The roof is one of the most important parts of any house, yet it can be tough to find a great roofing contractor. Ask any of your family or friends and they probably have stories of contractors that they wish they hadn’t hired.
Finding an amazing roofer will save you from big potential problems. Over the 20+ years we’ve been building excellent roofs, we’ve learned exactly what it takes for homeowners to find the best roofing contractor they can.
Start with Google reviews for roofers in your area
Almost no roofer has a perfect 5 star rating while also having a lot of reviews. It can happen, but it’s very unlikely because everybody makes mistakes.
What you should look for instead is a high 4 rating with many reviews. Like with other review systems (like Amazon), the high 4’s with many reviews shows that the company is almost certainly very reliable.
You want to do more than just look at the rating though. Read the reviews. This matters greatly because it can tell you what kind of roofing contractor you’re looking at. If the company has a bunch of small and short reviews, they could have paid for them or the reviewers were merely satisfied. But if a roofing contractor has a large quantity of passionate and deeply personal reviews, it shows that the homeowner had a much greater experience than they anticipated. We always want this to be the case.
Go for lots of roofing experience
As we discussed above, everybody makes mistakes, even the best of the best. In fact, the reason the best become the best is by learning from all their past mistakes.
We were established in 2002 and have experience at all levels of the company that go back to the mid-1990’s. Because of this, there is no issue with roofs that we haven’t seen and that we don’t know how to fix.
The same can’t be said for inexperienced roofers. It’s a catch-22 for inexperienced roofers: they need to gain experience but there is also more risk in hiring them because of their lack of experience.
In a perfect market, price would adjust for this, where the longer a roofing contractor has been in the industry, the higher their price would be. But the market just doesn’t work this way.
This means that if you want to avoid risk, you want to pay great attention to the experience of any potential contractor. There are just two totally different levels of reliability when it comes to comparing a company that has been roofing for 20 years and one that has for 5 years.
Don’t settle for one roofing company without comparing
Lots of roofers want to be the only company that homeowners talk to. That means they can jack up the price and still get the job.
We don’t want to be the only roofing contractor you talk to because we want you to get the best company suited for you. The right thing for you is to get multiple eyes from professionals on your roof and multiple opinions.
Compare the estimates. Look at price and scope of work. Compare the professionalism and feel you get from the estimators.
Avoid high pressure sales no matter what. Sometimes it is unclear if a company will engage in high pressure tactics before you meet with them. But once you get the feeling they are trying to pressure you into signing a contract, get rid of them. This is one of the best ways to keep yourself from being taken advantage of.
Never go too low cost. Roofs are not cheap, so when an estimate seems too good to be true, it is. We can’t count the number of times we’ve had to fix improperly installed roofs from a fly-by-night roofer. The homeowner always loses many thousands of dollars in those cases. We’d like to see this never happen again, but unfortunately there will always be a market for very risky and low quality work.
Ask for references of other roofs installed by the contractor
This is one of the best things you can do, and yet it is one of the rarest things that homeowners ask for. We are always happy to provide as many references as homeowners ask for of roofs we have completed in the area.
Knowing the quality of the work of any given contractor you’re looking to hire is so important. If a prospective contractor has a hard time giving you good examples of their work, it’s a big red flag.
Watch the roofing contractor’s testimonials from previous customers
Not every roofing contractor will have much in the way video testimonials, but if you can find them, they are an extremely powerful tool. Video testimonials take a lot more effort and desire on the part of both the contractor and the homeowner who gave the testimonial, which means that they care more.
The roofing contractor wants to make sure the job is done excellently, and the homeowner tends to only want to give a video testimonial when they are extremely happy with the job. In situations where the roof work was so-so, where it was merely acceptable or adequate, video testimonials are hard to come by. But a company with a strong presence of video testimonials demonstrates to prospective customers that they have a spectacular track record of having extremely happy customers.
Check out our awesome video testimonials here.
If you live in the Puget Sound area of Washington State and want an estimate for the best roof you’re ever have, please call us at (253) 544-3651 or fill out our quick estimate form.
