How much does each state's law tell a homeowner before a home job?

The 2026 Home Job Readiness Grade scores how much a homeowner can learn from state law and official state pages before a home job: deposit limits, written contracts, cancel rights and an online contractor record. 38 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia are graded; 13 are not graded yet.

InstaBids is an AI-run marketplace for homeowners and property managers: describe a home job once, by chat or through your own AI assistant, add photos, and get multiple written quotes on the same scope, compared apples to apples, with no phone calls or home visits before you pick.

Reviewed 24 October 2026. Researched by the InstaBids editorial team.

home job

InstaBids assistantAI · builds your written scope with you

What home job do you need done in your home? Describe it once to start your written scope.

Describe your home job

Start from a common job

You choose who gets your numberStart my request

Or send it from your own AICChatGPTCClaudeGGrokGGeminiMore ways

1. 1Describe it onceBy chat, or through your own AI assistant, and add photos.
2. 2Post it and send itContractors bid in writing on that scope.
3. 3Compare line by lineEvery quote is written against the same scope.
4. 4You chooseContact details stay hidden until you pick and they confirm.

For your AI assistant

MCP connector · REST API · plain HTML

Hand any of these to your assistant and it can help you write this job's request; you send the request yourself. What you type in the job box above goes into the prompt these buttons carry. The connector asks you to sign in to your InstaBids account the first time.

• MCP connector URLhttps://instabids.ai/api/agent/mcpCopy
• Agent API (OpenAPI)https://instabids.ai/openapi.jsonCopy
• Start-request linkhttps://instabids.ai/intake?from=us-home-job-readiness-grade&utm_source=us&utm_medium=page&utm_campaign=home-job-readiness-gradeCopy

Open it in your assistant

• ChatGPTOpens with the prompt
• ClaudeOpens with the prompt
• GrokOpens with the prompt
• GeminiCopies the prompt, then opens

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• Add to Cursor
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Every page is plain HTML. Steps for every assistant: add to your assistant.

This grade is a compilation of statute text and official state pages, reviewed 24 October 2026. It is not legal advice.

The grade is about what state law and official state pages tell a homeowner. It says nothing about any contractor, any trade or any company, and states are listed in alphabetical order inside each grade, not ranked.

Which states earn each grade?

Data: CSV file (51 rows) and JSON file, the same facts as these pages.

How did each state score on each measure?

How is the grade worked out?

Each measure earns 0, 1 or 2 points. The grade is the share of possible points earned: A+ is 100%, A is 90-99%, B is 75-89%, C is 60-74%, D is 45-59% and F is under 45%.

• Statutory deposit limit: 2 points when a state statute caps the deposit on home-improvement or residential contracts, 1 when the cap covers one narrow kind of job, 0 when none was found in the official sources reviewed.
• Written-contract rule for home-improvement work: 2 points when a statute or regulation requires a written contract for home-improvement or residential work with listed contents, 1 when the rule covers a narrow class only.
• Statutory right to cancel: 2 points when a statute gives a cancel right that reaches home-improvement contracts or sales made at the home, 1 when it covers a narrow case only.
• Online public record of the state's home-contractor credential: 2 points when the state issues a statewide credential for home-improvement or residential building work and publishes an online search of it, 1 when the search covers part of the work or was unavailable. A state that issues no statewide credential is not scored on this measure. A lookup is an optional public-record step.

Two separate reviewers coded each written-contract, cancel-right and online-record measure from the same quotes, without seeing each other's codes. Where they differed, the measure is not scored. A disclosure or notice clause on its own does not count as a written-contract rule.

A measure we could not settle from official text is not scored: it leaves both the points earned and the points possible, so it never counts against a state.

A state with fewer than 3 scored measures is shown as not graded this year.

A fifth measure, an official state page naming the residential building code and who issues permits, enters the grade once at least 46 of the 51 jurisdictions have such a page on file; 0 do today, so the 2026 grade uses four measures.

Every statute or agency sentence on the state pages is quoted word for word from a saved copy of an official page (legislature, official code, state agency or state Attorney General), with its link and the date it was read.

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<figure><img src="https://instabids.ai/fl/data/home-job-readiness-grade.svg" alt="Home Job Readiness Grade 2026: the 50 states and DC by grade" width="640"><figcaption><a href="https://instabids.ai/us/home-job-readiness-grade">InstaBids</a></figcaption></figure>