If you’re a home improvement contractor working in New York City, there’s a new paperwork requirement headed your way.
NYC’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) has adopted rules implementing Local Law 181 of 2025. The law adds a new disclosure requirement for home improvement contractors relating to permits and is now part of Title 6 of the Rules of the City of New York.
Before or at the time a home improvement contract is signed, home improvement contractors must tell owners in writing whether any permits are foreseeably required in order to do the contracted work.
While contractors have always needed to secure permits or see that they’re secured, the requirement to provide advanced written disclosure is new.
If permits are foreseeably required, the disclosure has to spell out four things:
- Which permits are required
- Who’s responsible for obtaining them
- What steps are needed to get them, including estimated fees
- How the owner can check permit status through city databases, like the buildings information system
Note that the “estimated fees” are in fact supposed to be estimates. The rule doesn’t require exact fees, since some fees aren’t determined until later in the process. An estimate is enough; contractors aren’t expected to predict a number that isn’t yet knowable.
The rule also acknowledges that even though contractors aren’t always the ones pulling the permit, the disclosure still needs to say who’s handling it. To make sure there’s no confusion about where responsibility lands, the Department also updated the required contract language. Contracts must now include a clause stating the contractor will either procure the permits directly or see to it that they’re procured. That’s consistent with the existing rule that makes permit acquisition a non-delegable duty of the contractor, even when someone else is the one filing the paperwork.
There’s also a recordkeeping piece. Contractors need to hold onto copies of these permit disclosures for six years, or for as long as the contract’s guarantee period runs, whichever is longer. That’s the same standard already in place for other required business records, so it should slot into existing recordkeeping practices without much disruption.
And yes, there’s a penalty attached. Failing to provide the required disclosure now carries its own line in the home improvement business penalty schedule, starting at $375 for a first violation and climbing to $500 for repeat violations.
For contractors, the practical takeaway is simple: Build the permit disclosure into your standard contract packet now, before it becomes something you’re scrambling to add later.
