Roof inspection
An inspection earns its cost when it answers a decision. In this region the decisions are specific: how many layers are up there, whether the deck under them is sound, and what is happening in an attic that has rooms in it and therefore cannot be looked at from a hatch.
When it earns its price
Before buying, above all — roof condition is one of the largest numbers hiding in a house purchase here, and a general home inspection rarely establishes the layer count or looks properly at the flashing on a split-level. Before winter, on an ageing covering: the freeze-thaw months find every loose edge and every tired sealant bead, and finding them in September costs less than finding them in February. And on any house where ice forms at the eaves each year, because that is a symptom worth diagnosing before it is worth roofing over.
What gets checked
On the roof: what the covering is and how many layers it appears to be; whether the shingle edges are still sealed; granule loss and the difference between slopes; every roof-to-wall junction and whether the flashing is layered metal or sealant doing the work; skylights and dormers, which fail before the field does; valleys and what is sitting in them; and the roof edge — fascia, soffit and gutter hardware, which in this climate is often the first timber to go.
Off the roof: the attic, where the real story usually is. Whether intake exists and is open rather than buried under insulation, staining or rust on the underside of the deck, and daylight at penetrations. On a finished Cape or a split-level, the accessible knee-wall pockets. And the paper: permit records for the property, which can date the last work and tell you whether it was a tear-off or a second layer.
What the report is good for
A written report turns impressions into decisions. For a buyer it puts a number on the largest hidden item in the purchase. For an owner it fixes the scope, so that three bidders price the same layer count, the same decking assumption and the same ventilation work — which is the only way a comparison between quotes means anything. And it puts the job in the right season: identified in spring, quoted properly, done in the warm months when the covering will actually seal.