General contractor needed to pull permit?

Our architect will be filing plans (with help of our expeditor) for an Alt-2. He told us only a general contractor can “pull” the permit. Does anyone know if that is true? My husband wants to act as his own GC (I know there are lots of arguments against, but he has his reasons) and we are trying to figure out how to make that work. Getting licensed sounds tricky – he would need workmans comp insurance, but our insurance agent says he can’t get that if there is no one on payroll. He plans to hire people, of course – mostly companies like heating companies or window companies, but he might also want to hire some individuals for specific jobs. But he does not plan to have people on payroll.
A related question is, does anyone know how to get in touch with anyone at the DOB? Telephone? Email? Thanks!

so, i can tell you that there is a way to get a permit as a homeowner (i do believe the architect has to file the plans and NO i have never been through this so i could be wrong; a friend of mine went through this with something years back and they told him no and he did his research and made them change their minds by putting their rules in their faces. this was 20 years ago) and that as a homeowner doing the work yourself, you will not need workman’s comp though if you hire people they may want you to carry it and you may very well want to carry it – a lot of bizarre accidents happen on jobs (you can take all the caution in the world and all it takes is one guy with a hangover).

I can tell you this about workmen’s comp. if they still say you need it or you decide you want it, call the NYSIF (new york state insurance fund) and tell them you need a policy for an estimated payroll of say 10,000 for one person, part time for the year. that will cost you about 2,000 for that policy depending on what you say they will be doing. i class my employees as painters since they are up and down step ladders and that is what they often do. when you apply, they will not ask you who you have on payroll or even how many; the cost of workmen’s comp is determined by class of employee (painter, welder, carpenter) and the estimated payroll. at the end of the year, they will audit you (they will send someone to your place of business to look at your check book; they do it at my dining room table) and if you had a payroll of say 20k, they will send you a bill for the cost of insurance over the initial 10k. if you have a payroll of 5k i suppose you get a refund but that has never happen to me.

to protect yourself and your property, as you bring trades in, be sure their worker’s comp policies are current. also, some homeowners policies say they cover workmen’s comp for “domestic” labor and domestic labor is not a painter or plumber. they mean child care or house cleaner.

if i were to do this for myself, i might set myself up as say a sole proprietorship and get a federal tax id number as a business (even in my own name; i still have my number from when i was a sole prop) and set up a separate bank account. there is no reason why some auditor should be looking at your personal bank account but more than this, we sometimes have to purchase things as a business that some suppliers will not sell to walk in customers, especially if you begin ordering things from national distributors.

I’ve been thinking about this and there are things I don’t understand. What counts as payroll? We wouldn’t plan to have any actual employees, but would, for instance, hire a plumbing company to do plumbing or buy windows from a window company and have them installed. Surely those don’t count as employees. What about hiring someone to dig up roots of a tree or to do other specific, time-limited jobs? If we declared a part-time employee to get insurance and then got audited, what kind of checks would they be looking for?

I am very confused by this…your husband wants to start a company solely for your project?

I am very confused by this…your husband wants to start a company solely for your project?

line 4 on the PW2 has a box for homeowner (with DOB approval)
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/pdf/pw2.pdf

Chris, My husband wants to be in charge of the work, and our understanding is that in order for that to happen, he has to be a licensed general contractor since only a licensed general contractor can pull the necessary permit. Eman137, do you know whether a PW2 is relevant for an Alt-2 renovation? Thanks!

If you have no payroll but wish to GC, you should be able to get a workers comp waiver by filing an online form with the workers comp board. If you have no payroll you should not need workers comp. You can pull a permit as a homeowner, but I believe not to GC the job, but rather to physically do the whole job yourself, someone correct me if I’m wrong. I think If you want to hire subs, you would need an insurance tracking number to pull the permits at dob. Whether you can convince the insurance company that you have no employees is the issue, but I think it should be possible. You can I believe get workers comp for yourself if you choose, but then you’d have to create a payroll entity and figure out how to pay yourself probably get hit with taxes.

Also, I don’t think you need a license if you’re doing the work in your own home. Dob doesn’t check the license for permits as far as I know, just the insurance.

An easier route might be to find a contractor to open and close the permits for a fixed fee and perhaps supply workers when needed on time and materials, say for demolitions or tree digging or whatever.

There is a provision for certifying exemption from the workers comp requirement, but the DOB explicitly says that licensed general contractors cannot use it.

Dob asks for the license depending on the scope of work when requesting permits. I applied for permits recently, the expediter mentioned that certain scopes of work do require the license.

Well I’ve never looked into doing this as a GC hiring subcontractors, there are some permit jobs I’m considering pulling my own permit for. Legalizing a layout change would be a good candidate, or building small partitions.

