You have your Baton Rouge Louisiana home for sale and the home inspector comes back with his report saying you have hail damage to your roof, what do you you do next? The biggest problem is time or more to the point the lack of it, get professional advice as fast as you can.

I have written a couple articles on roof damage and the possibility of your insurance company denying your hail damage claim. I have a client in Baton Rouge that has had her house on the market for quite some time and finally got a contract. One of the first things to happen in a housing transaction is a home inspection. We have been trying to get this client a new roof for well over a month and just as I feared would eventually happen this homeowner had her house go through the home inspection process and the inspector came back with a negative report. The negative report came from the roof and more particular it was called hail damage, again just as I feared. 

If this has happened to you, you are certainly not alone. What are your options at this stage of the game? If your house is on the open market for sale you will have to act quickly or this situation will eat your wallet alive. One of the first things you need to do is call a professional roofing contractor to inspect your homes roof. Tell the roofing company that you think you might have hail damage and let them fill out a full report with pictures so you have something to contradict the home inspectors report in case the roofing contractor comes back and says you do not have hail damage on your house. Hail damage to a homes roof can be missed diagnosed very easily, many types of damage can be called hail to the untrained eye. A few of the most common types of damage that are considered hail by an unqualified observer are shingle blistering, manufactures defect and in many cases normal wear and tear. 

If your Baton Rouge, LA house was written up to have hail damage and now you find the buyer wanting the cost of a new roof off the sales price as my client did, have your counter plan in mind and implement it immediately. The first thing to do is take the roofing contractors report to your real estate Broker and let them go through it thoroughly. Have your Broker contact the buyers real estate Broker and start negotiating  the price with the professional roofers report on your side. The only way to counter a professional home inspector is to have your own professional that is an expert in Louisiana roofing to say the homes roof is in good order.

If you have your Baton Rouge house listed for sale and it has been declared to have hail damage get your own professional roofing expert in Louisiana to furnish you with a report that it does not have hail damage and let the negotiations begin, do your best to only take off the depreciated value of your homes roof and that is about the best you can hope for.