Why Financing Hail Damage Roofs Could Ruin Your Customer

There are ethical concerns with financing storm damage roof replacements that no one is talking about, especially as the trend of treating these hail, wind, or hurricane damage roofs like retail. By the way, there's a reason to do it, and I know why. Insurance carriers are harder to work with than ever before, and homeowners' out-of-pocket expenses are increasing. So there's a time and a place. But sadly, roofing sales reps and companies are encouraging homeowners to pursue financing options in my opinion, sometimes for the wrong reason, because that just means that the company gets paid faster, that it can move on to the next one. What this is doing is leaving homeowners vulnerably exposed to very expensive consequences, consequences that they may never have signed up for if they knew what could happen. And that's why I wanted to make this video, not because I don't think it's right to approach storm damage roofs by way of the retail path, but just to help you communicate it in the best way. I think if you're tuning into this channel, you've seen in the past— and if you're new, by the way, my name is Adam Bensman. Welcome. I do everything I can to teach people how to build profitable, future-proof companies the right way. And that's an important distinction. The right way means in a way that benefits the homeowner. Homeowner first. And again, we're all in business to make money. And if you don't think you are, that's just not how it works. You got to make money to stay in business and you got to do it the right way. So let's get right into today's video. I am pulling a lot of resources from the 2025 to 2028 Roofing Market Report that I published recently. It's a 17-page report. You can get a copy of this in the link in the description. It's 100% free. There's no catch. But in this report, you may have seen other videos I've done outlining what I call the 3 buckets of a future-proof company. It's culture, convenience, and cost-effective. Now you might be seeing like, Adam, you've done multiple videos on cost-effective solutions and presenting financing. And yes, I have. And I want to add in this very important distinction that I haven't shared in previous videos. So I want to lay some groundwork first to further understand these ethical consequences and then share with you how you can change your pitch and how it might lead to people spending 2 to 3 times as much money. So let's start at the top. Now, of course, if you are approaching storm damage roofs in a retail fashion, being financing their out-of-pocket expenses, you're in an area that likely gets hit over and over and over again. That's where the highest deductibles are. So for this example, I'll use Dallas, Texas. Let's say a homeowner has an $8,000 out-of-pocket expense towards a roof. And I've heard of numbers even higher. Sometimes roofs aren't even insured because they're ACV or the value of the roof is less than their— excuse me, is, yeah, less than their deductible. In other words, they're going to pay out of pocket for it. So let's say, for example, it's an $8,000 out-of-pocket expense and you, meaning the salesperson or the company owner, whoever says, all right, we're just going to finance that roof for the homeowner. Well, the homeowner then finances the roof over 10 years and they have an $8,000 deductible and maybe they, you know, again, I know it's not up to you. To figure out how they work it, whether they use all of the insurance proceeds and pay it off, or maybe they're pocketing that money and financing the roof. All of this is possible, but it's up to us to communicate to the homeowner what the consequences are. So let's say they finance the $8,000. Now, in 3 years, there's another hailstorm. Shocker. It's going to happen. Maybe it's not 3 years, but it's 5. If you're in Dallas or you're in a hail-prone area, pretty much anywhere in Texas, if you're in Florida, If you're in Colorado, if you're in Minneapolis or Minnesota, if you're in Kansas or Oklahoma, these are areas that get hit frequently. Now, that homeowner, let's say, is only 2 or 3 years into paying off that loan. They get another hailstorm. Now what? They are carrying this loan and they need a new roof. This is the ethical problem that I have with financing storm damage roofs. I'm going to talk about the fix in just a minute. But something like this happened in the solar industry. I don't know if you saw when the solar industry sort of imploded, there was a tremendous media surge of really upset homeowners who felt misled on their financing offers because solar is essentially a financing game. You know, they say know the business you're in. You're not in the solar business, you're in the financing business. How can I take this electric bill and replace it with this financing offer that's at or less than the current bill. That was the name of the game in solar. It's why it made sense and why there was the solar boom. But the fine print on a solar loan, as an example, said, here's your monthly payment amount. Fine print: assuming you take the tax credit, the money you would have paid in taxes, and you write a check and apply it towards the loan balance. But if you don't do that, then the payment is going to go up quite a bit. Now, a lot of people were never informed of those consequences. They didn't read the fine print. They just trusted the person in front of them talking to them. And a lot of these people felt like they got a bait and switch. And we don't want that to happen to the roofing