The Deal Ledger · Issue 002 · July 12, 2026
The public record window. Issues 001 through 004 of the Deal Ledger are published here in full, as the open proof of what this engine sees. Beginning with Issue 005 on August 2, the Ledger goes to charter subscribers only. The charter rate of $299 per month is limited to the first 25 firms and locks for the life of the subscription. Charter access here.
This is a weekly pre-announcement signal brief on the residential trades, read from state license rosters, ownership records, and the Echelon contractor database. Every record in this brief originates from government and verified primary sources, is ingested into the Echelon Database, and passes through our verification discipline before it prints. Coverage this issue: 1,019,084 license records across eight states and live operator intelligence across 42 metro areas, read weekly. The database crossed one million license records this morning. Facts are source records. Reads are labeled as reads.
1 · The Week’s Movements
The engine read eight state rosters this window. The board:
| State | New | Dropped | Changes | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ohio | 23 | 125 | renewal wave | June 30 renewal cull, section 6 |
| Florida | 59 | 1 | · | normal velocity |
| Texas | 1 | 11 | · | quiet week |
| Tennessee | 78 | 9 | 759 | renewal season, first full refresh |
| Colorado | live | live | live | apprentice pool turning over |
| Arizona | 3 | 6 | 11 | first diff, debut in section 4 |
| California | 155 | · | 1,020 | first diff, two-day window, section 4 |
| Kentucky | reads as of July 7 | note below | ||
One honesty note, because the Ledger’s value is that its numbers survive verification. Kentucky’s state portal failed mid-download early Sunday morning, returning server errors after roughly 10,000 of 110,600 records. The partial file was caught and quarantined before it touched the record. Kentucky publishes next week from a clean pull; this week it stands as of July 7. We publish what survives verification, and we tell you when something does not.
2 · Flagged Signal: A Qualifier Walks Out in Glendale
The record
License 1041609 · California CSLB · A General Engineering, B General Building
Engineering and Seismic Construction Inc · 127 S Brand Blvd, Glendale, Los Angeles County · Corporation, licensed 2018
July 12 personnel file: Responsible Managing Officer Haig Ghazarian and officers Norayr Galoyan and Gegham Petrosyan disassociated from the license
July 12 license status: Susp – No Qualifier
California Secretary of State filing: Ghazarian is the corporation’s CEO and a director; Petrosyan is its secretary, CFO, and a director
Verified against the live CSLB portal July 12: license under suspension for Lack of Qualifier, with a second suspension for workers’ compensation noncompliance stacked on top
Contractor’s bond: $25,000, Hudson Insurance Company · License expiration date: July 31, 2026
The sweep: no acquisition announcement, no press. The federal docket, however, holds the backstory: a voluntary Chapter 7 petition filed November 18, 2025, in the Central District of California, case 2:25-bk-20303, with assets and liabilities each reported in the $0 to $100,000 range and fewer than 50 creditors.
The read. This one is a funeral, not a wedding, and saying so plainly is the point. The company presents itself publicly as a Los Angeles earthquake-retrofit specialist claiming more than 300 completed projects in the soft-story and non-ductile niche. It entered Chapter 7 liquidation in November. What the license engine caught this window is the terminal phase of that liquidation reaching the operating credential: the CEO and CFO disassociated from the license, the board suspended it for lack of a qualifier, and the credential expires in nineteen days. The estate is small and the trustee controls whatever remains.
Why this signal earns its place in the issue anyway: it is the proof case for how to read California’s no-qualifier pool. Those 231 companies are two populations wearing one status code. Some are live transition candidates, owners mid-sale or mid-restructure whose qualifier moved first. Some are wind-downs completing, where the license event is the last chapter of a story the courthouse started. The license record surfaces the flag; the docket check tells you which population you are looking at. Every no-qualifier signal the Ledger flags from here forward carries that check, because the difference between the two answers is the difference between a phone call worth making and a file worth closing. That verification chain, license diff to personnel file to live portal to corporate registry to federal docket, ran end to end on this signal in one morning. That chain is the product.
3 · The Transition Twenty: California’s Live Succession Board
This is the section the Deal Ledger exists to produce, and it starts with a number: 231 California contractors are suspended today for lack of a qualifying individual. Each one is legally unable to contract until a new qualifier is seated. The Ledger pulled all 231 from the Echelon Database this morning, scored them on license tenure, entity structure, active workers’ compensation coverage, and trade, ran the docket-and-announcement screen from section 2 on the leaders, and curated the twenty most substantive candidates below.
