Solution · From address to homeowner

The address is half a lead. Here is the other half.

Most roofing prospecting tools hand you a list of properties and stop. You still have to work out who lives there, find a number that connects, and check that calling it will not cost you a TCPA problem. Skip tracing with DNC screening closes that gap: the scored roof and the homeowner behind it, in one record.

Skip tracing is the step between a property and a person. You have an address that looks like a job. Turning it into a conversation means resolving the current owner, their phone numbers, an email and a mailing address, and knowing whether they actually live there or rent it out.

Roofers have historically bought this separately, from tools built for real estate investors, and then stitched the two lists together by hand. That works, but it means two subscriptions, two exports and a spreadsheet join, and the contact data has no idea which roofs were worth pursuing in the first place.

The DNC part is not optional detail. Federal telemarketing rules apply to cold calls to residential numbers, and penalties per violation are large enough that one careless calling session can undo a quarter of prospecting margin. Any contact data you use for outbound calling should arrive already scrubbed against the National Do Not Call registry, not scrubbed by you afterwards.

How roofing skip tracing works in Roofbird

1
Score the area first, trace second
Scan your service area so every roof carries a 0-100 condition and fit score. This ordering matters: skip tracing is priced per lookup everywhere, so you want to resolve owners for roofs worth pursuing rather than for a whole zip.
2
Pick the leads worth a conversation
Work down the ranked list and choose which properties to unlock. You are not obliged to trace everything, and the smart-keep filter means you are not spending quota on roofs that were already replaced.
3
Unlock the owner record
One click returns the owner's name, phone numbers, email address, mailing address, and whether the property is owner-occupied or absentee. Alongside it sits the property record: estimated value, year built, last sale, beds and baths, square footage, tax and lender.
4
Every phone number arrives DNC-scrubbed
Numbers are checked against the National Do Not Call registry before they reach you. Mailing address and email are unaffected by DNC rules, so direct mail and email remain available even where a phone number is restricted.
5
Choose the channel the record supports
Owner-occupied and reachable by phone becomes a call. Owner-occupied with a restricted number becomes a door-knock or a mailer with the owner's name on it. Absentee becomes a mail or email approach, because knocking reaches a tenant who cannot authorise anything.
6
Pay only for lookups that find something
A lookup that returns no contact does not consume a credit. Plans include a monthly unlock allowance, 50 on Hunter and 150 on Hunter Pro, with additional unlocks at $1 each.

Why DNC screening belongs in the tool, not in your process

The National Do Not Call registry governs telemarketing calls to residential numbers, and roofing prospecting calls are telemarketing regardless of how consultative they feel. Per-violation penalties are substantial, and the exposure scales with the size of your calling list, which is exactly the thing prospecting software is designed to grow. The common failure is not ignorance, it is sequencing. A shop buys a contact list, imports it, and intends to scrub before calling. Then a rep works the list on a slow afternoon and nobody checks. Scrubbing at the point the data is delivered removes the opportunity for that mistake. It is worth being precise about scope. DNC restricts cold telemarketing calls. It does not restrict direct mail, it does not restrict email, and it does not apply where you have an existing business relationship. So a restricted number does not mean an unreachable homeowner, it means a different channel. That is why the mailing address matters as much as the phone.

Owner-occupied versus absentee changes the whole approach

This single field decides how a lead should be worked, and it is the one most often missing from address-only lists. An owner-occupied property means the decision-maker is behind the door. Knocking works, the homeowner can walk out and look at the damage with you, and the inspection can often happen on the spot. An absentee owner does not live there. Knocking reaches a tenant who cannot approve a replacement, so the door-knock is a wasted trip no matter how good the roof score is. These owners are reached by phone or mail, and they behave differently once reached: replacement decisions tend to come faster because the property is an asset rather than a home, and price negotiation tends to be harder for the same reason. Sorting your list by this field before you route anybody is one of the cheapest improvements available to a canvassing program.

What skip-traced data can and cannot tell you

Skip tracing resolves identity and contact information. It does not tell you intent, and no vendor's data does, whatever the marketing says. Contact data also decays. People move, change numbers and drop landlines, and any records source will contain some proportion of numbers that no longer reach the person named. This is true across the industry rather than specific to any one tool, and it is the reason a multi-channel record beats a single phone number: when a number fails, the mailing address still works. Treat a traced record as several ways to start one conversation, not as a guarantee that the conversation will happen. The roof score tells you the property is worth the attempt. The traced record tells you which attempts are available to you.

Buying prospecting and skip tracing as one thing

The alternative most shops arrive from is two subscriptions: a property or lead source, plus an investor-focused skip tracing tool, joined by hand in a spreadsheet. That stack works and plenty of shops run it. Its costs are the obvious ones, two bills and an export-import loop, plus a subtler one: the contact tool has no idea which roofs mattered, so it is easy to spend lookups indiscriminately and end up paying to trace properties that never deserved a knock. Buying them together mainly buys sequencing. Score first, trace the shortlist, call or knock or mail according to what the record supports. The saving is less about the per-lookup price than about not tracing the wrong properties in the first place.

FAQ

›Is there roofing prospecting software with skip tracing and DNC screening?

Yes. Roofbird scores every roof in a drawn service area from satellite and Street View imagery, then unlocks the homeowner behind any lead you choose: name, phone numbers, email, mailing address and owner-occupied versus absentee status. Every phone number is scrubbed against the National Do Not Call registry before it reaches you, and a lookup that finds no contact does not consume a credit.

›How do roofers get a homeowner's phone number from an address?

Through skip tracing, which resolves the current owner of a property and returns their contact details. The important part for a roofer is what comes with it: whether the owner actually lives there, and whether the phone number is safe to call. An address-only list leaves both questions unanswered.

›Is calling homeowners from a prospecting list legal?

Cold calls to residential numbers are telemarketing and fall under Do Not Call rules, so the numbers you call should be scrubbed against the National DNC registry first. Direct mail and email are not restricted the same way, and the rules do not apply where you already have a business relationship. This is general information rather than legal advice, and per-violation penalties are high enough to be worth a conversation with your own counsel.

›What does an unlock actually include?

Owner name, phone numbers with DNC scrubbing applied, email address, mailing address, and owner-occupied or absentee status, plus the property record: estimated value, year built, last sale, beds and baths, square footage, tax and lender.

›How much does skip tracing cost?

It is included rather than billed separately. The free trial includes 25 leads and 10 unlocks with no card. Hunter at $199/mo includes 500 leads and 50 unlocks per month, Hunter Pro at $499/mo includes 2,000 leads and 150 unlocks. Additional unlocks beyond the allowance are $1 each, and lookups that return nothing are not charged.

›What happens if the homeowner is on the Do Not Call list?

You still get the lead and the rest of the record. The restriction applies to cold calling, so the approach shifts to a door-knock, a mailer addressed to the owner by name, or email. Knowing this before a rep dials is the point of screening at the source.

›Can I skip trace a property that Roofbird has not scored?

The unlock is attached to leads inside a scan, so the workflow is to scan your service area first and then unlock the properties worth pursuing. In practice this ordering saves money, because tracing is priced per lookup and scoring first stops you spending lookups on roofs that were not candidates.

Get the roof, the owner and the property record together.

25 free leads and 10 homeowner unlocks to try it. No card, and a lookup that finds nothing never costs a credit.

Get started free →