Start with how old the houses are, which the Census publishes by area, then use your city’s building permits to cross off the houses that already have a new roof. What’s left are the streets where original roofs should be coming due, and a fresh permit on a lead who went quiet can show that another roofer got the job.
The Census counts houses by the decade they were built
Census table B25034, “Year Structure Built”, comes from the American Community Survey. It sorts the homes in an area into ten bands, mostly by decade, running from 1939 or earlier up to 2020 or later.
The table gives the age of the house and says nothing about the roof. A house built in 1995 may already be on its second roof, which is why the permit step comes next. Pull the table for the areas you can work, and mark the ones where most homes fall in the decades you’re after.
InterNACHI puts 3-tab shingles at about 20 years and architectural shingles at about 30
Those figures come from InterNACHI’s Standard Estimated Life Expectancy Chart. Hold them up against the Census bands. A house from the 1990s still on its first 3-tab roof is past 20 years, while a house from the 2010s with architectural shingles still has years left by the chart.
InterNACHI says the figures assume regular maintenance and normal wear without extreme weather, and it keeps a separate chart for Florida homes because climate changes the number. In hail country, expect roofs to give out sooner than the chart says, and start with the oldest bands.
Your city’s permit records show which old houses already have a new roof
Permit data is published city by city. In DFW, Dallas has a Building Permits dataset on its open data portal, and Farmers Branch publishes its own. Start with your city’s open data portal or online permit search, and check which years a dataset covers before you lean on it.
A salesperson in California asked r/RoofingSales where to find county records for roof permits: “i want to find houses that have old roofs. is this even possible?” A roofing company asked the same forum whether any software searches permits in bulk, because pulling them by hand across many properties is slow. Where your city publishes a dataset, work from the dataset instead of looking up addresses one at a time.
Before you trust any permit source, look up three houses you reroofed yourself. If your jobs show up with dates, the records can cross off reroofed houses for you. If they don’t, the records miss reroofs where you work, and you’ll be picking streets from the Census bands alone. Run the same test on any property data before you pay for it.
A fresh permit on a lead who went quiet often means another roofer signed
Permits work in the other direction as well. A salesperson on r/RoofingSales checks county building permits on leads who went quiet, and wrote that “half the time I do see that another roofer got the job.”
Before you spend another visit on a stalled lead, check its permit record. On the streets you plan to work, treat any house with a recent roofing permit as taken and leave it off your reps’ list.
In Texas, an old roof on an actual cash value policy can pay nothing on a claim
The Texas Department of Insurance says most home policies pay replacement cost, and some pay actual cash value, which subtracts depreciation for the roof’s age and condition. TDI’s own example is a $10,000 roof replacement with a $4,000 deductible, which pays $6,000 under replacement cost however old the roof is.
Under actual cash value, the same claim pays $3,000 on a 10-year-old roof and nothing on a 20-year-old one. Texas sets no single roof age at which a roof becomes uninsurable, and each carrier applies its own underwriting rules.
On the oldest streets you pick, TDI’s own example has an actual cash value policy paying nothing for the roof. Go in with a retail price ready, and ask which kind of policy the homeowner has before you bring up a claim. Selling Retail Roofs When Insurance Work Slows covers that pitch. Outside Texas, find out how policies in your state settle roof claims, because the same math holds anywhere a policy pays actual cash value.
Check five things before sending reps to a neighborhood
- Most homes fall in Census decades old enough that an original roof is at or past InterNACHI’s figure for its shingle type.
- Your city’s permit records show few recent roofing permits on those streets, and your own jobs show up in them.
- You’ve checked whether a recent storm hit those streets, which is a separate question from roof age. Hail Maps for Roofers: Which Storm Data to Trust After a Hailstorm covers which storm data to trust.
- You know the city’s rules for going door to door. See Do Roofers Need a Solicitor Permit to Door Knock?
- In Texas, if most houses are past 20 years, your reps carry a retail price and ask about the policy first.
Before reps go out, it helps to know where your company shows up on Google near the streets you picked. In the free Google Maps heatmap you pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you see your rank at 49 points around your office.