What the personnel records revealed changes how you should read this entire pool. Seven of the twenty show the founder’s passing in the state file itself, on licenses held as long as forty-eight years. The residential trades succession wave is not a forecast; it is already in the record, with dates. These are records of livelihoods and, in several cases, of loss. The Ledger prints what the state files say and nothing more, and the read stays at the pool level.
| License | Company | Market | Trade | Tenure | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 349834 | Anderson’s Sierra Pipe Company | Auburn, Placer | C36 Plumbing | 48 yrs | Succession event, Dec 2025; family officers remain |
| 445832 | R D Builders Inc | Anaheim, Orange | C10 Electrical | 43 yrs | Succession event, Oct 2025; RMO departed Dec 2025 |
| 497809 | NEC Equipment Service Inc | Gardena, Los Angeles | C10 Electrical | 40 yrs | Succession event, Mar 2026; sole principal of record |
| 520533 | Karl Kardel Company Inc | Oakland, Alameda | B, C33, C39 | 39 yrs | Succession event, Dec 2025 |
| 605577 | Warm Corporation West | Napa, Napa | B, C-4, C46 | 36 yrs | Succession event, Jul 2025; new CEO seated Jul 2026, resolving |
| 651367 | Discount Plumbing & Rooter Co | Redwood City, San Mateo | A, B, C36 | 34 yrs | Qualifier departed, Feb 2026; operating, screened clean |
| 677263 | Chandler’s Air Conditioning & Refrigeration | Santa Ana, Orange | B, C10, C20, C38 | 33 yrs | Qualifier departed, Nov 2025 |
| 680718 | American Plumbing Heating Air & Electrical Inc | Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino | A, C10, C20, C36 | 33 yrs | Qualifier departed, Feb 2026; successor CEO seated May 2026, resolving |
| 729557 | Home Tech Security Inc | Van Nuys, Los Angeles | C10 Electrical | 30 yrs | Succession event, Oct 2025 |
| 740436 | Home Pros Kitchen & Bath Inc | Livermore, Alameda | B, C17, C36 | 29 yrs | Succession event, Jan 2026; WC flag on file |
| 742191 | Melko Air Conditioning & Heating Inc | Montrose, Los Angeles | C20 HVAC | 29 yrs | Qualifier departed, Jan 2026 |
| 762828 | Oakwood Construction | Anaheim, Orange | B, C33 | 27 yrs | Qualifier departed, Feb 2026 |
| 882226 | California Generator Service Corporation | San Leandro, Alameda | C10 Electrical | 20 yrs | Qualifier departed, Aug 2025 |
| 970271 | A & O Painting Inc | Anaheim, Orange | C33 Painting | 14 yrs | Qualifier departed, Jan 2026 |
| 1020319 | Beta Contracting Inc | Rancho Cordova, Sacramento | B, C39, C43 | 10 yrs | Qualifier departed, Jan 2026 |
| 1079947 | Dae Jin Plumbing Inc | Torrance, Los Angeles | C36 Plumbing | 5 yrs | Qualifier departed, Jan 2026 |
| 1083245 | Intersection Electrical Services | San Diego, San Diego | C10 Electrical | 5 yrs | Qualifier departed, Dec 2025 |
| 1099815 | Caribou Comfort Heating and Air Conditioning | Winchester, Riverside | C20 HVAC | 4 yrs | Qualifier departed, Mar 2026 |
| 1101136 | Hanson Services LLC | Santa Rosa, Sonoma | C39 Roofing | 3 yrs | Qualifier departed, Feb 2026 |
| 1110347 | Energy On Electrical and Plumbing Inc | San Mateo, San Mateo | C10, C36 | 3 yrs | Qualifier departed, Feb 2026 |
Tenure is years since original licensure per the state record. A succession event denotes a principal’s passing recorded in the state personnel file. “Resolving” denotes a successor already seated in the record. All facts are state records as of July 12, 2026; screened entries were additionally verified against public sources the same day.
What charter subscribers receive. This table is the surface. The charter tier receives the full file for all 231: complete personnel records with association histories, business phone and address of record, bond and workers’ compensation carriers and expiration dates, secondary status flags, the docket screen, and weekly tracking of every entry and exit until resolution.
And California is one board of three the system holds today. Ohio’s escrow pool, the 211 parked credentials this Ledger has tracked since Issue 001, is the same signal class: qualifier gone, credential idle, business in transition. Arizona’s qualifying-party structure feeds the third. Washington and Oregon land this week with the same person-to-company linkage, extending the board across the entire West Coast. Charter access: $299 per month, first 25 firms, locked for life.
4 · Coverage Expansion: California and Arizona Come Online
Two states entered the system this window, and one of them changes what the Ledger can see.
