An owner running an $11 million roofing company, about 60 jobs a month, wrote on r/RoofingSales in October 2026 that the work now splits about 55% retail and 45% insurance, and was far more insurance-heavy before the law changed. About 18 posts and comments I found on Reddit and YouTube describe a company or a rep making the same move, most of them from May 2025 on.
Look first to the homeowners who are paying for a roof anyway. That includes home sellers, since 37% of Realtors recommend a new roof before listing, and homeowners whose actual cash value claim pays little or nothing on an older roof. A rep who sells about 70% retail takes that claim check as the down payment and finances the rest. Owners who post their numbers report a lower price and a thinner margin on retail work than on claims.
I run Zentora, a marketing company for roofers, so on the sale itself I’m passing on what owners and reps have posted and what regulators publish. Online, homeowners search for the price, and a DFW roofing client’s cost page that wouldn’t give one sat around 85th on Google while every page-one result led with a dollar range.
Owners report thinner margins on retail roofs than on claims
An owner whose company does 95% retail wrote on r/RoofingSales in August 2025 that it charges around $450 a square in most cases, while insurers have lately paid as much as $600 to $700. An owner with $30 million in sales wrote in September 2024 that the company’s insurance work averaged margins in the mid 40s and its retail work the high 20s. A rep doing about 70% retail reports average margins of 25 to 40%, and another rep wrote in June 2026 that their company had told reps to bid every insurance job as a cash job at a 40% profit margin. These are anonymous posts from different markets, so treat them as anecdotes.
If your overhead was set on claim margins, work out whether the company still makes money at a high-20s margin before you move crews to retail. How to Price a Roof: Price per Square, Overhead and Target Margin covers the math.
Reps who sell claim jobs can find retail jobs harder to sign
In November 2025 an owner whose company had mostly worked insurance claims went looking on r/RoofingSales for someone to train the team in selling retail roofs in the home, since the sales program it already used was mostly for insurance. The team knew insurance work well, the owner wrote, and retail selling was a different animal. A rep had written in June 2024 that insurance claims came easily and a single decent retail contract wouldn’t.
I couldn’t find a public benchmark for retail close rates, only anonymous forum claims, so I can’t tell you what a good retail month looks like.
An actual cash value claim can leave the homeowner paying most of the roof
The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) works through an example: a $200,000 home with a 2% deductible, which comes to $4,000, and a roof that costs $10,000 to replace. Replacement cost coverage pays the cost minus the deductible, whatever the roof’s age. Actual cash value coverage pays what the old roof was worth minus the deductible, and TDI values it at $8,500 after 5 years, $7,000 after 10 and $4,000 after 20.
| Coverage | Claim pays | Homeowner pays |
|---|---|---|
| Replacement cost, any roof age | $6,000 | $4,000 |
| Actual cash value, 5-year-old roof | $4,500 | $5,500 |
| Actual cash value, 10-year-old roof | $3,000 | $7,000 |
| Actual cash value, 20-year-old roof | $0 | $10,000 |
The right-hand column is retail money, so a claim on a 10-year-old roof under an actual cash value policy is mostly a retail sale with a claim attached. These are the regulator’s illustrative numbers, so have the homeowner check their own policy before you quote anything.
Florida lets insurers offer a separate roof deductible of up to 2% of the home’s dwelling coverage or half the cost of a new roof, whichever is less, and pay roof claims at actual cash value until it’s paid. Hurricane losses are among the exceptions, and the homeowner can opt out.
The average Texas homeowners premium rose from $2,124 in 2021 to $3,489 in 2025, and TDI tells homeowners that a higher deductible means a lower premium. I found no count of how many policies now pay roofs at actual cash value or carry a percentage wind and hail deductible, so I can’t tell you how common they’ve become.
Texas lets a homeowner finance the deductible a contractor can’t waive
Eating the deductible to win a claim job is off the table in Texas. Since September 2019 the Insurance Code has required the policyholder to pay it, and the Business and Commerce Code makes it a Class B misdemeanor for a contractor to pay, waive, absorb or decline to collect a homeowner’s deductible without the insurer’s consent, or to advertise or promise that it will.
Financing the deductible is legal. An insurer on a replacement cost policy may hold back the recoverable depreciation until it sees proof the deductible was paid, and the statute counts “a copy of an executed installment plan contract or other financing arrangement that requires full payment of the deductible over time” as proof. That’s the law as I read it, so have a lawyer look over any deductible arrangement before it goes into a contract.
