(214) 807-0414Request an assessmentEstimate guide
A single page with a total at the bottom of it is not an estimate; it is a price with a logo on it. A usable estimate states quantities, names products, says what is being replaced and what is being reused, and is explicit about the work it does not include.
In short
Squares of roofing, linear feet of ridge, valley and drip edge, counts of pipe boots and vents. Numbers let you compare proposals against each other and against the roof itself. A total on its own lets you compare nothing.
01
Step flashing, counter flashing, valley metal, drip edge, pipe boots, vents: each can be replaced or refitted. Refitting is reasonable on some details and a false economy on others. What is never reasonable is leaving it unstated, because a reused flashing under a new roof is invisible until it leaks.
02
Decking is the one quantity that cannot be settled before the covering comes off, so what belongs on the page is the arithmetic rather than the number: how many sheets the base price already carries, the rate for anything past that, and who has to say yes before more goes down. Two proposals assuming different quantities are not the same price, and neither of them is wrong until you can see the assumption.
03
Deposit, progress payments, the trigger for final payment, and what has to be true before it falls due. Then look for the closeout: final walk-through, magnet sweep, photographs, product records, and the actual warranty documents rather than a sentence describing them.
Questions
No. It is a range someone is willing to say before seeing the property. There are no quantities behind it, and it is routinely revised upward once the roof has been measured and the details have been looked at.
Yes, and it should be handed over. The measurement is the basis of every quantity on the page, and a contractor unwilling to show the area and pitch figures behind the price is asking you to trust arithmetic you are not allowed to check.
Enough to see whether the scopes agree, which usually means three. The value is not in finding the cheapest. It is that three independent reads of the same roof will expose the item one of them missed.
Not automatically. The agreement is frequently a separate document with its own terms, and the scope you spent an evening comparing can end up referenced in it only as a total. Ask for the estimate to be attached to the agreement or incorporated by its name and date, exclusions and allowances included. Where the two documents describe the work differently, the one you signed is the one that governs, and it is usually the shorter one.
It is not unfair, but it costs you the thing you were buying. A contractor shown a competing number tends to produce a matching number, and you finish with two prices for one opinion instead of two independent reads of the roof. The more useful move is to take a specific item from one proposal — a flashing detail, a decking allowance, a named underlayment — and ask the others why theirs differs.
Assessment request
Short, routing-only questions. Nothing here asks you to diagnose the roof yourself.