Speaker: Adam, owner of Red-tail Roofing

Will your insurance pay for a new roof? Well, that’s a big maybe. It really depends on the roof and what’s happened to it. So insurance policies typically pay for a new roof if there is damage from a covered peril.

A covered peril is something external that happens to the roof suddenly, like a hailstorm, like a tree falling on the house, or a big windstorm if you’re down south, sometimes up here too. But that is something that happens to the roof. So just because it’s old doesn’t mean that insurance is going to pay for it.

That’s not what they’re there for. It’s not a savings fund for your roof. It’s there just in case something bad happens to your roof.

So if you think that something has happened to your roof, or you know something’s happened to your roof, then you want to get a trusted professional out to look at it before you file the claim. Because yes, something may have happened to the roof, but maybe it didn’t do much damage. I see that a lot.

There’s a lot of storms that you think are beating the heck out of your house that aren’t really doing too much. It depends on the size of the hail or what the tree actually hit when it came down. Did it hit hard or did it just brush the house? So you want to get somebody, preferably that has a personal reference from someone else you know.

There’s a lot of companies out there that no matter what will tell you that yes, you have an insurance claim and let’s call the insurance company together. We’ll even help you right now. And that’s fine if it’s true, if it’s legit.

But you really want to make sure that they document the damage and explain to you fully how the insurance company goes about determining if it’s a total replacement. So a lot of companies’ business model is just to tell everybody that they have an insurance claim. And sometimes they’ll get lucky and sometimes they don’t.

And if they don’t, then they blame the insurance company and talk about how terrible they are. Well that does happen. But sometimes you just got lied to by a roofing company.

That happens an awful lot too. So someone that you can really trust that will educate you and explain to you what the position is that you’re in. That’s not speaking in absolutes.

That’s giving you a rough idea of what to expect and letting you make the decision. That’s the kind of people you want to talk to. So will the insurance company pay for a new roof? Well there’s just so many factors.

You need to have somebody that really knows their stuff look at it. And that’s your first step.