“An ACV policy is actually really easy to sell,” the rep who uses claim checks as down payments wrote on r/RoofingSales in June 2026. Roof Financing for Contractors: Dealer Fees, Lenders and When It Helps Close goes through the lenders and what they charge you.
Florida’s rules reach further. A contractor there can’t offer a gift card, cash, a deductible waiver or anything else of value in exchange for a roof inspection or a claim, and can’t interpret a homeowner’s coverage without a public adjuster’s license, so leave it to the homeowner’s agent to explain what the policy pays. Fines run up to $10,000 per violation, and homeowners can’t assign post-loss benefits under residential policies issued on or after January 1, 2023.
A Georgia remodeler adding retail roofs wrote in June 2025 that new legislation there had made claim approvals harder, so check your own state’s or province’s rules before you build a sale around a claim.
37% of Realtors recommend a new roof before a home is listed
A Texas owner wrote on r/Roofing in September 2025 that nobody has $10,000 to $20,000 set aside for a roof, so most of that company’s work comes from insurance or from home sales, with the roof paid for out of the sale.
The National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Remodeling Impact Report found that 37% of Realtors recommend installing new roofing before listing a home, and 43% had seen demand for new roofing increase. That makes the agents who list homes near you a source of retail roofs that doesn’t wait on hail. Find out which agents list the most homes in your area, and get your number into their phones before their next listing. Roofing Referral Programs: Past Customers, Realtors and Insurance Agents covers what owners report about working with them.
Don’t promise a tax credit or a set insurance discount on a 2026 roof
The IRS says the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit covers property placed in service from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2025, and Energy Star’s list of qualifying improvements doesn’t include roofing. I found no federal credit for a roof put on in 2026, so leave it out of your proposals.
TDI says the size of any discount for impact-resistant roofing is set by each insurer for each class of material, and it publishes no percentages. I couldn’t confirm whether Texas requires insurers to offer one at all, so have the homeowner ask their own carrier what an impact-resistant roof would save before the figure goes in your proposal.
In Alabama, Strengthen Alabama Homes grants in eligible counties pay 100% of the cost of the work, up to $10,000, for a roof built to the FORTIFIED Roof standard, which IBHS says includes a sealed roof deck and ring-shank nails in an enhanced pattern. FORTIFIED homes there also get discounts on the wind portion of the premium. Check whether your state or province runs a program like it.
A roof cost page that wouldn’t give a price sat around 85th on Google
A Texas roof cost guide on a DFW roofing client’s site opened by saying nobody could know the price yet, and gave a whole section to why the company wouldn’t publish a price per square. In mid-September 2026 it sat around 85th for “average cost to replace a roof in texas”, and every result on page one, HomeAdvisor’s included, led with a dollar range. We rebuilt it on September 16 with a sourced range at the top and a price table in the first screen, and I don’t have a ranking for the new version yet. The range can come from a published source, so the page doesn’t commit you to a quote.
“Roof replacement cost” gets about 22,200 US searches a month, and “roof replacement cost dfw” about 40. Take the 107,210 monthly US searches for roof cost and insurance questions, keep one DFW roofer’s share of the population, and about 500 are left, so 99.5% of the people reading a roof cost guide live where that roofer doesn’t work.
A DFW remodeling client of ours shows what that traffic turns into: about 130 cost guides of 5,000 to 8,700 words with price tables took its Google clicks from about 40 a month in late 2025 to 833 in August 2026. About 87% of those clicks came from readers across the country. Roughly one click in 300 became a lead, and qualified leads ran 2 to 3 a month. Its remodel cost guides hadn’t produced a single qualified remodel lead when we checked in September, and since it’s a remodeler, these numbers say nothing yet about roofing leads.
So a price page’s job is to earn the trust of the homeowner near you who has already found you, and on these numbers it won’t carry a slow month by itself. Judge it by the inspections it books in your area.
Start with the claim jobs that are already part retail
The deductible and the gap on an actual cash value claim are retail money inside jobs you already see.
- Go back to homeowners who didn’t sign because their claim paid too little, and offer financing for the gap, deductible included if your state’s law allows it.
- Price retail work per square from your own costs, at a margin that still covers your overhead.
- Get to know the agents who list the most homes near you.
- Put a sourced price range and a price table on your website.
If you want to see where your company shows up on Google Maps when a homeowner near you searches for a roof replacement, run the free Google Maps heatmap. Pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.