Playbook · Roofing contractors
The roofer playbook
Here’s the honest version: a reroof permit usually means a roofer already won that job — chasing it is chasing your competitor’s closed deal. The money is upstream. Every new home, addition, and commercial shell in the permit record needs a roof, and the roofing contract is often not let when the building permit appears. This is the guide to living upstream of the bid.
Set up in a few minutes; your first digest lands the next morning at 7 AM.
The daily loop
- 1
Point your territory at buildings, not roofs
Pick your service-area ZIPs, then build your first saved search on new construction and remodels & additions — the work that will need a roof — rather than the roofing lens itself. The roofing lens shows you the trade’s activity (yours and your competitors’); the building lenses show you the jobs still hiring.
TipThe roofing lens deliberately excludes roof-mounted solar and rooftop AC units — when you do use it, you’re seeing shingle and tile work, not PV arrays.
- 2
Find the builders who need a roofer on repeat
One custom home is one roof. A production builder opening a section is thirty. The contractor leaderboards rank the most active builders in your ZIPs — open a builder’s profile to see their pace, where they’re pulling, and their permit history. Those are the relationships that fill a calendar.
- 3
Vet the GC before you bid
Every contractor profile shows the AZ ROC license, status, classification, disciplinary history, and recent volume — on a match-confidence badge. Thirty seconds tells you whether a GC is real, licensed, and worth attaching your crew to.
- 4
Track your competitors and your accounts
Add the roofers you compete with and the builders you sub for to My Book. You’ll see whose permit pace is climbing, who’s gone quiet, and whose license is about to lapse — the local market map, refreshed daily.
TipA competitor going quiet is a set of builder relationships coming loose. That’s your call sheet.
Aim it right
Point your search at the work that needs a roof
Different roofing books ride different permits. Point your saved search at the slice of construction that feeds your kind of work.
Searches you can paste straight in
Type it in plain English — the search bar parses the trade, the ZIPs, the dollar floor, and the date window for you.
“new single family homes in my zips”
Every new home starting in your territory — each one a roof not yet installed, tied to the builder who needs it.
“the busiest roofing contractors this year”
The leaderboard read on your local competitors — who’s winning volume, and whose customers you want.
“commercial permits over $500k in Phoenix”
Commercial work large enough to carry a real roofing package, before the trade contracts settle.
What to look for
The signals that separate a call from a waste of a call
- Lifecycle stage
- “Applied” means the building permit isn’t even issued — the earliest legal moment to reach the builder, usually before trade contracts are signed. “Issued” means dirt moves soon.
- Builder velocity
- A builder whose permit count is climbing needs more subs this quarter than last. The leaderboard finds them; their profile proves it.
- Valuation band
- A $900k custom home carries a different roof spec — and margin — than a tract unit. Sort by value to match the work to your book.
- License status of the GC
- A GC with a lapsed license or a disciplinary record is a payment risk before it’s a schedule risk. It’s public; check it before you bid.
Power moves
Once you’re past the basics
Search buildings, not roofs. By the time a roofing permit exists, the job is won — usually not by you. New-construction and remodel permits are the jobs still hiring.
Pick the three most active builders in your ZIPs from the leaderboard and put them in My Book. Every alert about them is a section, not a house.
Applied-stage permits carry an estimated issue date. Reaching a builder at application time beats every competitor who waits for the issue.
A rival roofer’s profile shows every permit they pull — which builders they serve, at what pace. When their pace drops, those builders take calls.
If you run separate tile, shingle, and flat crews, run separate saved searches — each digest lands pre-sorted for the crew that would do the work.
What you’ll see on every lead
Type, work class, lifecycle stage (applied → issued → in progress → finaled), and declared value — or a clearly-labeled estimate when the city doesn’t report one.
Where the permit names one: the AZ ROC license, status, classification, disciplinary flags, and recent volume — your vetting sheet, on a match-confidence badge.
Address matched to the county parcel and the owner of record — so a commercial shell and a custom home read differently at a glance.
Refreshed daily from each city’s feed — “hot” really means this week.
Straight about the data
What we won’t oversell
- The honest limit: permits tell you where roofs will be needed and who controls them — they don’t hand you a homeowner mid-decision. This is a builder-relationship and market-intel tool for roofers, not a storm-lead list.
- Some cities publish permits without a contractor field — Gilbert, Goodyear, Chandler, and Queen Creek name no contractor — so competitor tracking is thinner there.
- A contractor is resolved on about 39% of all permits and about 61% of the ones that name a contractor — every link shows its confidence.
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