How to Choose a Roofing Contractor in Kansas City

The Kansas City metro sits in two states, and they treat roofers differently. Kansas has a roofing registration law. Anyone doing residential roofing for pay in Kansas is supposed to register with the Attorney General's office, and that registration number belongs on the bid and the contract. You can look a company up on the Attorney General's website in about a minute. Ours is KS14-004306.

Missouri doesn't have a statewide roofing license. A few cities on the Missouri side have their own contractor licensing or business registration, and most require a permit for a full replacement, but there's no single state list to check. That puts more of the vetting on you. On the Missouri side, insurance, a real address and a track record you can confirm carry most of the weight.

Ask for a certificate of insurance, then call the agency printed on it. Don't take the PDF at face value. Certificates get emailed around long after a policy lapses, and the agent can tell you in one call whether it's active.

You're looking for two policies. General liability covers damage to your house, your car or your neighbor's fence. Workers' compensation covers the people on your roof. That second one matters more than most homeowners realize. If an uninsured worker falls off your house, the injury claim goes looking for a policy to land on, and yours is the closest one.

After a big hail storm the metro fills up with trucks from out of state. Some of those crews do decent work. The problem is what happens later. A workmanship warranty is only as good as the company's ability to answer the phone when a pipe boot leaks five years from now, and a company that rented a temporary office for one storm season isn't going to be there.

Look up the address on the estimate. A storage unit, a hotel or a P.O. box tells you something. So does a phone number with an area code from three states away. Our storm chaser warning page goes through the post-storm patterns in more detail.

The person who sells you the roof is often not the person who installs it. Plenty of roofing companies are a sales office that hands jobs to whichever subcontract crew is open that week. That's legal. It also means the crew on your house may never have met the salesman, and the quality depends on who happened to be free.

So ask it straight: is this your crew or a sub? Who's the supervisor on site, and who do I call during the job? John Beal Roofing runs in-house crews. We'd still tell you to ask every company you're talking to, including us.

Two bids for the same house can be thousands of dollars apart and both be honest. One might include new step flashing at every wall, ice-and-water membrane in the valleys, a ventilation correction and a stated price for any bad decking. The other might include none of that and still say "complete roof replacement" across the top.

Line the bids up item by item before you look at the total. If one doesn't break the work down at all, ask for it in writing. A company that won't put its scope on paper is telling you how the change orders are going to go. Our Kansas City roof cost guide covers what moves the price.

• Pressure to sign today, or a price that only holds if you sign now.
• An offer to cover or waive your insurance deductible. We don't do that, and nobody should.
• A request for most or all of the money before materials are delivered.
• A contract handed over in the driveway that gives the contractor control of your insurance claim.
• No written scope, just a number.
• No Kansas registration number on a Kansas job.

Hold us to the same list. Look up the Kansas registration, call our insurance agent, drive past the address on the estimate. We'll come out for a free roof inspection, take photographs of what we find, and give them to you whether you hire us or not. If the roof is fine, we'll say so.

When a roof does need work, the written scope tells you exactly what's being done before anyone starts. That's true for a full replacement and for storm damage repair. Before you sign anything, our list of five questions to ask a roofer is worth ten minutes, and so is the page on workmanship and manufacturer warranties.