The document is the thing you keep
The inspector leaves. The roof inspection report is what remains, and it is the only part of the transaction that still exists next year. So it is worth buying the document rather than the visit, and worth asking what the document will contain before asking what it costs.
What makes one usable is that somebody who was not there can act on it. That means every finding has a number, a place on a plan, a photograph with a date, and a reason. It means the ratings come with the observations that produced them. It means the difference between what was seen and what was inferred from it is stated rather than blurred, because a reader who cannot tell those apart has no way to judge how much weight anything carries.
What other people do with it
A contractor prices from the repair list. A board votes on the summary and the priority order. A lender or a buyer reads the condition ratings and the limits section, and mostly wants to know what was not inspected. A warranty provider looks for dates, photographs and the method named. A manager sets it beside last year’s and asks what moved.
Those readers want different things from the same visit, which is why we ask who will read it before we scope it. A report written for an owner who wants a budget and a report written for a purchase are not the same document, and one rewritten for the other purpose afterwards always shows.
What it will not say
It will not tell you exactly how many years the roof has left. It will tell you what condition each area is in, what is driving its deterioration and what we would expect if nothing is done, and it will say how confident we are.
It will not rate an area nobody could reach. Those are listed as not inspected with the reason, and if that list matters to your decision, it comes with what it would take to close the gap.
It will not carry prices for the work unless you ask for them separately, and there are good reasons to keep the two apart. An assessment that prices its own recommendations is harder for anybody else to trust, including you.
Common questions
Can you write the report into our own template?
Usually yes, and it is worth asking before the visit rather than after it. Send your format with the booking and we will work to it.
- Agents, lenders and owners keep a format so a portfolio stays comparable
- A field we cannot fill honestly is completed as an estimate and labeled so
- A definite installation date on a roof with no paperwork is one such field
- A scored rating we did not design is applied with the observations behind it
- A number with no reasoning is the least useful thing in any report
If the template leaves no room for the limits of the inspection, we add them, because that section is not decoration. Where no template exists, ours is the default and you are free to reuse it.
Can a contractor price the work from the report alone?
For most items, yes, and that is deliberate. The repair list describes each item in the terms a roofer prices from.
- What the detail is, what has failed, roughly how much of it there is
- And what the repair has to achieve
- A contractor can find the location on the plan and price it without a visit
- Larger items get quoted after somebody has stood on the roof
- Removing material or judging how far a wet area extends needs seeing
That is the right instinct rather than an awkward one, and the report's job there is to make their visit short and their price comparable. Where the report runs a competitive tender, tell us at the start so we write the scope more tightly.
Does the report include repair costs?
Not by default, and it is worth thinking carefully before asking for it.
- The moment a report carries prices it becomes a quotation
- A finding that supports work is harder to trust when the same document prices it
- Keeping them apart lets you hand the report to another contractor
- A reserve study, budget submission or purchase may genuinely need a figure
- Budget ranges then come as a separate attachment, labeled as planning figures
We set out what would change those ranges, and you will not get a precise number for work nobody has scoped. If a price matters enough to act on, it comes from a quotation against the repair list, and the list is written so that quotation is straightforward.
What happens if we disagree with something in it?
Tell us which finding and why, and we will go back to the evidence.
- Sometimes it is the wording, and one call clears it up
- Sometimes you know something we did not, and the report should reflect it
- The area was repaired last year, or the stain is from a pipe
- Sometimes it is a genuine difference of judgment about what a photograph shows
- Where the images cannot settle it, open the detail and look
What we will not do is remove a finding because it is inconvenient. A report that can be edited by whoever paid for it is worth nothing to the next person who reads it, and the next person is usually why you bought it. If we are wrong, we say what changed.
Can next year's report be set against this one?
That is one of the better reasons to buy the first one. A single report describes a roof at a moment, two describe a direction.
- Direction is what budgeting actually needs
- The second visit repeats the first: same boundaries, same plan, same scale
- Photographs from the same positions, with previous findings carried forward
- Each finding then reads as repaired, unchanged, worse or new
- That short page shows which defects are moving and how fast
It also exposes repairs that did not hold. Where a building already has old reports from somebody else, send them: we cannot make another inspector's scale match ours, but we can note where their findings sit on our plan, which is enough to see what has changed.