California. 243,477 active-roster licenses drawn from primary CSLB records and verified against the live portal, layered with 404,540 personnel association records and 248,472 workers’ compensation policy records inside the Echelon Database. The personnel layer is the important part: it links every qualifying individual, officer, and owner to their license, which means the engine now sees the people leaving before the status changes. This issue’s flagged signal was caught exactly that way. California also carries the richest suspension taxonomy of any state we track, and one status code matters more than the rest: Susp – No Qualifier, currently 231 companies. Every one of those is a business whose qualifying individual is gone and unreplaced, legally unable to contract until that changes. It is a standing, named roster of operators in transition crisis, maintained in the Echelon Database, and the Ledger now reads it weekly.
Arizona. 83,170 Registrar of Contractors licenses, ingested and diffed for the first time this window. The debut diff caught real movement: six suspension lifts, including a multi-license entity coming back online across two credentials simultaneously, and two qualifying-party changes. Arizona’s qualifying-party structure gives the engine the same person-to-company linkage that made the Glendale read possible.
The ownership map followed the rosters. The platform ownership layer was run against both new states this window and produced its first candidate matches, now in the verification queue. Per the Ledger’s standing rule, no attribution is published until it is confirmed, and confirmations will print here as they clear.
The database stands at 1,019,084 license records across Ohio, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona, and California. Seven figures, crossed this morning, built one state roster at a time. Washington and Oregon enter the Echelon Database this week, both carrying the person-to-company linkage that makes the qualifier-departure signal class readable, and both passing through the same ingestion, verification, and weekly diff discipline as the eight states already in the system.
5 · ERDI Print
The Echelon Residential Demand Index prints 102.0 for the week, down 2.0 from 104.0. Three weeks of history now on the board: 105.6, 104.0, 102.0. This is also the index’s first print with all six components live: the Echelon proprietary review-velocity signal came out of calibration this week and entered the composite below its norm, while weather stress snapped back above norm exactly as last issue’s Watch flagged. Demand intent still runs roughly a quarter above seasonal norm. The full component table, the furnace-search anomaly that held for a second week, and what a live completed-work signal means for reading operator revenue quality are in The Echelon Report, Issue 003.
6 · Entries and Exits
Ohio’s roster contracted this week: 23 new licenses against 125 dropped. That is not an exodus, it is the calendar. Ohio’s renewal deadline passed and the board culled non-renewers, while a wave of credentials moved to Active In Renewal status. The structural read on a cull week: some fraction of those 125 dropped licenses are retirements and quiet closures, and the ones attached to operating companies will resurface as reinstatements or as successors’ new licenses over the coming weeks. The engine watches for both.
The escrow pool held at 211 credentials, unchanged. License EL.48859, the Franklin County electrical credential flagged in Issue 001, remains parked in escrow with no disposition. The transition it marks has not resolved, and the watch continues. The full roster by trade after the cull: 3,483 electrical, 2,736 plumbing, 2,631 HVAC, 869 hydronics, 691 refrigeration, 138 other.
Tennessee refreshed in full for the first time: 78 new licenses, 759 changes, 9 removals across all five contractor boards, most of it July renewal-season promotions from Applicant to Active and two-year expiration rolls. Florida ran 59 new against 1 drop, normal velocity. Texas was quiet at 1 new and 11 dropped.
7 · The Watchlist
License 1041609, Glendale. Chapter 7 wind-down reaching the credential; the license expires July 31 and the trustee controls the estate. Watched to closure as the pool’s first fully documented wind-down case.
The Transition Twenty, tracked to resolution weekly. Every reinstatement, sale, or expiration on that board prints here.
The California Susp – No Qualifier pool, 231 companies, now read weekly for entries and exits, with the docket check applied to every flag. Companies entering that list are beginning a crisis or ending one; the courthouse record tells you which, and the distinction is the signal.
Rausch Electric and license EL.48859, still parked in escrow in Franklin County, disposition pending.
The Air Guys LLC, Chapel Hill, Tennessee. License 74635 remains expired, now ten weeks after the Founders Home Service Group acquisition, with no renewal filed. Each week that lapse persists, the integration question sharpens.
Doctor Fix-It, Denver. Electrical license EC 100034 remains active under its own number, with Elkhorn’s EC 8150 also active. The September 30 expiration is the deadline that forces the consolidation answer.
The Ohio cull cohort: 125 dropped licenses now watched for reinstatements and successor filings.
The platform candidate queue from the California and Arizona map runs, clearing to confirmed attributions.
The Apex Service Partners portfolio mapping, more than 100 brands entering the ownership map.
Kentucky’s clean refresh, and Washington and Oregon’s first ingestion, both publishing next week.
The Echelon Deal Ledger is the weekly pre-announcement signal brief from Echelon Reports, built from state license rosters, ownership records, and the Echelon contractor database.
Issues 001 through 004 are the public record. From Issue 005 on August 2, the Ledger goes to charter subscribers only: $299 per month per firm, first 25 firms, locked for life.
Mike Warner · linkedin.com/in/jmichaelwarner