Hire a contractor. Pay with confidence.
A homeowner funds the renovation up front when they sign. The contractor can see it sitting there — funded, before day one. Each milestone releases when the homeowner approves it, and every release produces a signed lien waiver for the amount that actually left the project balance.
One balance. Two sets of eyes. Nothing leaves without a reason on the record.
Figures are illustrative. $48,500 is the kitchen remodel used throughout our demo — a real schedule is written by the contractor and accepted by the homeowner before anything is funded.
You stop paying for work before it exists.
Your money is committed, so the contractor knows it’s real — but it sits untouched until you approve what was built. You pay nothing to use it.
For homeowners 02 / If you’re buildingYou stop financing someone else’s renovation.
The whole job is funded before you start. Materials go straight to your supplier, draws clear on approval, and a verified record follows you to the next homeowner.
For contractorsSix mechanisms, not six features.
Payments tied to a schedule
The contract total is funded once. Each milestone has an amount, deliverables and acceptance criteria written before anyone signs. The total is derived from the schedule — it is never typed in.
A record, not a rating
A contractor’s licence, insurance and registration are checked against the issuing board. Homeowners look up that record; contractors cannot look up homeowners. Ratings are checkable yes/no answers, not stars.
A lien waiver on every release
Conditional when the draw is submitted, unconditional when it settles — for the amount that actually left the project balance. Forms follow the state: Texas and Utah prescribe the wording, North Carolina limits the scope.
A review clock that runs both ways
A submitted milestone gets a countdown so a contractor isn’t held hostage by silence. Raising an issue stops the clock — that sentence leads the homeowner’s screen, because a countdown that reads as pressure to approve would poison the whole thing.
Disagreement about money, decided on money
A hold is scoped to the line item in dispute, so the rest of the milestone still pays. A reviewer decides whether funds release against the written acceptance criteria — never whether a defect legally exists. That stays with the courts.
Paperwork that assembles itself
The agreement, every waiver, change orders and the closeout package generate as documents both sides can keep. In Utah the closeout package is framed as the evidence file for the Residence Lien Recovery Fund.
Both sides are reading the same page.
Releases, submissions, change orders and review decisions all land in one thread as project-record cards, alongside the messages. There is no version of events that only one party can see.
Two sentences carry more weight than the rest of the screen: a message does not stop the review clock — the dispute button does. And payment never moves because of a message, however convincing it sounds.
Milestone 2 released — $11,500. Approved by homeowner. Conditional waiver converted to unconditional on settlement.
Issue raised on 1 line item — $2,100 held. Review clock stopped. $9,400 of milestone 3 released; the waiver was written at $9,400, not $11,500.
Messages are part of the record and ride into an escalation packet. They do not move money and they do not stop the clock.
We would rather you hear the awkward parts from us.
- It is a pilot
- ProjectComplete is taking its first ten projects, in North Carolina, Texas and Utah. Those ten pay no platform fee. We are not a nationwide service and we are not pretending to be one.
- Who holds the money today
- During the pilot, project funds sit with our payments provider, Stripe Payments Company, earmarked to your project. That is not the same as a bank account held in your name for your benefit, and we won’t describe it that way until it is one. Moving to a for-benefit-of account at a chartered partner bank is the next step, and it is the reason the pilot is capped at ten projects rather than open to everyone.
- What we are not
- Not a bank. Not a lender — if you finance, the lender is Affirm or Klarna and their terms govern. Not a law firm. Not a judge of whether construction is defective. We decide whether held funds release against criteria both parties wrote down.
- Our reading of the law is ours
- The statutes cited across this site are ours to be wrong about — they have been researched, not blessed by counsel in every state, and nothing here is legal advice. We name them anyway, because a claim you can go and check is worth more than one you can’t.
Who pays for this?
The contractor does, and it comes out of the first release that pays them — never out of a supplier’s materials draw. The homeowner pays nothing and funds exactly the quote total.
The reason is authorship: the contractor writes the quote, so the fee is a line in a document they wrote rather than a surprise someone else added. Cancel before their first draw and it costs nobody anything.
What stops a contractor taking the materials draw and disappearing?
Three things. Materials for a supplier are paid to that supplier by name, so the money never lands in an account someone can empty. A contractor’s first draw is capped as a share of the job, and how large that cap is depends on their completed record here. And the record itself is the asset — it is worth more than one job’s materials.
Can the contractor pull money out without me approving?
A contractor cannot originate a payment request at all. They submit completed work; you approve it. If you go silent, a review clock can release a milestone — but never the first one while nothing has been released yet, because silence should not buy an unearned deposit. Raising an issue stops the clock.
Ten projects. No fee. Three states.
We are looking for a small number of contractors who already do good work, and homeowners about to sign for something that matters.