Georgia
Supplements written for Georgia roofs, north metro to the coast
Georgia claims are won and lost on two arguments more than any others. Drip edge, and whether a code upgrade is required or merely preferred. Everything else on the file sits on top of those two, from a hail damaged roofline in Cherokee County to a wind assembly three blocks off the Savannah River.
By Kyle Hamrick, Founder
Georgia is among the states where the adjuster credential behind this desk is active, and it is also where a long stretch of our file history sits. Atlanta shops and roofers across northeast Georgia have kept work moving to us for years running, which is why the carrier reads on those two markets came out of submitted files instead of a search bar. Same desk adjusters. Same reinspection calls. Same storms your crews were standing on.
The Estimate Company is run by a licensed independent insurance adjuster, with claims experience across many states, writing for contractors nationwide. What we bring to a Georgia file is code mechanism, carrier behavior, and claim pattern, confirmed for the address rather than assumed from a statewide rule.
Licensed independent adjuster in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Alabama, writing for contractors nationwide. More about Kyle.
What actually damages roofs in Georgia, and what it does to the estimate
The north metro corridor: Cumming, Alpharetta, Canton, Kennesaw, Marietta
This is the busiest hail and severe thunderstorm corridor in the state. Supercells track east and northeast across Cobb, Cherokee, Forsyth, Paulding, and Bartow counties through spring and early summer, and the housing stock they hit is a supplement writer's whole caseload: two story elevations, stacked gables, deep valleys, sunrooms and screen porches on the back, and pitches steep enough that nobody walks them casually.
Every one of those features costs crew hours, and an estimate generated from an aerial report and a squares total prices none of them. The steep and high charges vanish. Four valleys get written as one valley. The screen room disappears from the scope entirely, on the apparent theory that a crew will shingle straight over the top of it.
The inspection itself is the other leak. By the time an adjuster is on the ladder, the spatter marks on the soft metals have already washed off, and the gutter apron and vent caps hold the evidence long after the field shingles stop showing it. Let an inspector count bruises inside one test square and he will pick the wrong slope as the damaged one. Undoing that later requires a file assembled to the standard the carrier is held to. The roof claim inspection checklist walks that photo sequence in order so the proof is on the card before anybody climbs up to inspect. After a tear off, none of it can be produced again.
Northeast Georgia and the mountains: Gainesville, Dahlonega, Blue Ridge
Hall, Lumpkin, White, Dawson, and Fannin counties are a wind market before they are a hail market. a home built along a ridgeline catches uplift from air that has nothing to slow it down, and tropical systems reach this far inland still moving hard enough to crease shingles across an entire subdivision without tearing one off. A creased tab is the loss carriers underpay most, because the photograph shows an intact shingle and the failure does not arrive until the next storm gets under it.
Terrain shows up in the price too. Take a lot hanging off a switchback above Dahlonega: the dumpster ends up parked well down the grade and the bundles get carried the rest of the way by hand. Those hours are countable, and nothing in an aerial measurement reflects them. The second home stock around Lake Lanier and Blue Ridge then stacks architectural shingle, standing seam accents, and complicated roof to wall transitions onto one structure, which puts three separate flashing arguments in a single file.
Savannah, the coast, and the fall line: Augusta, Macon, Columbus
Chatham, Bryan, Liberty, McIntosh, Glynn, and Camden counties carry higher design wind speeds, and four things move as a result: how many fasteners go in each shingle, which underlayment is acceptable, whether the components hold product approval, and what metal survives salt air. Matthew made that concrete around Savannah and Tybee, and Irma drove wind damage deep inland from a landfall that never touched this state. Put a St. Simons roof next to a Kennesaw roof and they are two different assemblies. Your price list defaults describe the Kennesaw one.
