Operating as a contractor in Washington
Washington runs on registration, not exam-tested licensing: every construction contractor — general or specialty — registers with Labor & Industries before contracting any work. General contractors can take most project types and hire subs, while plumbing, electrical, and a handful of other trades carry their own separate state licenses.
There is no trade exam and no experience requirement at the state level. Registration hinges on the $30,000 surety bond (raised from $12,000 in mid-2024), qualifying liability insurance, a UBI business registration, and the application fee — which makes speed-to-operating faster here than in exam states, and homeowner diligence correspondingly more focused on bond and insurance status.
Any legal business entity can register — there is no residency requirement — but a home-state license substitutes for nothing: an out-of-state contractor still needs the Washington UBI, the Washington-specific bond, and compliant insurance before contracting work.
Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I)What Washington homeowners are building
HB 1337 (2023) rewired the state’s second-unit market: every fully-planning city and county under the Growth Management Act must now allow at least two ADUs per lot in single-family zones, without owner-occupancy requirements or lot-size minimums that used to block them.
Seattle’s 2025 implementing ordinance lets a standard lot add a detached backyard cottage up to 1,000 square feet plus an attached unit of the same size simultaneously — a state-mandated expansion of legal backyard capacity that contractors can plan a pipeline around.
Outside the cottage wave, in-place expansion is the western-Washington pattern — additions and major remodels in neighborhoods where trading up means leaving the school district — while Spokane runs a steadier, lower-competition eastern lane.
For a contractor weighing where to buy leads, the practical read is this: Puget Sound supplies the volume and the DADU premium, the Eastside supplies the ticket size, and the state mandate supplies a category that will not evaporate when rates move — because it is written into land-use law, not consumer sentiment.