Will insurance cover a roof leak?

Sudden versus gradual

Homeowners policies are generally written to cover sudden and accidental events. A windstorm lifting shingles, hail impact, a limb through the roof — those are the kinds of thing cover exists for.

What they generally exclude is wear. A thirty-year-old roof that has reached the end of its life is not a sudden event, and neither is a leak that has been quietly getting worse for two winters. The awkward cases sit in between, which is exactly where documentation decides the outcome.

Why photographs decide it

An adjuster is trying to establish what happened and when. Photographs taken promptly, showing the damage inside and out, are the strongest thing you can put in front of them — far stronger than a description after the fact.

We photograph everything we find as a matter of course, and you keep those photographs whether or not we do the work. That is not a claims service; it is simply what an honest inspection produces.

Your duty to mitigate

Most policies include an obligation to prevent further damage once you are aware of it. In practice that means getting temporary protection on the roof rather than waiting weeks for the claim to resolve. Tarping is usually the cheapest thing in the whole sequence and it stops the interior damage compounding.

Keep the receipt. Reasonable mitigation costs are often recoverable, and an insurer would far rather pay for a tarp than for a ceiling.

What we do and do not do

We photograph what we find, we tell you honestly whether it looks like sudden damage or ordinary wear, and we give you a written itemized quote you can hand to anyone.

We do not file claims on your behalf, we are not a storm-chasing operation, and we will not tell you damage is storm-related when it is not. If someone knocks on your door after a storm offering to handle the whole claim, slow down and get a second opinion.