Solution · The roofs to stop chasing

A re-roof permit means the job is already gone. So we check before we charge you.

Most permit tools sell you the fresh permits as leads. That is the same list your competitors bought. The more useful read of the same record is the negative one: this house was re-roofed eighteen months ago, nobody should be knocking it, and you should not be paying to find that out.

A building permit is a public record filed when a homeowner replaces or repairs a roof. It is the closest thing the trade has to proof: not an estimate off a satellite picture, not an inference from the year the house was built, but a filing that says work was authorised on this address on this date.

That record is usually sold to roofers one way round. Buy the permits issued last week, call the homeowners, chase the job. It works until you notice that a permit database sold to everyone produces a list everyone is working, which is the exact problem shared leads already have.

Roofbird uses it the other way. Every roof you open is checked against the permit record first, and a house that already pulled a re-roof permit costs you nothing. The credit is not spent, the owner's contact is never bought, and the roof does not reach your list. Then, on the roofs that survive that check, the whole permit history is shown to you: what was done, when, what it was worth, and which contractor pulled it.

How permit data works inside Roofbird

1
You open a roof
Pick a house off your ranked list, or ask for one by address. Nothing has been charged yet.
2
We read the permit record first
Before any imagery, any model call, or any owner lookup, the address is matched against the permit record. The match is on the house number and the street, not on a radius, because a permit on the next lot is the neighbour's roof and not yours.
3
If the roof is already done, you keep the credit
You are shown the permit and given the choice. Skip it and nothing is spent: no credit, no imagery, no contact purchase. Open it anyway and you are charged normally, because a permit can be pulled and abandoned, a re-roof can be partial, and you may know the street better than the records do.
4
The roofs you do open come with their history
Every roof-related permit we hold for that address: the date, what the work was, the estimated value, and the contractor of record where the city publishes it. Solar permits are included, because an array on the deck changes the job and the price.
5
Ask the assistant about it in plain words
“Skip anything already re-roofed.” “Are my areas covered?” Coverage is a fact we already hold, so asking costs nothing and is answered instantly rather than sold back to you.
6
Nothing is metered
The permit check runs on every roof you open, on every plan, whether or not it finds anything. There is no permit add-on, no per-lookup price, and no separate subscription.

Why the negative signal is worth more than the lead

Permit data sold as a lead source has a structural problem: the freshest permits are the most valuable rows, they are the ones every subscriber queries first, and a permit filed last Tuesday is visible to everybody who pays for the same feed. You are competing on dial speed against people holding the identical list. The negative read has no such problem. Knowing that 14 of the 60 doors on your route were re-roofed in the last three years does not get less valuable because a competitor also knows it. It changes your morning rather than your call script. It is also the read that saves money rather than spending it. A knocked door that was sold last spring costs a drive, a conversation and the slot that a live prospect could have had. Finding that out before you pay for the house is the cheapest version of the same discovery.

An issue date is not a completion date, and the copy should not pretend otherwise

A permit is issued when work is authorised, not when it is finished. The gap between the two is routinely months, and sometimes the work never happens at all. We hit this on a real address: a re-roof permit issued on 16 February, our aerial photograph dated the following March, and the model read that March picture as heavy staining and surface degradation. Both were correct. The permit had been pulled two weeks before the photograph and the crew had not started. So the label says "re-roof permit" and the date next to it, never "re-roofed". The distinction sounds pedantic until you have driven to a house on the strength of the wrong one.

What a matched permit means, and what an empty result does not

When the house number and the street both agree, the permit belongs to that roof and it is treated as fact. It can remove a lead and it can reverse a charge. When a permit sits inside a tight radius but carries no address to check against, it is shown and it is labelled as nearby. On a terrace or a duplex that permit is very often next door. It is worth knowing the street is being worked. It is not evidence about the house, so it never removes a lead or reverses a charge. The empty result is the one most often over-read. No permit on an address does not mean no work was done. Re-roofs go unpermitted all the time, small repairs rarely get filed at all, and some cities publish far less than others. A blank is the absence of a record, not the presence of an opportunity, which is why the picture still decides and the permit never overrules it.

Coverage, and how we say so out loud

The permit record spans 103M+ building permits across all 50 states, refreshed daily from official city and county portals. In Texas and Florida we ingest directly from 63 municipal sources ourselves, which is why the depth there is highest. Cities stop publishing without announcing it. A feed can run every night, report no error, and quietly return nothing new for months. When that happens the card tells you the data stops in March rather than letting you read silence as "no permits". A roofer told a street is clean, who is not told the records end six months ago, is exactly the person this feature exists to protect. If you work a county we do not hold yet, tell us which one. Coverage requests are how new jurisdictions get prioritised, and we would rather say honestly what we have for your ground than average it into a number that is true nowhere in particular.

The permit never overrules the picture

Roofbird is an image-first product. The comparative read of a roof against its neighbours is the thing it is actually good at, and it is the judgement we measure. An early version of this let a permit demote a roof and overwrite the model's own reasoning whenever the filing post-dated the imagery. That was backwards. It let a records feed, whose field mapping varies city to city, silently rewrite the one judgement we trust most. So permits do their work in two places only: before the charge, where they can stop a spend, and on the card, where they are evidence you asked to see. They do not quietly edit your rankings. If the scan can answer the question from the picture, that is the answer.

FAQ

›Does Roofbird include roofing permit data?

Yes, on every plan at no extra cost. Every roof you open is checked against the permit record before you are charged, and the roofs you do open show their full permit history: date, work type, estimated value and the contractor who pulled it. There is no permit add-on and no per-lookup fee.

›What happens if a house already has a re-roof permit?

You are shown the permit before anything is spent and given the choice. Skip it and no credit is used, no imagery is bought and no owner contact is purchased. Open it anyway and you are charged normally, because permits get pulled and abandoned and you may know the street better than the records do.

›How much permit data is there, and which states?

103M+ building permits across all 50 states, refreshed daily from official city and county open-data portals. In Texas and Florida we additionally ingest 63 municipal sources directly, so depth is highest there.

›Is a permit proof that the roof was replaced?

No. A permit is issued when work is authorised, not when it is finished, and the gap runs to months. Some permits are pulled and never acted on. That is why the label reads 're-roof permit' with its date rather than 're-roofed', and why the satellite read still decides the ranking.

›Does no permit mean the roof has never been replaced?

No, and this is the more common misreading. Re-roofs go unpermitted regularly, minor repairs are rarely filed, and cities differ enormously in what they publish. An empty result is the absence of a record, not evidence of an old roof. The imagery remains the catch for an unpermitted replacement.

›Can I see which contractors are pulling permits on my streets?

Yes, where the city publishes the contractor of record. It comes with the permit history on any roof you open, so you can see which firms keep winning work in the areas you are canvassing.

›Do you sell permit data or permit leads?

Neither. Permit records are part of how Roofbird decides what to charge you for and what to show you about a house. We do not sell permit exports, and we do not sell the fresh filings on as leads, because a permit list sold to everyone produces the shared list that self-sourcing is supposed to replace.

›What if my county is not covered?

Tell us which county and we will tell you honestly what we hold for it. Requests are how new jurisdictions get prioritised. Where a city's feed has stopped publishing, the card says so rather than letting silence read as a clean street.

Stop paying to knock roofs that were sold last spring.

10 free credits to try it. No card. The permit check runs on every roof, on every plan, and a roof it rules out never costs you one.

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