industry at large. We have a bad enough reputation as it is. It's hard enough for us to earn trust. We don't need more of this. So the consequence in what I see is the ethical problem is the lack of education to a homeowner on what could happen in the future and how changing what they do now will actually save them money down the road. So let's take a look at this for a minute. When you thumb through the report and I'm just going to go to this next page and we look at the buying patterns of what homeowners want, we're going to see a few things. Homeowners are staying in their house longer than ever before. Excuse me, I shouldn't say longer than ever before. That's not true. Longer than in recent history. Because the 2020 era days of these really low interest rates are gone. We're seeing that the real estate market is tanking. We are seeing that if someone moves, they have to spend twice as much on a new house than they're in now for their mortgage, even if it's the same price. We're also seeing— and you'll see this as you thumb through the report— and by the way, again, there's a link in the description, or if you go to RoofMarketReport.com, you can get a free copy. And when you pop over to the section on insurance claims, Section 6, you'll see that insurance coverage is reducing, which means homeowners' out-of-pocket expenses are increasing. So to that homeowner whose roof you replace and encourage them to finance and they get a claim in 3 or 5 years, the cost of roofing goes up and their coverage may go down, which means they're going to owe even more on the next roof replacement. So what do we do instead? What we do instead is we act as an advisor, almost like a risk advisor, to help a homeowner make the right decision. Now, there's many options, and I'm just going to continue along with the examples in Texas for hail-prone areas and recommend to the homeowner to choose an impact-resistant shingle, whether it's a Class 4 shingle, maybe it's standing seam or stone-coated steel. Or one of these new innovative products like F-Wave— by the way, I'm not affiliated with F-Wave. I haven't talked to anyone over there. I just know some of our members in our story are using their products. These products are— could be a game changer for the homeowner. Now, I am hesitant to cite the exact data that I've heard and been told because I haven't seen the source myself. But what I can share with you is from what I've— I've been hearing anecdotally from manufacturers in conversation is that these impact-resistant shingles could reduce a claim by a very, very, very, very significant amount, which means the homeowner, like, the chances of them financing the roof and getting a new one gets cut and cut and cut to just a little small risk, a really minor risk. So when you're sitting in the home with your homeowner who's about to finance a roof, and maybe they're going to do a 5-year loan or a 10-year loan. What about instead being the hero to them, spending the extra time and saying, Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner, I recognize that this is an expense you didn't plan for and you're about to invest $8,000 on this roof system. And I just want you to be prepared so you can make the best decision that's best for you. And it's important that we understand both the pros and the cons of this decision. Now, the pros is we can get you started with this incredible financing offer, very low monthly payment, and you're going to be— you're going to be set. But the cons is that if we replace a roof that got damaged with another roof that could get damaged, this means you might be in a similar situation in 3, 5, 7 years from now when you're still, you know, paying off the last loan. So many of the homeowners that we work with use this opportunity to cut their risks as low as humanly possible. And in that, they make a very conscious decision at this time to try to get the last roof they'll ever need, a roof that could save them on their insurance premiums because they're impact resistant, a roof that's going to reduce the chance of it getting damaged in a future claim by a very, very, very significant amount, and a roof that's going to look amazing. And that is where these premium roofing systems come into place. And this, by the way, is where you present your Class 4 standing seam or stone-coated steel. And if you're not already offering them, you'll notice under the homeowner trends in Section 2 that homeowners are spending even more money on roofing systems. Now, you'll actually look at the data in the amount of money people are spending on roofing is here, but the number of roofs is actually less. And this is the first time this has happened in a very, very long time. There's an opportunity for you to present these, these roofing systems. And what this allows the homeowner to do is to make an informed and educated decision to say, okay, now I know all the risks and it wipes your hands clean. If they say, you know what, that roofing system is too expensive, we can't afford it, even if you could stretch the loan terms out because the risk goes down of that getting damaged in the future, at least you did your part in giving them the information they needed to, to make a decision that's best for them without being caught on their heels or blindsided. Or feeling like they got a bait and switch. Now, if you want to learn how to present metal roofing or premium roofing in the home against asphalt shingles, then jump into this very next video because I'll show you the exact pitch that you can use.