Every roofing lead is on a clock, and the clocks run at four different speeds. A hail swath is measured in days. A restoration window is measured in weeks. A roof aging past its local median is measured in years. A block where the first neighbour just re-roofed is somewhere in between. A roofing floor that dials one “roofing leads” list is dialing all four clocks as if they were one, and the reps feel it as a list where half the openers are wrong for the house.
This page is about the four lists, what each is built from, what each row has to carry so the setter’s opener is a fact, and what to suppress before any of it reaches a dialer. It is signal-first on purpose. We do not publish an outbound conversion rate for any of the four, because we do not run the dialers and would be inventing one.
Disclosure: Scout Data is our product; the permit database and the storm footprints the four lists below are built from are ours, and the roofing lists on our call-center menu are these. The clocks run the same whoever builds the file.
The storm clock: days
Hail or wind passes over a set of streets on a known date, and for a short window every homeowner inside the footprint has a reason to take a call they would otherwise decline. The list is the footprint, by street, with the event date and the maximum hail or wind class on every row — not the county, which produces routes full of untouched roofs, and not a contour so old that the floor is the ninth call.
Inside the footprint the rows are not equal, and the ranking is the same one the field crews use: aging roofs first, because a fifteen- year roof under fresh hail is a replacement conversation and a two-year roof is a repair at best; owner-occupied over rentals, because the claim is the owner’s to file; solar roofs as a separate lane, because panels over damaged shingles are a specialist scope. The field motion, from verifying the footprint on the ground through the long tail a month later, is in storm damage leads; the phone list is the same contour with an owner-matched number on it, worked on the streets the crews cannot reach this week and on the no-answers afterward. What the phone list adds that the door does not need: the date on the row, so the floor knows how much of the window is left.
The age clock: years
Where the same home shows two roofing permits, the gap between them is a direct observation of a replacement interval. Across 309,255 such intervals of three years or more in our permit database, the median is 14 years, with quartiles at 7 and 20 — and that national figure hides the number that decides a territory:
| State | Median observed interval |
|---|---|
| Ohio | 8 years |
| Texas | 9 years |
| Colorado | 10 years |
| Michigan | 11 years |
| Minnesota | 12 years |
| California | 12 years |
| Florida | 16 years |
Twice as long in Florida as in Ohio. Hail-belt states replace early because a storm claim funds the roof before the shingles wear out and each storm resets the clock; Florida is a hurricane-code market with more tile and metal on it. So the age list is “last roofing permit past the local median,” held per state, and never “roof older than fifteen years” nationally — that threshold over-targets Florida and under-targets Texas. Two more rules: use the permit date, not the build year, because the median home is 42 years old at permit and on its third roof; and filter on material before applying an asphalt threshold, or the Nevada territory is tile. Every median is a floor — the sample can only contain roofs replaced twice inside a jurisdiction’s coverage window — and the derivation is in roof replacement statistics, with the warranty, material and build-year answers beside it in when do roofs need replacing.
The street clock: months
The quietest of the four and the one most floors do not build. A subdivision built across three years got its roofs in the same three years, and the block comes due as a block. The first roofing permit on that street is the signal that the rest are coming, and it is a fact the setter can say out loud: “there’s been roofing work on your street this spring — the last permit we can see on your place is from [year], is that right?” The list is homes on a block with a recent roofing permit within a few doors, in a build-year band tight enough that the roofs are the same age, with their own last permit past the local threshold. A quarter of roofing permits go to homes under 25 years old; this is where they cluster.
The insurance clock: weeks
After an event, the homeowner is inside a window — to report a claim, to get an inspection, to make a decision about a roof that has an adjuster’s finding attached. The list is the storm list a few weeks on, and what changes is the timing on the row: how long since the event, and therefore where in the window the household is. Deadlines vary by policy and by state, and a setter never discusses the claim, the deductible or what the insurer will pay — that boundary is the first design decision in the roofing cold call script and the operational side of what happens once a claim is open is in insurance restoration sales process. What the file contributes is the date, so the floor works the households whose window is still open before the ones whose window has closed.
What the roofing row has to carry
| Field | Which clock | What the setter does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Footprint date, hail or wind class | Storm, insurance | The opener: “your block was inside the footprint on the [date]” |
| Last roofing permit date | Age, street | “The last permit we can see is from [year] — is that right?” |
| Roof material | Age | Decides whether an asphalt threshold applies at all |
| Build year | Street | Finds the blocks where roofs are the same age |
| Owner-occupied | All four | Renters are logged as their own outcome, not dialed |
| Sale date | Age | A roof sells before a listing and after a purchase |
| Panels on roof | Storm | Routes the home to the detach-and-reset lane |
Plus the columns every dialer file carries — a phone matched by name to the owner on title, line type, timezone from the ZIP, the registry scrub date — which are the spec in homeowner phone lists for call centers.
Suppress before the dialer
- Recent roofing permits. In a hail market the last permit is often a storm date, and a home that had a claim-funded replacement three years ago is a stop, not a lead — on every one of the four lists.
- Renters. A tenant cannot authorise a roof or file a claim, and an address-matched storm file will hand the floor a steady stream of them. Owner-occupied only, and “renter” as its own disposition so a high share is charged to the file rather than the script.
- Your own lists. Customers, opt-outs, complaints, and the households already dialed off the last footprint. A storm week is precisely when suppression routines fail, and some states tighten solicitation rules after a declared disaster — DNC scrubbing for roofing and HVAC is the pre-campaign check.
- The registry, scrubbed after the phones exist, with the date on the file.
Signal first, on the phone
Every row above exists so the setter can open with something true and checkable about this house, ask whether it is right, and sell twenty minutes of an inspector’s time. The lines that do that — the storm call, the aging-roof call, the boundary the phone never crosses — are in the roofing cold call script; that page also covers how to tell a script problem from a list problem, which on a roofing floor is usually a footprint that is too old or a file that reaches renters. Judge the lists the way it judges the script: held inspections per right-party conversation, per list, with the four lists stamped separately at import so the storm clock is never averaged with the age clock.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best leads for a roofing call center?
Homes with a reason to take the call, and there are four: the street sat inside a hail or wind footprint on a known date; the last roofing permit on the home is past the local replacement median; a neighbour on the same block just pulled a roofing permit; or the homeowner is inside a restoration window with a decision to make. Each is a different list with a different shelf life, and the storm list goes stale in days.
How old should a roof be before a roofing call center dials it?
Past the local median, not a national one. The observed interval between consecutive roofing permits on the same home has a national median of 14 years, but it runs 8 in Ohio, 9 in Texas and 16 in Florida. Ten years since the last permit is overdue in the hail belt and early in a hurricane-code market. Hold the threshold per state, and use the permit date rather than the build year — the median home is 42 years old when a roofing permit is pulled and is on its third roof.
How fast does a storm lead list go stale?
Days. Every roofer within driving distance is working the same footprint, and a list dialed three weeks after the event is a list where the setter is the ninth call. The storm file has to carry the event date and the hail or wind class per street so the floor can work the freshest footprint first, and it has to be re-run against roof age and ownership rather than dialed as a flat list.
What should a roofing lead list include besides the phone number?
The date of the last roofing permit on the home, the footprint date and hail or wind class if the street was hit, roof material where the assessor records it, build year, owner-occupied status and the sale date. The phone gets the connect; those fields are what the setter opens with, and a file without them is a generic homeowner list with a roofing script taped to it.