Roof Inspection Checklist: What a Roofer Actually Checks

This is the roof inspection checklist we actually work from on a Katy or Houston house, written out so you can hold a contractor to it. Print it, bring it outside, or just read it before someone climbs your ladder. A homeowner who knows what the list contains is much harder to sell a roof they do not need — and much harder to talk out of one they do.

Worth saying at the top: you can do the first section yourself. The rest of it needs someone on the roof and in the attic, and that is not a DIY job in this climate.

Section 1: From the ground

Everything here is visible from a standing position with a decent pair of binoculars. Walk the full perimeter of the house slowly.

• Shingle line. Sight along each roof plane. The rows should read as straight lines. Waves, dips or a sagging ridge point at decking or framing, not shingles.
• Missing, curled or cupped shingles. Curling at the edges is heat and age. A shingle lifted at the bottom edge but still attached is usually a broken sealant strip from wind.
• Granules in the gutters and at downspout outlets. A light scatter is normal on a new roof as loose granules wash off. A gritty layer on an older roof is the surface wearing through.
• Dented soft metals. Gutter aprons, downspouts, vent caps, the AC condenser fins. These date a hail event when the shingles are ambiguous.
• Flashing at every wall junction. Look where the roof meets a vertical wall, chimney or dormer. Rust, gaps, or a visible bead of caulk doing structural work are all findings.
• Fascia, soffit and drip edge. Rot, peeling paint, blocked soffit vents, missing drip edge along the eave.

Section 2: On the roof

This is where a real roof inspection checklist separates from a drive-by. The inspector should be physically on the surface unless pitch or condition makes that genuinely unsafe.

• Underfoot feel. Soft or spongy areas mean the decking below has taken on moisture. This is felt, never seen.
• Hail bruising. Pressed with a thumb, a hail strike feels like a bruise on fruit — the mat underneath is fractured even where the surface looks intact.
• Test squares. A marked ten-by-ten area on each slope with the hits counted, which is the format an insurance adjuster is trained to read.
• Sealant strip integrity. Tabs should resist a gentle lift. Ones that come up with no effort have lost their bond and will be the first to blow off.
• Valleys. The highest-volume water path on any roof and a common failure point. Open valleys need clean metal; closed valleys need intact shingle weave.
• Nail pops. Nail heads pushing up through the shingle above. Each one is a future pinhole leak.
• Ridge and hip caps. Cracked, lifted or improperly nailed caps, and whether ridge vent is present and actually open.

Section 3: Penetrations

Most leaks a homeowner calls a “roof leak” are not failures of the roof field at all. They are failures where something comes through it. Every penetration gets its own line on the checklist.

• Pipe boots. The rubber collar around plumbing vents. In Texas UV these crack and split well before the shingles wear out, and they are the single most common leak source we find.
• Chimney flashing and counter-flashing. Including whether the counter-flashing is let into the mortar joint or just caulked to the face.
• Skylights. Frame condition, seal, and the flashing kit around them.
• Exhaust and turbine vents. Flashing, fasteners, and whether anything is rattling loose.
• Satellite dish and solar mounts. Anything bolted through the deck, and whether it was flashed or just sealed.

Section 4: In the attic

Skipping the attic is the most common way an inspection goes wrong, because the underside tells you what the top surface is hiding.

• Daylight through the deck. Any pinhole of light is a hole.
• Staining on the decking or rafters. Note whether stains are dry or damp, and whether they sit under a known penetration.
• Wet, matted or displaced insulation. Often the first sign of a slow leak.
• Rusted nail tips. Condensation rather than a leak, which means a ventilation problem.
• Intake and exhaust airflow. Blocked soffits are extremely common and quietly shorten shingle life.
• Deck deflection between rafters. Sagging sheathing that has been wet long enough to lose strength.

Section 5: The documentation

The last item on the roof inspection checklist is the part most homeowners forget to ask for, and it is the one with the most money attached.

• Dated photographs of every finding, with a scale reference in the frame
• A written summary that says what was found and where
• A clear statement of what is urgent, what can wait, and what is simply age
• Your copy, in writing, whether or not you hire the company

If a contractor hands you a one-page price and no photographs, you did not receive an inspection. You received a quote.

What this checklist will not do

It will not turn you into a roofer, and it will not make a marginal roof a clear call. Plenty of roofs come back with a few small findings and no obvious verdict, and honest judgment about whether to repair, monitor or start budgeting is the part that takes experience.

It also will not settle an insurance claim. It produces evidence. Your carrier’s adjuster makes the decision, and the two do not always agree — which is exactly why the documentation section matters.

For the standards side of this, InterNACHI publishes its home inspection standards of practice, which sets out what a general home inspector is and is not required to do on a roof. It is a useful benchmark, and it is worth knowing that a general home inspection covers considerably less roof than a dedicated roofing inspection does. If storm damage is the reason you are reading this, the Texas Department of Insurance guidance on what to do after hail or windstorm damage is the neutral starting point.

Three findings homeowners consistently misread

Running the roof inspection checklist yourself is useful right up until you find something. These three get misjudged more than anything else on the list.

Dark streaks are usually not damage. The black staining that runs down north-facing slopes in this humidity is almost always gloeocapsa magma, an algae. It is cosmetic. It does not shorten the life of the shingle in any meaningful way, and it is not a reason to replace a roof. Plenty of homeowners have been sold a roof over it. The fix, if it bothers you, is algae-resistant shingles at the next replacement, not a replacement now.

A few granules in the gutter are not a failing roof. New roofs shed loose granules for the first year or two. What matters is the ratio — a handful after a storm is normal, a packed sediment layer on a fifteen-year-old roof is the surface giving out. Age is the variable that tells you which one you are looking at.

One ceiling stain is not one leak. Water travels along rafters and decking before it drops, so the wet spot on your ceiling is frequently several feet from where the water actually came in. This is the single biggest reason a DIY diagnosis goes wrong: the repair gets aimed at the stain instead of the entry point, and the leak comes back with the next hard rain.

How often to run through it

Once a year, and again after any major storm. We lay out the full schedule, including how it tightens as a roof ages, in our guide to the annual roof inspection Katy homes need. If a storm is what prompted this, the post-storm rules are stricter and time-bound — those are in our storm damage roof inspection guide. And if you want to understand why a bruise you cannot see matters so much, we took an asphalt shingle apart layer by layer in what is actually under your shingles.

We run this roof inspection checklist on every house we look at in Katy, Cypress, Fulshear and the greater Houston area, and you get the photo report either way. Call (281) 769-4282 whenever it suits you.