Know who you’re hiring. Pay for what gets built.
You commit the full contract amount when you sign, so your contractor knows the job is real and funded before they order a single cabinet. It sits in the project balance, and it leaves one milestone at a time — on your approval, against what the two of you agreed counts as done.
It costs you nothing. No fee, no subscription, no percentage. You fund exactly the quote total and not a dollar more.
Renovation money has four ways to go wrong. Three of them are solvable.
You pay, and then the work slows down
The moment money changes hands, your leverage goes with it. Under milestone payments the sequence flips: the funds are visibly committed, which is what a contractor actually needs, but the release is tied to a milestone you signed off on. Being funded and being paid stop being the same event.
You pay your contractor, and a subcontractor liens your house anyway
This is the one most homeowners have never heard of until it happens. Every release here produces a signed lien waiver, written for the amount that actually left the project balance — and the closeout package assembles the whole file. How much that protects you depends heavily on your state, which is why we say so state by state below.
Your deposit funds somebody else’s job
Materials money for your project is paid to your supplier by name — it never lands in an account it can be spent out of. And how much of the job a contractor can draw first depends on the record they’ve built here, not on how confident they sounded in your kitchen.
The work is genuinely bad
We will not pretend to fix this one. This is leverage and a paper trail, not a warranty — and we do not decide whether construction is defective. What we do is hold the money against criteria you both wrote down in advance, so “that’s not what we agreed” is a document rather than an argument.
Six steps, and the boring ones are one tap each.
Every step that survived is the whole defence against a category of fraud. That’s why the code, the identity check and the money-movement review are still there when almost everything else has been folded away.
- Step 1 — Look them up
- Scan the contractor’s code or type it in. You see their verified record and the quote they wrote, with no account and no signup. The part that convinces you costs you nothing.
- Step 2 — Sign in
- Your phone number and a code. There is no password, because a password on an account that moves this much money is a liability, not a feature.
- Step 3 — Your property
- The address, a deed check, and the two or three questions your state actually turns on — whether you occupy the home, whether it’s your homestead. These aren’t paperwork — they decide which state protections apply to your project.
- Step 4 — Approve
- Confirm the person in your kitchen is the record you looked up — with a plain “not who’s in your kitchen?” exit if they aren’t. Then the quote, the $0 fee, and an honest list of what this can and cannot do for you.
- Step 5 — Fund it
- Choose your route first, because financing doesn’t need a linked bank account. Then one review screen before money moves. That screen exists on purpose: it is the last point at which a mistake is free.
- Step 6 — Approve each milestone
- Your contractor submits completed work with evidence. You approve it, or you raise an issue on the specific line item you disagree with — which holds back that amount and releases the rest.
You have a legal right to cancel. Funding up front is what makes it painless.
All three of our states give you a window to cancel after signing — three business days in North Carolina and Utah, three calendar days in Texas. Normally that window is a source of friction, because the contractor has already started and money has already moved.
Here nothing has been released while it’s open. Cancelling inside the window is a refund, not an argument. We never ask you to waive it, and we would refuse if you offered — in North Carolina, failing to give you that notice on an off-premises signing is a criminal offence, not a technicality.
Standard bank transfer takes a few business days to settle. We hold releases until it does, because an unsettled transfer can still be reversed.
Runs from signing, by your state’s count. Nothing releases while it’s open.
Waits for whichever clock ends later. On a standard bank transfer they usually end the same day — so the free funding option and your right to cancel cost you no extra time at all.
- Holds the contract amount so releases are tied to approved work
- Pays materials suppliers directly, by name
- Produces a signed lien waiver for every release, at the amount released
- Caps how much a contractor can draw before doing work, based on their record
- Generates the agreement, change orders and a closeout package you keep
- Keeps one shared record neither side can quietly revise
- Returns unreleased funds if the project ends early
- Guarantee the quality of anyone’s work, or insure you against defects
- Decide whether construction is legally defective — that stays with the courts
- Replace checking references and looking at finished jobs yourself
- Make a subcontractor’s lien impossible — waivers reduce that exposure, they don’t erase it
- Lend you money, or set the terms if you finance through Affirm or Klarna
- Give you legal advice, or substitute for an attorney reading your contract
- Protect money that has already been released and approved
The protections aren’t the same in Raleigh, Austin and Provo — so we don’t say they are.
Most of the industry writes one national pitch about liens. The law underneath it varies enough that the same sentence is reassuring in one state and misleading in another. Here is the short version; the long version is on the trust and law page.
Waiver scope is your protection
Improvements to a home you already own and occupy are exempt from the lien-agent requirement under § 44A-11.1, regardless of cost — but that exemption is only from naming an agent. A subcontractor can still lien your house, so the double-payment exposure is real.
That makes the waivers do the work. § 22B-5 voids a progress waiver unless it’s limited to the payment actually received, and voids advance waivers outright — which is exactly why we issue one waiver per release rather than one at signing.
Also worth knowing: a contractor working above $40,000 without a licence may find their contract unenforceable in court, which cuts both ways.
Liens are hard. Retainage is the real risk
A lien on a Texas homestead for renovation work has to clear four conditions in the state constitution — both spouses signing the way a property conveyance is signed, and execution at a lender’s, attorney’s or title company’s office. Most subcontractor liens on a homestead fail. So we don’t sell you the “you could pay twice” story here.
Your actual exposure is § 53.101: as the owner you’re required to withhold 10% of the value of completed work for 30 days after final completion. Under § 53.105, if you don’t, you can become personally liable to subcontractors for what you should have retained. The schedule accounts for it and the money stays in the project balance through the statutory window.
Also worth knowing: the Residential Construction Liability Act sets its own notice-and-repair timeline before you can sue. Our dispute process decides release of held funds — it doesn’t replace that.
Strong protection, with a trap in it
Under the Residence Lien Recovery Fund (Title 38, ch. 11), an owner-occupant who had a written contract with a properly licensed contractor, pulled permits, and paid in full is protected from subcontractor liens.
Here is the trap. That protection requires payment in full, so simply withholding money you’re unhappy about can forfeit it. When you dispute something in Utah we offer a written change order that reduces the contract by the disputed amount instead — you end up paid in full on a smaller contract, and the protection survives. It’s the clearest case we’ve found of a state rule changing what the product should do, not just what it should say.
Also worth knowing: the homeowner’s screen tells them plainly whether their contractor is licensed, and a licence is required above $7,000.
Ours to be wrong about. These are our readings of the statutes, researched carefully and cited so you can check them, but not reviewed by counsel in every state and not legal advice. If your project is large or complicated, have a construction attorney read your contract. We’d tell you that even if it cost us the signup.
Signing something soon?
Tell us your state and roughly what you’re planning. If we can cover it during the pilot, we’ll come to you — and if we can’t, we’ll say so rather than sit on your email.