Home renovation contractors ghost you after taking a deposit and there is no accountability system

You hire a contractor to renovate your bathroom. They seem professional, give a reasonable quote, and take a 30% deposit ($4,500 on a $15,000 job). They start demolition. Then they disappear for 2 weeks. You text them — no response. You call — voicemail. They show up briefly, do 2 hours of work, then vanish again. Your bathroom is a gutted shell. This drags on for 3 months instead of 3 weeks. You have no leverage because they already have your money, and hiring a new contractor to finish someone else's work costs 50% more. So what? This is not a rare horror story — it is the default experience. HomeAdvisor data shows 55% of home renovation projects exceed their timeline by 2x or more. The core problem is asymmetric commitment: the contractor has your money and many simultaneous projects, you have a demolished bathroom and no alternatives. Reviews on Yelp/Google are unreliable because contractors ask happy clients to review and unhappy clients have already moved on. Licensing boards exist but only handle egregious fraud, not chronic schedule overruns. Why does this persist in the first place? Contractors face zero financial penalty for delays. The deposit structure (30-50% upfront) eliminates their urgency. There is no escrow system where payments release based on milestone completion. Bonding exists for commercial projects but not for residential renovations under $50K. And the market is structurally short on contractors — demand exceeds supply by 30%+, so even bad contractors stay fully booked.