Lead Generation for Roofers
Every homebuyer survey in your town mentions a roof
A stream of qualified enquiries created by somebody else
A full roof re-tile is £5,090. Fascias, soffits and guttering, £1,830. A flat roof in EPDM, £1,790. A repair, £505. A survey, £175.
Consider what happens in every house sale in your area.
A surveyor inspects the property and produces a report. Roofs are among the most commonly flagged items in those reports, usually in careful language — nearing the end of its serviceable life, evidence of previous repair, further investigation recommended by a qualified roofing contractor.
The buyer reads that sentence and is immediately in one of two situations. Either they want a price before exchange so they can renegotiate, in which case they need somebody within days. Or they have bought the house and now have a roof they have been told to worry about.
Both are motivated, both have a written reason to act, and both were created without any marketing on your part. The demand exists because a surveyor generated it.
Who they ring is close to arbitrary. The estate agent’s suggestion, whoever the surveyor mentioned, a search, a neighbour. In most towns no roofing firm has deliberately positioned itself in that flow at all.
The referral network that sits around a house sale
Surveyors. They cannot recommend exclusively, but they are asked constantly and they remember firms that produce clear, honest reports rather than alarming ones.
Estate agents. A sale stalling over a roof is their problem. A roofer who attends within two days and produces a written report is solving something that costs them money, which is why agents remember them.
Conveyancers, who deal with the paperwork consequences of unresolved defects.
Mortgage brokers, where a retention has been applied pending roof works.
Insurance brokers and loss adjusters, for storm and escape-of-water claims.
Managing agents and landlords, who deal with roofs on a maintenance cycle rather than a crisis.
That is a small group of professionals, most of whom are asked about roofers regularly and have nobody satisfactory to name.
The ratio
A re-tile is £5,090. Our Noticed package is £49 a month — £588 a year. One re-tile covers more than eight years.
On referral: an estate agent branch involved in a hundred sales a year, with roofs flagged in a meaningful share of them, is a stream of survey-stage enquiries that never appears in search data. Winning two branches is a different business from waiting to be found, and the enquiries are unshared.
What we’d actually build
A survey-stage service that agents can rely on — attendance within two working days, a written report with photographs, and a clear price. That reliability is the product being sold to the referrer.
A report format aimed at a transaction, which is a different document from a homeowner quote: what the defect is, what it means, what it costs, and what is not urgent.
An outreach programme to agents, surveyors and brokers, which is a small local list and almost entirely uncontested.
Storm and insurance positioning, so claim-related work has a route in.
A managing agent offer for flat roofs and periodic condition reporting.
Source tracking, because referral work is invisible in analytics and easy to under-value.
What good looks like at twelve months
- Two or three estate agent branches using you at survey stage
- A two-day attendance standard you actually meet
- Reports written for transactions rather than repurposed quotes
- Enquiries arriving with a surveyor’s wording attached
- A visible share of turnover from referral rather than search
The mistakes we see most
Waiting to be found. The demand created by surveys is enormous and it is allocated by whoever is present at the moment it appears.
Treating a pre-purchase inspection like a sales visit. Overstating the defect loses the agent permanently.
Slow attendance. A stalled sale is measured in days, and a roofer who cannot attend inside two is not useful.
Not tracking referral. It never shows up in search reporting, so it gets under-invested in.
The first ninety days
Weeks 1–4. The transaction report format, plus a realistic attendance commitment you can hold.
Weeks 5–8. Outreach to local agents, surveyors and brokers, which is a short list and a series of conversations rather than a campaign.
Weeks 9–12. Managing agent and insurance routes opened, and source tracking so the channel becomes measurable.
At ninety days the measure is whether any enquiry arrived because a professional named you. That is the channel this page exists to open.
Where this lands in Gaffer
Enquiries record their source, so referral work is visible rather than lost among general enquiries.
Because survey findings and photographs sit against the property, a transaction report is assembled from the inspection rather than written up later.
And with attendance dates recorded, the two-day commitment that wins agent relationships is something you can prove you are keeping.
What to charge for the pre-purchase inspection
The agent and surveyor route only works if the economics of the visit work, and that decision is worth making deliberately rather than by habit.
A pre-purchase roof inspection is not a quotation visit. The buyer may not own the house yet. They may not proceed at all. What they need is a written opinion, with photographs, that they can put in front of a seller, a lender or a solicitor — and producing that properly takes a couple of hours including the write-up.
Three positions are defensible and they produce different businesses.
Charge for it, at something like £175. It filters out the merely curious, it pays for your time whether or not the sale completes, and it produces a document the buyer values because they bought it. Agents are comfortable recommending a paid inspection because it is what a surveyor would charge for anything similar.
Provide it without charge and price the work. Higher volume, more wasted visits, and it works if a good share convert to jobs.
Charge and offset it against the work. The common middle position, and the one most buyers find reasonable.
What does not work is being vague about it, because the agent needs to tell the buyer what to expect before making the introduction.
Whichever you choose, decide it once and tell the referral network plainly. The clarity is worth more than the fee.
Questions roofers ask
Will surveyors recommend me? Not exclusively, and they will name firms that produce measured reports rather than alarming ones.
Is two days realistic? For a survey visit and a written report, generally yes, and it is the commitment that wins the relationship.
What about lead platforms? They send homeowner enquiries shared with competitors. The referral route sends unshared work with a professional’s endorsement behind it.
How do I approach agents? Directly, with the report format in hand. It is a short local list and almost nobody has done it.
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