are drawn from the independent published sources listed above, are accurate as of their publication dates, and are subject to revision by those organizations; The ADU Exchange is not affiliated with or endorsed by any agency, publisher, or company named here, and nothing in this article is an allegation against any party beyond what those sources report. Contractor registration, deposit limits, lien rights, and disclosure obligations vary by state, change frequently, and were verified as of August 4, 2026. Homeowners should verify current requirements with the relevant state agency and consult a licensed construction attorney in their state before signing a construction contract or responding to a dispute.