How to Hire a General Contractor: What Homeowners & Buyers Need to Know (Part 1)

Hiring a general contractor can feel confusing and overwhelming—especially if you’ve never tackled a remodel, repair, or major home project before. In this episode, we break it all down so homeowners and home buyers know exactly what to expect before they sign a contract.

I’m joined by licensed general contractor Michael Fucci, owner of The Proud Crowd Inc., who walks us through what a general contractor actually does and how the hiring process works from start to finish. Michael explains how general contractors coordinate and manage all the skilled trades involved in a project—including framers, electricians, plumbers, drywallers, and more—and why that coordination is critical to keeping a job on schedule and within scope.

We also dive into the less-talked-about (but extremely important) topics such as contractor licensing and license limitations, liability insurance, and workers’ compensation—what they mean, why they matter, and how they protect homeowners from unnecessary risk. If you’ve ever wondered who is responsible when something goes wrong on a job site, this episode clears it up.

Whether you’re planning a remodel, dealing with repairs after a home inspection, or simply want to be a more informed homeowner, this conversation will give you the knowledge you need to hire a general contractor with confidence and avoid costly mistakes.

🎧 A must-listen for homeowners, first-time buyers, and anyone considering hiring a contractor for their home.

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Welcome back to the buying a home don't panic podcast, and today's guest is Michael Fucci from the proud crowd. Inc, he's a general contractor, and we are going to talk about general contractors and what it means for home buyers, because a lot of you out there do not understand what's going on here. So we are going to get right into the shit on this. Let's do this. John, so Michael, tell everybody who you are real quick. I know I said you know your name and stuff, but give us a little background. My name is Mike Fucci. I own the proud crowd construction company and the proud crowd Inc, and so we're a licensed GC company and also a licensed brokerage for real estate. So we help you buy houses. We help you fix houses. We help you rent the house. We're just a one stop shop. I'm going to have some pretty good questions for you today, because, you know, there's some things I don't quite understand with general contractors, but for the most part, today's show is about the homeowner and the potential home buyer. What does a general contractor do? Exactly So a general contractor is able to do multiple things. Our primary function is to bring all the trades together, set up the budgets, do the planning and just managing the project. So for example, if you're a homeowner and you just have a general plumbing problem, you're not going to call a general contractor. You're going to call a plumber, right? But if you have you know, if you're doing a room, if you're doing multiple trades, you can either, as a homeowner, manage that whole entire process with the subs, or you can hire a general contractor. That's what I do. What you just described is what I do with my house. I bring in people to to facilitate. And it's worked out pretty good. But I understand the process, the process, and I understand what each of these trades has to do, so that's easy for me, but that is not easy for regular Joe or Jane. Whoever's buying a house, they're like, what they're like.

Michael Fucci: 2:14

It's overwhelming for home buyers, right, especially a fresh time home buyer, right? That doesn't understand that one, you're buying a house that's older, so you're gonna, you're gonna have maintenance stuff, yeah, the the struggle is trying to kind of convince people like this is not that big of a deal. It's not that hard, right? You just have to find you know a good, reliable person that's going to be commutative, right, communicate with you that's going to answer your phone when you call. It's good. That's important to answer your questions. It's very important because, you know, people are spending a lot of money, and there's a lot of moving pieces, yes, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong. And I found as a contractor, when you assume somebody understands something, that's when disaster happens.

John Laforme: 3:00

Don't assume anything. Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. That's a fact. And I've heard, I heard that probably 30 years ago. I heard it hasn't changed.

