Often our office gets the question, “Whether I should report hail damage to my insurance company when I have a new roof?”
Now that can be a very interesting question depending on several factors.
The biggest Factor being whether or not the roof was actually damage and whether or not it’s going to cause problems down the road.
Of course, as a homeowner, if I just been through this process three years ago and the roof seems to be perfectly fine, then , “Why should if I file a claim?”
Especially if I’m a homeowner who just had a roof for 10-plus years, it seems like I have a long time before but to replace it again.
It goes back to how big the storm was, how long it lasted, short-term goals for the house.
For example, if I just replace the roof 3 years ago but a 2.5″ size hail storm just pummeled my entire property for 30-plus minutes, and my goal is to sell the house in a year, but I definitely want to get it inspected to see if we can get the roof replaced.
Now, when the insurance company does come out and they cut a check for the set damages, I may want to wait till I’m ready to sell the house to replace the roof so that it doesn’t get hit again during that time.
But, let’s just say I didn’t want to sell my house and the storm the same size, same density, same duration, but the hail hits caused big fiberglass matting of the shingle the rupture, meaning the entire roof has holes all over it, I probably want to get it replaced show doesn’t start leaking five years down the road and then the insurance company won’t come out of pocket because i didnr report the damages.
There’s so many factors that play into whether a qualified roofer may recommend full roof replacement.
This is called totaling out the roof. It means roof is irreparable. It cannot be fixed.
When hail hit it, this means there are enough hail hits on the roof that do try and replace their shingles that are damaged would basically having to rip up the entire roof.
Insurance companies consider damage to be anything that’s going to decrease the life-cycle the roof. All the time we here a homeowner who has an eight-year-old roof, and does not think they need to replace it despite our recommendation because the original roofer told them that the roof would last 30 years (architectural shingles).
Yes, if the roof wasn’t in Northern Texas, that could be the case be the case. But the reality is that when golf balls drop from the sky every year, a roof loses its life cycle much quicker then another throughout the United States.
So then there’s the argument that the homeowner can hide those damages from the insurance company, and try to attribute it to a future storm.
We wouldn’t recommend that either if it was significant size because the insurance companies could deny a future claim by simply pulling the impact reports of the property throughout its coverage period.
I’ve personally ran into an attorney that works for an insurance company, ie. Statefarm. The attorney was waiting to replace the roof even though he had damages. My argument to him was that the insurance companies require you to document damage. He said they do not, which is completely untrue, because we have more than enough first-hand accounts a roofs being denied on the bases of insurance companies claiming the damages were caused past storms.
That’s why he works for insurance companies. The carriers manipulate the fine print when it suits them, especially when it comes to large loss claims.
Do you really think your insurance company isn’t going to try to fight on every basis to prevent from paying out over $50,000 in losses?
Come on.
What is the purpose of having insurance if it is not used properly. I’ve said this again and again: the only way insurance companies stay in business is there a portion of their customer base an uninformed and unequipped to handle these tactics.
I’m not knocking insurance companies, simply laying out the facts for homeowners who want to take action and use our services to the full potential.
So again, you don’t take your car to your wife to get a checkup, you take it to a mechanic where he has all the technology, the knowledg to properly be able to diagnose your vehicle’s problems.
Similarly, with a roof, it is no different.
As a side note, I must say homeowners who work with the insurance companies, perhaps a family member works for the insurance company that they have, or perhaps they are an insurance salesperson, those people are by far the hardest to deal with. They are the most stubborn. Regardless of your recommendation to them, they almost always go the opposite direction, and worst off, in my experience I found they manipulate roofers into getting their claim approved (using their services with no intention of using them to do the labor), then they go on to work with other contractors who would do it for less (as I explained before, lower estimates mean nothing for roofers).
I try to avoid those people at all cost because they’re working on behest of the insurance company, and our entire business model is on the other end: to work for the homeowner.
So I degress.
Homeowners out there: hire a qualified expert opinion after you have a storm hit your home. Avoid relying on your own whims. It will cost you dearly down the road.