Are contractor references more important than public records?

Contractor references are useful but heavily biased. The contractor hands you three names — the three customers most likely to say nice things. You will not be given the names of the customers who sued them, filed complaints with the state board, or got mechanics' liens against their homes. This is not malicious; it is rational on the contractor's part. It also means references are a curated dataset, not a representative one.

Public records have the opposite property. The contractor cannot remove a mechanics' lien filed by an unpaid subcontractor, cannot remove an OSHA citation, cannot remove a court judgment, and cannot make a Secretary of State filing disappear. These records are involuntary — they enter the public record because something went wrong on a prior job, and they stay there.

What references are good at:

- Subjective work quality. Did the finish carpentry look great? Were the painters tidy? Was the project manager responsive? - Communication style. References can describe whether the contractor was responsive, kept the homeowner informed, accommodated changes graciously. - Specific scope verification. Did the contractor actually do high-end kitchen tile work, or did they primarily do drywall? References on similar work tell you about the right trade depth.

What public records are good at:

- Predicting catastrophic failure. The mechanics' lien is filed when the contractor does not pay subs. The court judgment is entered when a customer wins a breach of contract case. The OSHA citation is issued when a worker is hurt. These predict the same failure modes recurring. - Detecting phoenix patterns. Multiple LLCs at the same address tells you the operator has a history of walking away from prior entities. - Continuous truth. Public records update as new evidence surfaces; references are point-in-time.

The right weighting: public records first, references second. A contractor with clean public records and three glowing references is a strong hire. A contractor with three glowing references and a pattern of mechanics' liens against them is a future lawsuit — the references just haven't filed their lawsuit yet.

The strongest reference signal is not the call itself but the contractor's reaction to your request. A legitimate contractor provides 2-3 recent references readily. A contractor who delays, deflects, offers "older" references without recent ones, or refuses, has something to hide.

Groundcheck (earthmove.io/trust) covers the public-records side. It does NOT verify references — that is a phone call you make yourself. Use Groundcheck to filter contractors before spending time on reference calls; if a contractor fails Groundcheck, the references will not save the project.