Couture Construction Co

The single most important thing about Couture Construction Co is on the state's books, not in its reviews: its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, #111937, is expired, and the registry lists it under this exact company name. This is a family outfit — BuildZoom names Leon Couture and Matthew Couture as owners — and the work it takes on is the substantial kind: additions, whole-home remodels, kitchens, baths and finished basements. Its permit trail, eleven projects running 2010 to 2022, sits almost entirely in Essex and Middlesex county towns, including a second-storey addition in Marblehead in 2022, with Newbury, Malden, Middleton, Methuen, Chelmsford and Arlington alongside it. The address BuildZoom carries is in Fairhaven, on the other side of the state from every one of those jobs, which is worth clearing up before you plan around it. The customer record is one voice. In an April 2023 Google review, a homeowner wrote that Matt built a second-floor addition on their house and praised the quality of the work and his professionalism, adding that they had passed his name on to others. Google shows a 5.0 from two ratings; BuildZoom has collected nothing at all. The licensing picture is where a homeowner should slow down. Massachusetts requires HIC registration for exactly this kind of remodeling and addition work — the trades the state exempts are floor-covering, landscaping, fencing and interior painting only — so an expired registration is a real gap, not a technicality. BuildZoom compounds the confusion rather than clearing it: it lists three separate HIC numbers for the company (#111937, #167965 and #164722), calls all three inactive and says each was at one point cancelled, then in its own summary paragraph re-describes #111937 as a "General Contractor" licence that expired in February 2005. Its score for the company is 0, purely because it could not verify an active licence. If you are considering them for an addition or a gut remodel, ask directly about the registration status before anything else, and get the current number in writing so you can check it yourself with the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. Registration also matters after the fact: it is what gives a homeowner access to the state's Guaranty Fund if a dispute goes badly. The 2023 addition account is genuine and specific, but it is one account, and it cannot answer the licensing question.