The fall line cities get hit a different way. Helene showed Augusta what happens to a city built under a tree canopy: the roof does not fail from uplift, it fails because a pine came through it, and the roof scope ends up buried inside a tree removal claim. Macon, Warner Robins, and Columbus sit where inland severe weather and tropical remnants overlap, so files arrive carrying two perils at once and get filed under whichever one is cheaper to pay. Southwest Georgia keeps its own memory of this, and anybody working Albany or Bainbridge can tell you what Michael left behind on its way through.
Every region named above is handled on the footing this whole page runs on. What the adopted code compels, how those carriers behave once the file is open, and what the claim pattern looks like in that corridor. Those three inputs are what a supplement gets assembled from.
Three code arguments that move Georgia files
Drip edge, the argument you will make on almost every file
The residential provisions Georgia adopts call for drip edge at eaves and rakes on an asphalt shingle roof. That makes it part of the assembly the same way underlayment is, and it is still the line most likely to be missing when a Georgia carrier estimate reaches this desk. The cause is not malice, it is the template. A national price list build does not put drip edge in by default, so the line exists only if a human writes it and backs it with a citation. Verify with local building dept Editions and local amendments are not uniform statewide, so pull the requirement from the building department covering that address instead of reciting a section number you memorized on a different job.
Code upgrade exclusions, and the order the argument has to be made in
Code upgrade denials in Georgia almost all trace to one sequencing error. The supplement demands payment for the upgrade before it has proven the upgrade is compelled. Put that in front of an adjuster with no requirement attached and the line reads as the homeowner asking for a nicer roof, which the policy language excludes on sight. Prove the adopted code for that address forces the work first. Only then reach for the ordinance or law coverage, which is normally capped at a share of the dwelling limit instead of being open ended. Run those two steps in that order and the line survives. Run them backward and it does not.
Coastal Georgia is a wind assembly, and it is not called HVHZ
HVHZ belongs to Florida. It covers two counties down there, Miami-Dade and Broward, and nothing in Georgia sits inside it. Use that term on a Georgia file and the adjuster gets to dismiss your entire code argument on a terminology error without touching the merits. The correct framing is elevated design wind speeds for those coastal counties, and everything that follows from them: the fastening pattern, the underlayment, product approval on the components, and corrosion resistant metal. The recovery ends up in the same place. The words have to be right to get there.
The carriers writing Georgia, and the deductible structure that changes the math
State Farm, Allstate, Travelers, Nationwide, Auto-Owners, and Georgia Farm Bureau carry most of the residential book, with Progressive and the nonstandard writers filling in underneath them. USAA density tracks the bases, so in this state that is Fort Moore outside Columbus, Fort Stewart and Hunter, Robins Air Force Base near Warner Robins, and Kings Bay down on the coast. Every one of those companies has a settled pattern of what it will approve without pushback, and the pattern holds well enough that the supplement can be shaped around it before anything gets submitted.
Two structural details deserve attention before you write anything. Start with the Georgia Underwriting Association, the residual market that picks up property the standard carriers turn down. Association files move on a clock of their own and go to a reviewer bench of their own, and a scope written against one usually comes in tighter than anything else on the block. Then look at the deductible. Through the north metro hail corridor a percentage wind and hail deductible is routine, and along the coast a separate hurricane deductible is routine, so two neighbors with identical roofs can end up with wildly different net checks. The roof still needs what the roof needs. What shifts is how much friction the homeowner has left, which is why the scope cannot be wrong on the first pass.
Let a named storm come ashore anywhere in the region and the files route to catastrophe crews flown in from other states, working against a daily file quota. Volume closed per day is the metric they answer to. Nobody is cutting corners on purpose; there is simply more work than there are hours, and the result is thin scope arriving in bulk right when the most roofs need writing. The reinspection supplement handles the files that stay frozen until somebody from the carrier is standing on the roof again up there, with your documentation waiting for him. If the disagreement is about money the carrier is holding back rather than lines it never wrote, depreciation recovery takes the second half of that same claim.
What gets recovered on a Georgia roof file
Ordered by how often the item is missing when a file reaches our desk.
