by Andrew Goodrick
Every summer in Georgia, the same sequence plays out. A storm rolls through, hail or straight-line wind, and within 48 hours there are trucks in the neighborhood with out-of-state plates and magnetic door signs. Somebody knocks on your door and tells you your roof is totaled and they can handle the whole insurance claim for you. Free roof. Just sign here.
I've been on roofs most of my life, and I want to walk through what's actually going on in that moment, because the week after a storm is when homeowners make their most expensive mistakes.
Before you sign or call anyone
Don't sign anything at the door. The paper they want you to sign is usually an assignment of benefits or a contingency agreement. Depending on how it's written, it can lock you into using that contractor if the claim gets approved — before you've seen their work, checked their references, or gotten a second opinion. There's no reason to sign anything on day one. The damage isn't going anywhere.
Look at your roof before you call your insurance company. Or have someone look at it for you. Here's why the order matters: a claim filed is a claim on your record, even if it's denied, even if you withdraw it. If the storm knocked off a few shingles and the fix is a $400 repair, filing a claim against a $2,000 deductible costs you money and puts a mark on your loss history for nothing. Get an honest read on the damage first, then decide whether it's a claim or a repair bill.
If a contractor offers to "cover your deductible," walk away. In Georgia that's illegal — the contractor, not just the homeowner, is breaking the law. The way that trick actually works is the contractor inflates the invoice to the insurance company to bury the deductible inside it. That's insurance fraud, and the homeowner is a party to it. Anyone who opens with that offer has told you everything you need to know about how they run the rest of the job.
If it is a claim
Document before anything gets touched. Photos from the ground, photos of anything that came down in the yard, the date of the storm. If tarping is needed to stop active leaking, that's fine — emergency mitigation is expected and generally covered — but photograph first, tarp second.
Be there for the adjuster meeting, and have your contractor there too. The insurance adjuster is not your enemy, but they're also not on your roof every week. A contractor who knows what hail bruising looks like versus blistering, or what wind creasing looks like versus normal wear, can point out damage the adjuster would walk past. You want that conversation happening on the roof, in person, not in a dispute letter three weeks later.
Understand what your policy actually pays. Most policies are either replacement cost or actual cash value. Replacement cost pays what it costs to put a new roof on. Actual cash value pays the depreciated value of your old roof — which on a 15-year-old roof can be a fraction of the replacement price. A lot of homeowners don't find out which one they have until the check arrives. Read the declarations page now, before storm season, when it's boring.
A denied claim isn't always the end. Adjusters miss things, and a first inspection done from a ladder at the eave isn't the same as a full walk of the roof. If you believe there's real damage and the claim came back denied, you can request a re-inspection. Just be honest with yourself about the difference between damage and age — an old roof that's simply worn out isn't a storm claim, and chasing one wastes everybody's time, yours included.
Where I fit in
I run Onsite Roofing out of Canton and I do this work myself — inspections, repairs, full replacements, and the storm assessments that come with all of it. But whether you ever call me or not, the advice is the same: slow down, get the damage looked at honestly, and don't let the week after a storm be the week you stop asking questions.