How to Verify a Michigan Roofing License in Five Minutes

Before a single shingle changes hands, you can check the license standing of the company standing in your driveway. Michigan regulates contractor licensing at the state level through the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, known as LARA, and LARA's public lookup exists for exactly this reason: so a homeowner does not have to take a sales pitch on faith. It takes about as long to run the search as it takes to read this note. What it turns up, and what it cannot, is worth understanding before you rely on it.

01 /Which license actually covers roofing

Michigan licenses residential contractors under two overlapping categories. A Residential Builder license covers general home construction and remodeling, including new structures. A Maintenance and Alteration Contractor license, usually shortened to M&A, covers repair and replacement work on a structure that already exists, without new construction attached, which is where most reroofs and repair jobs land. In practice, many established roofing companies hold both, since a full tear off can straddle the line depending on scope and what else is being changed on the house. See Michigan LARA's Verify a License lookup.

02 /Running the lookup, step by step

The search itself is simple once you find it. Michigan LARA's Verify a License page hosts a search field where you can look a contractor up by business name, licensee name, or license number if the crew already gave you one. Enter what you have and the result returns the license number, license type, current status, and the date it was last renewed or is set to expire. A clean result reads active, with a renewal date still ahead of today. A status reading expired, lapsed, or revoked is worth a direct question before a deposit changes hands, not an assumption of clerical error.

Save what you find the same way you would save a storm report. A screenshot with the date attached costs nothing and gives you a record of exactly what the license showed the day you checked, which matters if a dispute over the work surfaces months later.

03 /What an active license does and does not prove

An active license confirms two things: the state has this business on file under a category that covers the work, and its account is currently in good standing. That is a real floor, and it screens out the unlicensed crews that show up heaviest in the days after a storm. What it does not confirm is workmanship, current insurance limits, or how the last several roofs that company installed are holding up two winters later. Licensing is a legal minimum to operate, not a quality rating, and treating the two as the same thing is where a lot of homeowners get burned.

04 /Before you sign anything

Run the lookup, ask for a current certificate of insurance, and get the scope and price in writing before any deposit changes hands. If the estimate covers a full replacement, canon pricing for most Macomb County homes runs $12,000 to $16,000 for asphalt shingles, with the full range running $9,000 to $18,000 depending on size and pitch; a straightforward repair typically runs $350 to $3,200. Our cost calculator can put an honest number on your specific roof before anyone climbs a ladder. For the fuller playbook on vetting a contractor, not just the license number, the guides library covers that ground; this note is only the lookup itself. Two related files worth pulling: our note on which building code covers your roof in Michigan right now, and our permit desk note on Warren, for the paperwork that follows a licensed crew once work actually starts.

We are licensed and insured ourselves, and a free inspection is a reasonable second opinion no matter who else you are considering. If a storm is what put a roofer in your driveway in the first place, our storm damage page and insurance claims hub are the next stop, and more field notes like this one live in The Record.