You can get an HIC license with the waiver, that I’m pretty sure of. If you’re licensed, but without workers comp will DOB deny your permit? It sounds like the answer is yes. But a person could be a licensed solo contractor installing wall partitions that would require a permit. Why should such a person need workers comp? It could be that while technically allowed, DOB will not issue the permit.

Now if you call nysif, you should be able to get a workers comp policy for yourself. You’ll have to show payroll at the end of the year, and they should true up for hours worked when they do the annual audit. Since your business didn’t make any money, I don’t know how they will treat that, since you have no wages, but probably this can be sorted out.

Another question is, if you pull a homeowner permit, will they allow you to use licensed subcontractors such as plumbers who either do or don’t pull a separate permit. I assumed the answer is no, but maybe it is possible. If they still have homeowners night, or a virtual equivalent, it would be awesome if someone would ask these questions and post back so we’ll all know!

If you wanted to take a permit to build a new bathroom for example, could you do that as homeowner hiring an electrician and plumber to do the tradework? It would seem possible that would make sense.

the DOB website is pretty explicit… over $200 job you need a HIC license

If you need to ask “whether a PW2 is relevant for an Alt-2 renovation?” you are biting off more than you can chew.

eman and urban, this is the thing i do not like about the HIC license and i am an HIC. the HIC license is not related to what the DOB enforces. The HIC license is something issued by the DCA and while the DCA specifies that anything over 200 you need an HIC, the language of the DCA makes it sound like if someone gets caught, ONLY the contractor who does not carry the HIC gets in trouble, not the homeowner who hired them. In other jurisdictions, both the homeowner and contractor get in trouble.

the HIC license is BS. they did not even have such a beast until the 1990’s or so when they realized that homeowners were hiring people who they had no idea who they were and those contractors were taking deposits and disappearing. so they check our id and finger print us and make us take a test that pretty much makes sure we understand we cannot take a deposit and go sit on a beach some place.

a homeowner can do work on their own home without an HIC. i know there is some debate about whether a homeowner can pull the permits that they would otherwise need a GC for but i do not understand why a homeowner would need a GC so long as an architect or engineer filed the plans? The only thing a GC has to prove when he or she becomes a GC is that they has 25k in the bank for a few months and certain types of insurance (insurance that covers hiring of sub contractors plus the workman’s comp) and if a homeowner is doing this work, they will certainly be able to meet all of the requirements to become a GC. i could become a GC next week if i wanted to.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/buildings/business/home-improvement-contractors.page

As I mentioned above, HIC license is required for certain scopes of work. I would check what that work is with an expediter. Eman where does it say $200, can you point us to that please. Thx.

How to file
In Section 6 of the PW2, the contractor must respond to the HIC License question (Does the Work Permit applied for require an HIC license?). If the answer is Yes, the contractor must provide the HIC license number in the space provided and present the license or a copy to the permit clerk for validation. If applicable, you may present an HIC Affidavit (HIC1) to have the requirement waived.

doorsbythetinkerswagon, I am sure you could become a GC easily. But it is not clear that a homeowner without a company, or a homeowner with a company that has no employees, will be able to get workmen’s comp insurance, and without that insurance one cannot be a licensed GC. My insurance broker says it is impossible. As an experiment, I tried getting a quote from the NY State Insurance Fund. I have a company, but it is a sole proprietorship (and it’s a publishing firm, nothing to do with construction) . In the application one of the required fields is salary, but a sole proprietor cannot, by law, have a salary. So I didn’t get far with that.

So call nysif and ask them what to put for salary if you’re self employed. Don’t do the work under your business, I’d keep that separate. @janedrew, a solution for that box would be to tick the one that says a HIC license is not necessary.

“No person shall solicit, canvass, sell, perform or obtain a home improvement contract as a contractor or salesperson from an owner without a license therefor.” So it sounds like you arguably are not dealing with any kind of contract if you’re working for yourself. If I replace the flooring in my own house, that’s more than 200 dollars of work. Do I need a license to do that? What if I install a new vanity in my bathroom?

Do so at your own risk. There are penalties if you file a false statement with DOB, so get proper advice on whether you need to check that box.

ithaca, i cannot speak to the part about a sole proprietorship as i am set up as a corp. in so far as the salary, i would not be deterred by them asking for salary as whenever i have done it, i have taken a guess for the year forward and all has worked well (it seems they use it only as a billing estimate; at the end of the year they will catch it during the annual audit).

i have heard the same thing that others are saying from brokers, that you have to have a “salary” and the reason i went with NYSIF is that they seem to be set up for people who have less of a history. they are cheaper and easier to deal with.

i just tried to apply for a quote under my old sole proprietor name but they are asking for a Federal Tax ID Number which i cannot locate and would take weeks to get.