A roof insurance claim has five steps: an inspection, a written damage report, the filing, the adjuster visit, and the repair. On most of our jobs the homeowner makes one phone call and our team does the other four.
Here is what happens at each step, and the two places a claim usually goes sideways.
What are the five steps of a roof insurance claim?
- An inspection. Someone gets on the roof and looks for storm damage. Not from the driveway.
- A written report. Photos, measurements, and a note on what caused each mark.
- The filing. You open the claim with your insurer and give them the report.
- The adjuster visit. Your insurer sends someone to look at the same roof.
- The repair. Once the claim is approved, the work gets scheduled and done.
Steps two and four are where claims are won and lost. Both come down to whether the damage was documented well enough for somebody who was not there to agree with it.
Do I file the claim, or does the roofer?
You file it. The policy is yours and the insurer will only open a claim with the policyholder.
What we do is everything around that call. We inspect first, put the report together, and give you the claim number reference and the language to use. Then we meet the adjuster at the house so the two people looking at your roof are looking at the same things.
What happens when the adjuster comes out?
The adjuster climbs the roof and decides what the storm did and what was already worn out. That distinction is the whole claim.
We are on the roof with them. When they mark a slope as undamaged, we show our own photos of that slope. When they miss the flashing or the vents, we point at them.
It is a much shorter conversation when both parties stand in the same place.
What if the adjuster and the roofer disagree?
It happens, and it is normal. Most disagreements are about scope: how many slopes, whether the decking is included, whether matching shingles are available.
The fix is documentation, which is why step two is worth doing properly. A photograph of a hail bruise with a date on it settles an argument that a phone call cannot. If the gap is wide, your policy has a process for a second review, and your agent can walk you through it.
Will filing a claim change what I pay?
Ask your agent before you file. Policies differ, and so does how an insurer treats a weather claim against an at fault claim.
Ask it first and file with your eyes open. That is also why we tell people when a claim is not worth opening. If the damage falls under your deductible, filing costs you more than the repair does.
How does this play out around here?
The northwest suburbs get hail. Barrington, Long Grove, Inverness, Palatine and Lake Zurich have all had events that put whole streets into claims at once.
That does two things. Adjusters get busy after a big storm, so the houses with a finished report attached get moved along faster. And your neighbours will get door knocked by crews who drove in from three states away, which is a different problem we wrote about separately.
The other local wrinkle is age. A lot of housing stock around here went up in the same few years, so whole subdivisions hit the twenty year mark together.
An adjuster looking at a worn roof has to separate the storm from the twenty years. The photos decide that call.
What should I do after a storm?
- Do not get on the roof yourself. Storm damaged roofs are slick and the marks that count are easy to walk over.
- Write down the date of the storm. Insurers ask for it and people forget within a week.
- Take photos from the ground of anything obvious: shingles in the yard, dented gutters, a bent vent cap, torn screens.
- Book an inspection before you call the insurer. Going in with a report is a different conversation to going in with a question.
- Do not sign anything a door knocker hands you until you have read it. Some of those forms assign your claim to them.
Getting help with the claim itself
If a storm has hit your roof, you should not have to learn the claims process to get it fixed. That is the part we take off your hands. We inspect, document, meet the adjuster, and follow the claim to the end, then we do the repair.
See how we handle a roof insurance claim from the first inspection through to the finished roof.
Or call or text us at (224) 518-0278 and we will come look at it. The inspection is free and you get the photos either way.
