Mother Nature is turning out to be an effective economic stimulus for local businesses reliant on stormy weather for work. Roofs along the Front Range that have been pelted with hail or dissected by tornadoes from June and July storms are creating a booming business for the roofing industry.
Lawn signs displaying the name and telephone numbers of roofing companies are so prevalent in some areas that it almost appears to be an election year.
They are a real indicator of how roofing companies are hiring more crews and raking in the revenues as they move through one area to the next keeping up with demand for repairs and replacements.
In Denver, the number of city inspections of roofing work — roofing-permit totals are unavailable — has doubled in just the past three weeks, city building officials said.
Chuck Cooper, president of Englewood-based Kape Roofing and Gutters Inc., said he has had so many inquiries for roofing work that he’s planning to increase his workforce to 20 salespeople and 10 crews. Normally he employs an average of five salespeople and three crews.
“It’s a great thing, and I think it puts a lot of money into the economy,” Cooper said. “We’re ahead of where we were last year, and I expect to do a lot more (jobs) than we did last year.”
The average cost of a roofing job ranges from $5,000 to $30,000, depending on the project, he said.
Before June’s hailstorms hit, crews at Professional Roofing Inc. in Arvada were taking on about 10 jobs weekly.
Now, according to company manager Jessica Anderson, they’re looking at up to 40.
“We’re keeping people busy,” she said. “We’ve been able to create a lot of jobs with this.”
Most of the work is in Aurora, Parker, Lakewood, Wheat Ridge and Golden, she said.
Storm damage is big business in Colorado, where about $160 million in damages to personal property resulted from June storms, said Carole Walker, executive director of Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.
In June’s second week, a severe hailstorm and tornado teamed up to become the fifth-worst storm in Colorado history, and tens of millions of dollars in damages are still expected to be logged from the July 20-21 torrent that produced golf-ball-sized hail.
The last time the Front Range saw this kind of storm damage was in 2004, when hail accounted for more than $140 million in damages, Walker said.
“This summer has been more reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s, where we saw three to five damaging storms in a season,” she said.
And in the tempests’ wake come the shady operators who look to cash in on the damage and prey on unsuspecting homeowners.
Fourteen complaints about roofing contractors were filed in June — a 64 percent increase over June 2008 — according to Megan Miller at the Better Business Bureau of Denver.
“And we expect it to get worse,” she said.
A common scam is for salespeople to tell a homeowner that they represent a reputable company when they don’t, Miller said.
The BBB provides company-reliability reports for consumers to review. In June, roofing companies were the subject of 10,352 such reports — 85 percent of the total provided and five times more than the same period last year.
Sara Castellanos: 303-954-1381 or scastellanos@denverpost.com
Avoid further damage from shady people
Big storms can bring big problems for homeowners not on the alert for shady contractors intent on taking their money. To protect yourself:
• Photograph the damage
• Ask your insurer to assess the damage before you’ve talked to a contractor.
• Don’t give insurance information to a contractor and refuse any offer to file a claim on your behalf.
• Keep receipts on temporary emergency repairs in case you’re covered by insurance.
• Can’t see damage? Dented outdoor grills and stripped foliage are usually good indicators your roof might need work.
• Insist on a roofing permit and ask to see it.
• Get several bids. Don’t sign a contract with the first company you come across.
• Verify and double-check everything: name, company, employment, state license, references.
Sources: Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies Division of Insurance, Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, Denver-Boulder Better Business Bureau