Status key: In scope. Usually omitted. Code driven. Verify with the authority having jurisdiction. Every status is spelled out in words beside the item, so nothing depends on color.
Drip edge at eaves and rakes
Code driven
The most denied required component in Georgia. The adopted residential provisions call for it on an asphalt shingle roof, and a first estimate frequently carries no drip edge line at all.
Code upgrade items against ordinance or law coverage
Verify with local building dept
The upgrade has to be established as required for that address before the policy coverage can be applied to it. Files lose on the requirement far more often than on the coverage limit.
Ridge cut, ridge vent, and cap course
Usually omitted
Opening the ridge with a saw is labor. The vent is material. The cap course is a second material with its own installation. A carrier estimate pays for one of the three and inherits the rest for free unless somebody breaks it out.
Steep and high charges on north metro rooflines
Usually omitted
Cumming, Alpharetta, Canton, Kennesaw, and Marietta subdivisions run two story elevations, stacked gables, and multiple valleys. A flat squares count carries neither the pitch nor the access.
Starter course at eaves and rakes
Usually omitted
Leave the starter strip off and with it the manufacturer wind warranty covering the entire roof is gone, so this is a liability line before it is a material line. Carrier estimates bury it inside the shingle quantity even though it is a separate product that gets cut and nailed on its own.
Enhanced fastening and corrosion resistant metal on the coast
Code driven
Chatham, Bryan, and Glynn counties sit at wind speeds the default line item was never priced against, so the fastener count per shingle climbs and the labor climbs with it. Salt air then takes standard galvanized flashing off the table on the same roof.
Sealed roof deck on coastal tear offs
Code driven
Once a tropical system peels the shingles off, the taped or self adhered deck below them is all that stands between the weather and the ceilings. Coastal jurisdictions drive the requirement. First estimates almost never carry the line.
Decking replacement and board sheathing
In scope
Intown Atlanta bungalows, Rome and Dalton mill housing, and the older Savannah and Macon stock are decked in 1x boards that cannot take a current nailing pattern. Nobody knows it is there until the shingles are in the dumpster, so it lands as a supplement every time.
Detach and reset on screen porches, sunrooms, and solar
Usually omitted
Nobody roofs over an attached screen structure or a mounted array. The labor is real and it is separate from the roof line item.
Matching and discontinued shingle documentation
In scope
Telling an adjuster the shingle is discontinued accomplishes nothing. A distributor letter or a manufacturer discontinuation notice sitting in the file is what turns a patch scope into a replacement scope.
Interior water damage after tarp removal
Usually omitted
By the time the tarp comes down, the ceilings, the insulation above them, and the drywall below have all taken water that the original inspection had no way to see. Gulf remnants tracking up through the state are what put it there.
Overhead and profit once the loss crosses trades
In scope
Roof, gutter, siding, fence, and interior on a single loss means somebody is sequencing and supervising five crews. That coordination is what the charge pays for, and the number of trades settles it rather than the size of the check.
All of it lands as an actual Xactimate line, carrying the reason it is owed, inside a real file. Which package it ships under depends on the claim in front of us: a roofing supplement, an Xactimate supplement package, a supplemental estimate, or a full claim estimate written from scratch.
What happens to your file after you send it
- 01
The carrier estimate gets read line by line against the roof
Not skimmed. We pull the estimate apart against your measurements and photos, marking every line where the assembly written does not match what that roof needs in that county.
- 02
Code and manufacturer requirements get sourced before they get argued
Drip edge, metal specification, underlayment, and the fastening schedule are arguments that only work when cited correctly. In Georgia the county is the unit that matters, not the state line. Where a requirement varies by jurisdiction we confirm it for the address rather than assert a statewide rule an adjuster can knock down.
- 03
The supplement is written in Xactimate and delivered as a PDF
Real file, real price list, real sketch. You get the PDF as the deliverable, and the ESX free any time you ask for it. Retail estimate work with no supplement attached delivers the ESX. Written same day or next day, submitted next day. One to three extra days on large commercial and multi structure work.
