The short answer: a contractor's free inspection is a sales call with a ladder. The inspector is paid when the job sells, not when the findings are right. A paid inspection on the board's side costs your board a fee, and the fee buys the document every decision that follows stands on.
Who the free inspector works for
Storm-restoration companies run whole departments that knock doors after hail. The free inspection is step one of a sales process, and the process works. Those companies track inspection-to-contract rates the way a dealership tracks closings. (We spent many years on the building-products side of this industry. We sat in the meetings where those numbers went up on the whiteboard.)
The inspector at your door is usually a decent person doing the job they were hired for. The job they were hired for is selling. Paid by the sale, the inspection finds what it needs to find. Every scuff reads as damage and every stain reads as urgency. The estimate left behind becomes the scope your board reacts to.
So ask the question your board would ask of any other vendor: who pays this inspector, and what are they paid to produce?
Where your board pays for it
The invoice for a free inspection shows up in places boards rarely connect back to it.
- The scope belongs to the seller. The free report turns into the project definition, written by the party that profits when it grows. Bids that follow are answers to a question your board never asked. A scope your board owns puts that right.
- The claim decision gets made for you. A free inspection that ends with "Call your carrier" has already steered an insurance decision. A claim involves your deductible, your policy structure, your claims history, and what the damage actually is, and there is no rush to make one. Documented evidence first, then the decision, on your board's timeline.
- The record follows the project. Somewhere down the road an owner or an attorney asks who documented the damage. When the answer on file is "The contractor who won the work," the file costs your board credibility at the exact moment it needs some.
What the fee buys
When your board pays for the inspection, the report is the product. The inspector is finished when the findings are right, NOT when a contract signs. An Action Plan gives you field conditions, photographed and location-referenced, in a format built to hold up when someone outside your board reads it.
Everything downstream flips with it. The scope belongs to your board, and every bid competes against your document instead of the seller's. If a claim question comes, it gets decided on evidence. The same principle runs through our whole practice: the fee is set in writing before the work starts and is the same whichever contractor your board selects.
What to do with the next free offer
Nobody has to chase a ladder off the property. If a free report lands in your board packet, keep it. Read it as one seller's opening position, then get a set of eyes on the buildings that answers to your board. The Minnesota Attorney General's Disaster Information page (Opens in a new tab) is worth ten minutes at your next meeting, it covers door-to-door repair solicitation and how to check out a contractor before anyone signs.
Have one of those reports on the table right now? Send it over. We will read it next to the roof it describes and tell you, finding by finding, what holds up. 612-440-8660.
Hail season comes back every year. The boards that come through it well own their information before the first truck rolls in. That ownership carries a fee, and the fee is the fairest price your association sees all year.
We work alongside your association's attorney. We assist associations through the insurance claims process. The Storm Damage Report →