Michael Fucci: 3:09

You assume you make an ass out of you and me, or something like that. So, I mean, you know, you're just dealing with, you're dealing with different personalities, you're dealing with different egos. You just part of my part of being a general contractor is just managing those guys, just managing everybody's personality, managing the expectations of the home, right, right, managing the expectations of the subs, right, making sure that they're following what they promised. You know, it all kind of ties together,

John Laforme: 3:39

right, right? So, so not to cut you off, but you know what Mike's pointing out is he's the ring leader. So if you hire Mike to come in and do your project, he's going to bring in a plumber with if needed, a drywall contractor, a framing contractor, he's he's going to manage all of these things for you, unless you want to do that on your own. But if you have no experience as to what a plumber does and doesn't do, or what a framer does and doesn't do, I don't suggest you do that, because you'll get hosed. You'll probably get hosed. It's been my experience that if you educate yourself a bit before you hire these people so that when you're having the conversation about plumbing, you know, get on YouTube and look at some plumbing videos and just kind of familiarize yourself with what a pipe is, what a water pipe is, compared to a drain pipe, if you just kind of educate yourself and then you call that person over. Now you can have a pretty, you know, intelligent conversation, and now you're putting it that that contractor on notice. Oh, wow, this person gets what I'm saying. So maybe I can't rip this person off, because they're aware. If you're not aware, that's how contractors can take advantage of you. They'll sell you. Something you don't even need. Well, I

Michael Fucci: 5:01

think we have so much information sources now, yes, like, you know where we had to go to encyclopedia and do your homework. We have the internet, we have YouTube, we have tick tock. There's lots of things you want to be able to speak the same language by speaking the same plumber language and understanding those things right, you're going to have a better experience. Yeah, and plumber, they're not going to take advantage. Take advantage. They're not going to cut corners. Those are big things that you have to worry about. And yeah, and the biggest thing that people base things off of is price, and when you start basing things off for price, you're missing out on a lot of different other factors, like the communication part,

John Laforme: 5:40

the organizational part, quality, quality experience. It's very important. That's the number one problem in the world. Okay, look, we're consumers. We're trying to save money, but some things cost more money. And if you want things to be perfect, if you want things well, close to perfect, if you want things to come up the best possible with the best possible outcome, you're going to pay a little more. But that's, that's the, that's the do I get the license guy? Do I get the non licensed guy? Well, the non licensed guy is like half the price of the license. Well, there's a reason for that, because he's going to give you a taillight guarantee soon as you can't see his tail lights, the guarantee is over exactly when he's done. So that's that's what you got to be aware of as a homeowner or home buyer about to do a significant remodel at your house, whether it's an adu addition, a bathroom remodel, whatever it is, this is your hard earned money. And do you want to hire somebody who has maybe a good track record, licensed, insured, insured. Yes, another one too. So there's a lot to go on here. So contractors are required, general contractors are required to have a license if their repairs are anything more than 1000 right?

Michael Fucci: 6:59

It's i i saw a number that was five. I think it's, no it's like 1000 now, I think it went up. It increased to 1000 it did, it did increase. So that doesn't cover much in terms of repairs.

John Laforme: 7:10

So that's handyman. We're talking below. That's handyman stuff, basic stuff.

Michael Fucci: 7:15

Yeah, that's where people are. You know, when you have a guy that can do everything, I'm finding that the guy that can do everything doesn't understand the nuances of each trade. And when somebody does the trade, like drywall every day, day in, day out, there's an art to it. There's a flow, versus somebody who just doesn't do it all the time. Like, yeah. So you know, when consumers are are out there looking for stuff, there's more to it than just price. There's reliability. Are they going to answer your calls? Are they going to show up? Right? You pay them? Are they going to like, you know, are they going to split down? Right? Me being licensed, I'm established. I have to report to the state, so if there's any issues, I'm that's my license call recourse. There's issues. So, you know, having a licensed contractor has a lot of benefits. You know, I find that some consumers, they want the cheap price, and they want the great communication. They want everything that goes with for zero, for zero, and there's, there's value to that. As my wife says, You got to have, you have value you communicate, and that's the biggest thing in any project, is constantly communicating. And if you're constantly communicating, the project gonna turn out really good.

