How a roof claim actually works

Read anything before you sign it

An assignment of benefits hands control of your claim to a contractor. There are legitimate uses for it and it is also the single most common way homeowners lose control of a claim. Never sign one on the doorstep.

Photograph everything, immediately

Take far more pictures than feel necessary, including undamaged areas for comparison. Do it before the tarp goes on, not after.

Stop further damage, and keep the receipts

Emergency mitigation is normally recoverable and routinely forgotten. Save the paperwork for the tarp as carefully as the paperwork for the repair.

Know what your policy actually pays

Replacement cost pays what it costs to replace the roof today. Actual cash value pays that minus depreciation, which on a fifteen-year-old roof can be most of it. Find out which you have before you file, along with your deductible.

Get an independent assessment first

Filing a claim that turns out to be under your deductible costs you nothing but is on your record anyway. Find out the scale of the damage before you pick up the phone.

Mind the deadline

Report promptly even if you have not decided what to do. The clock in the policy runs from the date of the event, not the date you noticed.

In short

The homeowners who do well out of claims are not the ones with the worst damage. They are the ones with the best photographs.