While $320 / square may be a bit high for some parts of the country, here in Boston and most of New England, some legit roofers won’t touch a roof for less than $400 per square and going average is $350 for walkable 1 layer tear-off, with new 30-year architectural. Also consider that since we put those “fixed” numbers into calculator, gas vent up $1.50 a gallon to about $4 now (it was about $2.50 a year ago) – this increases the cost of shingles as well as roofer’s costs.

Now $172 / square is just ridiculous – with cost of materials being about $125+ considering shingles, felt, flashing, ridge-cap, caulk, nails and in some cases ice and water and sales tax, that leaves less than $50 for labor, overhead and profit – i’m sorry but that math just does not work out.

Bellow is ONLY my opinion: The problem is that insurance companies / adjuster use exactimate to price a job, and since Ins. Co. are the biggest clients of the company making exactimate, the “real market value” numbers in that program are set to what ins. co. are willing to pay contractors doing insurance work. Therefore it’s a monopoly, and roofers are willful hostages of the situation, because there are always those who will work for free which is essentially the case with that $172 / square number, as well as illegal / unlicensed / uninsured low-ballers giving homeowners those ridiculous numbers.

Homeowners of course will often go for the lowest bid, not realizing or ignoring more than likely outcome that the roof will soon leak, the contractor who installed the roof will not be fixing it, and they will spend hundreds if not thousands to repair the roof / interior damages. But at that point they will not be going for a new roof, because they just put one on – at the same time they will think that all roofers are scammers and dirt-bags. In the end, their roof will cost about the same as the prices generated by our roofing calculator, but with much aggravation …

Unfortunately, this is a systematic problem, and I do not see how it can be resolved without active building code enforcement but the building inspectors – I mean permitting and strict requirements for all insurances and licensing. This alone can reduce the number of low-baller roofers significantly. Also many states don’t even have any insurance / license requirements at all – New Hampshire for example, as it is close to us.

Still, the homeowners will always want lower prices, and many will go for the lowest bid, and there will always be low-ballers willing to work for nearly nothing, and then going out of business.

Any way, there is plenty of such discussions on roofing.com forum, including insurance work, illegal roofers, low-ballers, etc. I’ve never worked with insurance companies, as they will never approve a metal roof in place of asphalt shingles, since a metal roof costs much more than asphalt roof, and I just never wanted to deal with them knowing how the process works.

PS – here is one of the xactimate discussion on roofing.com pointing to post #6 which explains that xactimate maker – Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO) which is owned by Verisk Analyitics (insurance risk specialists) which is owned by a group of insurance companies. So not only ins. co. dictate the pricing in that estimating program – they actually own it through subsidiaries.