John Laforme: 8:29

Yeah, that's my number one pet peeve when people don't communicate with me. Give you a quick example. I have a realtor reach out to me yesterday. Hey, John, are you available on Saturday? No, my first availability is Monday, then total darkness. Not even a Oh, okay, we'll get you on the next one. Sorry. We have to do it on sale. We'll get somebody else, nothing, zero, zilch. Now that person doesn't realize they are now at the back of my list for for realtors, because I will not put up with that. Don't ask me a question and then go dark. That's crazy. So it's your time. It's my time. Yeah, now, because now I get them in the back of my head going, Well, this guy may need me Monday, and now the phone's ringing with somebody else, and this guy's just, I'm not even going to respond to him, and I'm not going to say, Hey, what's going on? Why you don't dude who taught you that? Where did you learn that? What school taught you to ignore people? That's I

Michael Fucci: 9:21

just think it's a societal thing. I mean, I mean, we can go, we can go down that rabbit hole. Let's not

John Laforme: 9:26

do it stick to, stick to general contracting today. All right, so what kind of a license is it that you have to carry?

Michael Fucci: 9:35

So, as a general contractor, I have what's called a B license, okay, and so the B license allows me to do a multiple of of trades. So for example, if I come in and I'm doing repair for you, I have to have at least two other trades in order for me to pull the permit. So so I'm able to do, you know, I'm able to contract what a plumber does. So if you have a big plumbing problem, I'm the one that's going. Like, have the person come and demo it, right? Then you have the the plumber coming in, and they're doing their work, and then I have to close it up. So those are the things like, so then it's a little bit of framing, plumbing and drywall. So those right? So that's how I'm able to pull a permit into work. I can't just, you said you have to have two or three, I believe it's three, okay? And I'm I'm not able to, like, for example, if you have a plumbing project and I'm just doing changing a hot water heater out, and I'm just pulling, I can't pull just one permit. I have to pull three in order to to legally do it, because you have to specialize in that one field. So the specialty fields are there. Those are called C licenses. So you have, okay, drywallers have a C license. Electricians have their C license. Any of the specialties, I think there's like 37 of them, and those are specialty license, okay, so as So as a general, I can either bring a crew in and they work under my license, or I can hire licensed subs. So it all depends on the type of project that we're doing, right and the budget

John Laforme: 11:08

All right. So let me ask you a tricky question, sure, then again, it's not really tricky. It's, I think it's a question that's not asked. It's a better way to describe it. So that is you, I hire you as a general and I'm assuming you're bringing in qualified subs, but I don't know that. So are you required to bring in a licensed sub

Michael Fucci: 11:33

or not? No, I'm not required because,

John Laforme: 11:36

because your license one is the one, so they're going to be working under my license, right? So if you So, if they're screwing up, it's up to you to catch it, it's up to

Michael Fucci: 11:43

me to catch it, and it's my it's always my responsibility at the end, at the end, right? But so when if they screw up, I'm the one that's being held accountable, right? But if a licensed person who's working under their own license screws up, it's on them, right? So then they would have to come back.

John Laforme: 12:01

And this is important information. Listeners, this is really important information, right? You got to understand how this works, or how the burrito is made. Okay? Then he steps to that burrito as many steps. So if you hire a general and he's licensed, it's his license, and he's the one responsible for all the work being done under him, which is, could be plumbing, roofing, framing, whatever. So that's how that works. If you hire somebody without a license, once again, you get the taillight guarantee. So hopefully they're reliable source. If you hire somebody without a license, maybe you get referral from a friend, and you know, this guy's solid. I'm not going to say there's none out there, because I have hired some that are not licensed, and they did fantastic work, because they care about what they do.

