Verified state by state.
Every license. Re-checked every year.
Most marketplaces ask a pro to upload a license and call it a day. We don’t. Every pro is cross-searched against the issuing state’s board — contractor licensing boards, real-estate commissions, departments of insurance, cosmetology and barbering boards, state bars, the relevant allied-health boards — and the result is verified directly with the carrier for any insurance / E&O on file. EIN is validated, federal exclusion lists are screened, and the whole stack is re-verified every twelve months. Pros can also opt into a paid background check that adds the Gold badge.
Ocoro runs its own AI verification agent on every pro application — across every vertical. The agent reads license records and insurance / E&O certificates, cross-checks them against the issuing state board, and flags anything that doesn’t reconcile for human review. We don’t outsource this to a third-party verification vendor.
License number cross-checked live against the issuing state board — contractor licensing board, real estate commission, department of insurance, state bar, cosmetology / barbering board, allied-health board, whichever applies. Class verified; expiration tracked; account auto-suspends on lapse.
Our AI agent reads the pro's certificate (ACORD 25 for trades, E&O policy for agents / brokers, malpractice for allied health), extracts carrier, policy number, coverage amounts, and expiration, and flags coverage below the per-vertical minimum. Annual re-verification; auto-suspend on lapse.
EIN format check + OFAC consolidated screening list + SAM.gov excluded-parties check. AI agent matches business name and owner name against federal sanctions lists. Government ID required for higher tiers.
Reviews come from real, completed platform jobs only. No imports from outside review sites. Job history compounds. Three substantiated complaints in twelve months removes the pro from the platform.
License cross-searched against the state board, insurance read directly off an ACORD 25 within 12 months, EIN validated, OFAC + SAM.gov clean, no active disputes. Every contractor must clear this bar before they can submit a bid. Re-checked annually.
The contractor — not you — pays $50 for an FCRA-compliant criminal background check. That’s what the provider charges; Ocoro makes $0 on it, straight pass-through. On pass, a Gold badge sits next to their bid for the next twelve months. Optional. The fact that a contractor is willing to pay out of pocket for this signal is, itself, the signal.
We maintain a live registry of every state’s licensing authorities — California’s CSLB and DRE, Texas TDLR and TREC, New York DOS and DFS, Florida DBPR/CILB and OIR, Massachusetts BBRS and BORID, and the equivalents in every other state. When a pro declares a license number, our system knows which board to cross- check it against, which professions that state regulates at the state level vs. delegates to municipalities, the renewal cadence, and what counts as a valid class in that state. Anything that doesn’t reconcile cleanly goes to human review — never auto-approved on the pro’s say-so.
Verification artifacts (uploaded license / COI documents) are retained for the life of the contractor’s account plus 7 years after closure, as required by tax and contract-record laws applicable to a marketplace. Verification result records (pass / fail / expired, with timestamps) are retained indefinitelyas part of the platform’s audit trail. AI extraction outputs (the structured JSON our agent produced) are retained alongside the verification result. Contractors can request deletion of their account at any time via privacy@ocoromarket.com; some records may be retained where required by law. Full detail in our Privacy Policy.
We’re a marketplace, not a bank.
Not a matcher. Not a middleman. A place where the deal happens.
When you accept a bid, you and your contractor exchange contact info and arrange the work. Payment happens the way it always has, check, ACH, card, however your contractor invoices you. Ocoro never holds homeowner funds. That keeps contractors paid faster, and it keeps your money in your control.
No marketplace holding funds means contractors get paid the day the work clears, not on a platform release schedule.
Pay the way you’d pay any contractor you hired direct. Card, check, ACH, your call.
We’re a matching service, not a money-transmitter. The only thing we charge homeowners is a $10 flat post fee, we never touch the job payment itself.
If it’s not on Ocoro,
it’s not on the record.
The biggest source of homeowner harm in residential trades is the mid-job upcharge, a contractor “discovers” something on day two and adds thousands to the bill. Ocoro’s answer is structural, not aspirational: the accepted bid plus any APPROVED change orders posted on Ocoro are the only thing the platform recognizes as the contract of record. Verbal agreements outside the platform don’t exist as far as ratings, reviews, or disputes are concerned.
Change orders live on the job page with a description, why it wasn’t in the original bid, the cost delta, and photos. Both sides see the same record in real time. No memory games, no “I thought you said,” no receipt mismatches a week later.
The contract of record is the accepted bid plus any change orders both parties approved on the platform. That’s the number used for ratings, win-fees, and any future dispute reference. Anything that didn’t make it onto the record never happened, on either side.
Verified once isn’t verified forever.
Three strikes, you’re off.
We’re the marketplace. We’re not a mediator, arbitrator, inspector, or attorney. The structure of the marketplace itself does most of the work, verified pros, sealed bids, structured records, the change-order rule. When something falls outside that structure, here’s exactly what we will and won’t do.
Where to go for what
Three substantiated complaints in twelve months removes a contractor permanently. Repeat or false complaints from a homeowner are themselves a violation of our acceptable-use policy. The marketplace works because the rules are the same for both sides.