- 04
We stay on the file until the carrier answers
Follow up, desk adjuster calls, and reinspection support when the carrier sends someone back out. Response runs about three weeks as a general expectation, and the file does not close on our side because it went quiet on theirs.
Two promises, stated separately
Promise one: the fee
The standard fee is 15 percent of supplemental recovery. If a file produces no additional approved recovery, you pay nothing on that claim. That is the whole fee structure, and it applies claim by claim.
Promise two: the guarantee
Send us an average of 2 claims per week for 12 months. If that volume does not produce a minimum of six figures in additional margin for your company, we write you a $5,000 check at the end of the 12 months. The volume, the 12 month term, the six figure threshold, and the $5,000 figure are one set of terms and they always travel together.
Two different promises, no overlap. The fee describes what a single claim costs you. The guarantee describes what a year of steady volume is worth. Nothing in the fee structure is a guarantee, and the guarantee does not change the fee.
Georgia questions we get from contractors
Is drip edge required by code in Georgia, and why does it keep getting denied?
The residential provisions Georgia adopts call for drip edge at eaves and rakes on an asphalt shingle roof, and that requirement is the single most common code argument on a Georgia file. Two things kill it. The carrier estimate treats drip edge as an optional accessory instead of a required part of the assembly, and the national template a first estimate gets built from has no drip edge line in it to begin with. What turns that around is citing the requirement for that jurisdiction, not arguing preference.
How do I get code upgrades paid on a Georgia claim?
In two steps, in that order. First establish that the upgrade is required, by the adopted code for that address, not by builder preference. Second, get it applied against the ordinance or law coverage the policy actually carries, because that coverage is usually a percentage limit rather than an open promise. Files lose on step one far more often than step two. An adjuster who has not been shown the requirement will read a code line as a betterment request and exclude it.
Why is Atlanta hail damage so often written as a repair instead of a replacement?
Because north metro storms do real damage and spread it unevenly. The impact lands hard on one slope, the spatter on the flashing has washed away by the time anybody inspects, and a test square worked in the wrong place returns a count that reads as isolated damage. Put that method on a cut up two story roofline with several valleys and it will be wrong most of the time. Overturning it depends on what got photographed before the tear off, not on how well the argument is made afterward.
Does coastal Georgia have different roofing requirements than Atlanta?
Yes. Chatham, Bryan, Liberty, McIntosh, Glynn, and Camden counties carry higher design wind speeds. That means more fasteners per shingle, a specified underlayment rather than whatever is on the truck, product approval on the components, and corrosion resistant metal anywhere salt air can reach. A Savannah or St. Simons roof is a different assembly than a Cobb County roof, and a price list default reflects the inland one.
What is the Georgia Underwriting Association?
It is the state residual market for property the standard market will not write. It matters on a supplement because residual market files run on their own timelines and their own adjuster pools, and because a scope written against a residual market policy usually lands tighter than anything else on the same block. Expect the recovery to still be there. Expect to document it further than you would on a standard carrier file to get it.
How fast is turnaround, and what does it cost?
Estimates are written same day or next day and submitted next day. Larger commercial and multi structure files take one to three extra days, said up front. Carrier response runs about three weeks as a general expectation. The standard fee is 15 percent of supplemental recovery, and a file with no additional approved recovery owes nothing on that claim.
Georgia markets
Atlanta metro
- Atlanta and intown
- Alpharetta and north Fulton
- Marietta and Cobb County
North Georgia
- Gainesville and Lake Lanier
- Athens and the northeast
Files also come in from Cumming, Canton, Kennesaw, Acworth, Cartersville, Rome, Dalton, Columbus, Warner Robins, Albany, Brunswick, and St. Simons.
Send one Georgia file over and see what the carrier left out
Forward the carrier estimate along with your measurements. You get the supplement back the following day, off the desk of a licensed adjuster who already knows a Cherokee County roof and a Chatham County roof are not the same job.