Michael Fucci: 12:54

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a mentality. It's bred into people. Yes, it's, there's attention to detail. There's pride, yeah, yeah. There has to be. You have to have pride in your work, absolutely. And it shows, I mean, yeah, there's just little, little things that will really screw you up, yeah, if, if they're not, if somebody's not careful and not monitoring, supervising, yeah, you're not hiring the right people. I've had people go, you know, you don't really need to do that. Like, a concrete person, you don't need all those expansion joints. Like, really, you're doing concrete, and you're telling me, you don't need all those expansion joints. I deal with that all the time at work, and I have, like, and I've seen it like, you know, where I've seen con, you know, people doing concrete, where they'll just pour the concrete, spray down one time and leave, right? No, you gotta, you gotta have somebody there the whole day, yeah, spraying it down the whole day, because that's like the most critical period in time, like when you're

John Laforme: 13:53

and that's why concrete cracks faster

Michael Fucci: 13:55

than normal, all the time. And, I mean, I had, here's a good example. I'm doing an adu up in El Sereno so El serenos hillside. So we're at the kind of the bottom of the hill, right? And if you go to the street behind this, what I'm working on, every single retaining wall is cracked or leaning so it means that there's movement going on down Sure. Now I did this finished floor, and I did like the minimum requirement for the psi was 2500 I put 4500 in. I put perimeter expansion joints. I put a cross down. I used, instead of number four, I used number five rebar. I did the sand right, everything that you're supposed to do. I even wetted it down twice a day for seven days after it, just to get it to cure? Yeah, I got alligator cracks. And doing all that prep now, concrete is always going to crack. Yes, it's just a living kind of breathing thing, but if you have somebody that does not know what they're doing, it's bad. It becomes, it's not an alligator crack, it's a deep crack. Yeah, and there's prep that goes. Into it? Yeah, it's really important that's not go by the price. Go buy. Is this person does do they do good quality work, right? Are they going to just pour, you know, and walk away and then tell me that, you know, it's normal? Yeah, I get a bunch of stuff like that. So there's characters out there, and you see them all the time, and you just have to be very, very careful. I just I Yeah, and I heard too that if you don't do work with a licensed contractor and you're not pulling permits, insurance companies aren't paying out on stuff like, if something happened to your property and it's not permitted and you didn't use a licensed contractor, some insurance companies won't insure it. It's called consequences. There's consequences. It's the and then it starts, you know, it starts tumbling from there,

John Laforme: 15:48

right, right? You got to be accountable for what you're doing. I'm a big believer in that. It's like, you know, I could do home inspections. I take on some big jobs sometimes, but I'm there for hours and like, why are you taking so long? Because this is my job. You have to want me to walk through and go, Oh, it looks fantastic. I love the color.

Michael Fucci: 16:04

Well, I'm gonna put on my I'm gonna put on my broker's hat now, and it's really important, especially going through inspections. You know, we're dealing with in Southern California, there's not a lot of new home developments. We're dealing with product that's 50, 6070, years old, yeah. And so it's very important to go through those things, because at some point you as a homeowner are going to have to address those issues. Yes, so, and I've been through two inspections with John. John uses robots and remote controls. He doesn't drones, drones. He's smart. He doesn't have to crawl into the house normally, something that you're watching, this little RC thing going on to the house, yeah. And it's, you know, important. You're checking cracks, you're checking the stem wall, you're checking plum, and you're checking for leaks. Those are huge things for a buyer, especially a new buyer. Oh, yeah, a new buyer, it's the biggest purchase they're ever going to make, most likely in their life. Yep. And it's a scary process for people, but if you have a good at home inspector, if you have a good realtor, if you have a good contractor, it's not that bad. Don't panic.

John Laforme: 17:09

No, not at all. There's no need to panic if you got the right people on the job.

Michael Fucci: 17:13

And I'm gonna put my broker's hat on again, every single time you wait, you're losing equity, because in real estate, it always goes up, yeah? So if you don't get into the game, you have no tax write off, right? You have no like, you're just paying rent for the sake of paying. You're paying somebody else's mortgage

John Laforme: 17:30

because somebody gave him bad advice and told him was a bad idea to buy a house,

Michael Fucci: 17:33

because they went through the 2008 you know, recession, and they're just like, and that was a bad recession. It was everybody got scared. So you have a lot of people who went through that experience are giving advice to their children, their nieces, their nephews, dude,

John Laforme: 17:47

I escaped. I escaped that bad recession right there, that housing recession. I sold my place just before it happened, and I got top dollar. That's amazing. Just before it happened. The person that bought it from me actually wanted to meet me at the end, so I showed up. Hey, how you doing? She was like, I just want to shake the hand up the guy who got full price in a buyer's market.

Michael Fucci: 18:14

It happened sometimes it was a

John Laforme: 18:15

nice house and she had cash. So it was an easy transaction. 21 day escrow done.

Michael Fucci: 18:22

There's, I mean, I went through that. I lost the house, I lost my job, got divorced, so it was, it was a tough time. So it can be, yeah, it could be very bad. It was tough, but in the end, like that was the opportunity, because that people who bought during that time, when it went down. They're the ones that are smiling now, yes, because they understood that house prices, they go up, they go down, but they always go up, and they always appreciate, yep, and so they, they took the risk. And now, you know, they're sitting on 567, $100,000 worth of equity in their house.

John Laforme: 18:59

Yeah, that's, that's the plus of owning a house, right there. My name is Joe Schmo, and I'm looking to get some work done on my house, and I happen to call you when you show up to meet me, or just prior to us signing an agreement. Does does the Contractor have to provide his credentials? Is that required?

Michael Fucci: 19:19

That's not required in the state. Okay, however, it's good practice. I've when I meet somebody, I show them I have a contractor's card from the state that shows my information,

John Laforme: 19:30

my CSLB, yes. CSLB, that's the contractor state licensing board.

Michael Fucci: 19:34

That's the place that you're going to go and do the license lookups. And you're going to they have, it's pretty easy to use, and you can navigate that well, but you should always when you, before you sign a contract, you need to check the contractor to make sure they have no disciplinary actions, right? You can also check to make sure that they have workers comp insurance, yep, check their bond.

John Laforme: 19:55

So explain, let's, let's get right into that workers comp. So explain that to. Everybody how important that is.

Michael Fucci: 20:01

It is extremely important. So before they're going to make, I think it's this year or next year 2026 they're going to mandate that everybody has it carry some type of policy, the workers comp policy. I have it in order to ensure that if something happens to anybody that's on job site, doing the work, that they have medical care, that they can go to the whatever clinic or wherever they go to get treatment, and it comes off my insurance. What's as a homeowner, if you hire somebody that's unlicensed and they get hurt on your property, it's on you, and your insurance probably won't cover it because they're unlicensed. So there's a lot of risks that go in there, right? And it's expensive. That's why there's such a big markup with contractors. Like the insurance is insane. So just give you an oh yeah, just to give you an example, like how they charge with workers comp. So if I'm paying somebody under $42 an hour, that whatever I pay them is times by 18% because it's called Low wage, because the insurance company is going to charge you more if you're paying somebody less, because they assume that person doesn't know what they're doing, they're more of a risk. Yes, so if I pay everybody 40, $50 an hour, then I all I have to pay is 6% of what I pay them. Ah, so there's, it's expensive, it gets but you're

John Laforme: 21:28

paying them more. So you're paying the guy because he's more experienced, but you pay less, and it's just doesn't wash out, it

Michael Fucci: 21:34

washes out, it washes out. So it's but then, but you're not factoring in that. If you, if somebody's unqualified, you're going to have headaches. So there's a factor of like, do I want to have peace of mind, and do I want to pay, make sure I pay somebody right? What, you know, a great wage, the expectation is that I'm not going to have the headaches that if I were to pay somebody lower. And so it works out, I have a couple guys that that are, they're expensive, but I don't have to worry about anything, right? I know they they know exactly what they're doing. They know how to interact, and they'll do it right. They'll do it right. Take the time to do it. They're perfectionists, yeah, so that's what you want on your house. You want somebody, yes, like, for example, you did some grass work. It was, it's not the grass work, it was the prep that went into it in order to make it look good, right? And it's many steps.

John Laforme: 22:23

Talking about my new backyard. I'm gonna be a video on that soon. So you

Michael Fucci: 22:27

have like, you know you can have, if they skip steps in the end, it's either gonna look bad or it's not gonna function properly, not gonna last. It's not gonna last. And then in the end, you're gonna pay for it again and again and again,

John Laforme: 22:40

again and again, exactly. So yeah, that's, that was a good point of the workman's comp, but it's another benefit to use a licensed insured contractor. So So right now, I could still hire a licensed contractor, but he may not be insured.

Michael Fucci: 22:56

You have to check his insurances. So when you, when you sign the contract, normally, what we do is we put the insurance declarations within the contract. Okay, so they're there. So when you sign your contract, you'll get a you'll have my insurance, my bond declaration, my general liability insurance declaration, and my workers comp declaration, all right, so those are key, okay, so it's general liability, a bond. So the bond functions like, if I were to walk away from the project as a licensed contractor, then my bond would kick in, and somebody else, the bond company, would hire somebody else to come in and finish the process. Oh, that's how that works. I didn't, I wasn't aware of that. So that's, that's the purpose of the bond. General liability is just basic, you know, if, if something happens to the house, if it burns down, if a mistakes made, that's when the general liability kicks in. If somebody gets hurt on the job, that's where the workers comp kicks in.

John Laforme: 23:52

Now, how do I know you have the right amount of policy on on the liability it's going to show on the declaration? What if my house is worth 2 million, and you only have 500,000

Michael Fucci: 24:02

you have to go back to the insurance company and in and get more coverage. In order to do that, I see, okay, because they can, they can modify now that's up to you to do, or the homeowner that's up to me to do, because I'm the one that's carrying the policy, but it's up to you as a homeowner to make sure I do it, and then make sure that I show you.

John Laforme: 24:20

Aha, see that's this is what this is. This podcast is about. This is super, super crucial stuff. You got to know what you're doing when you start dealing with contractors. This is Thank you, Michael. This is very helpful. Pay close attention to this. This is a very important podcast right here, as far as as far as general contractors go those are fine. Those are fine details that most people will ignore,

Michael Fucci: 24:46

and 99% time, you're never going to have to worry about it, but it's 1% that if you don't have your ducks in a row, it's a disaster, right? And then it's going to add time, and you're going to be dealing with a lot of stuff that. Don't want to deal with as a homeowner, because all you ready to do is get your project done. Exactly.

John Laforme: 25:05

Are we done yet? Talk about that later, but that's really good stuff. So get a licensed contractor who's bonded insured and make sure his policy is going to cover the value of your property. To replace it, if something happened, to replace it, case it, case it, catastrophic problem, like it burnt down or something. The electrician was actually the plumber by accident. The gas line. Yeah, gas lines, yeah, that's, that's always, that always scares me. It is. It's very frightening. Yeah, right across the street here, we had a problem. Guy poured all new concrete, and he had one of his knuckleheads come by and start saw cutting the driveway for something, and he and He nicked it, so whole street got shut down. Fire departments out there. It was like it was an inconvenience for the half the neighborhood, more than half the neighborhood for about half a day.

Michael Fucci: 26:01

Here's another tip. Now that you mentioned the gas line. Another tip is to make sure, before you start a project, make sure the contractor calls 811 that's right, 811 because they're going to mark the gas lines. Yep. That's something that a contractor should be doing. That's the homeowner, yep. So if you hire the contractor. That's, that's one of my responsibilities, to make sure that the area is safe. Because, in the end, it doesn't matter. It always falls on the person with insurance, right? If you have insurance, yeah, they're coming after you

John Laforme: 26:34

Exactly, exactly. So, you know, we haven't even gotten into permitted work yet. We're gonna get into that, not right this second, but soon as we just talked about a lot, and that's just regarding a general contractor and what he should or she should not be doing. You.