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Choosing a roofer · Baldwin & Mobile County, AL

Seven checks to run before anybody gets on your roof

A roof is one of the largest single purchases a house ever makes, and it is bought under the worst possible conditions — after a storm, in a hurry, from somebody you met four days ago. This page is the checklist we would want our own family using, written so you can actually run it: where to click, what to ask, and what the answer should look like. Then the red flags, anchored to what Alabama's own agencies published after Hurricane Sally rather than to anything we made up. Then, at the bottom, how we check out on all seven — with the links to verify us instead of believing us.

4.5(117 Google reviews)

BBB A+ · accredited since 1988 · Alabama roofing license #7430

Start with check 01 Post-storm red flags

Why this is hard

Every roofer sounds the same in the driveway

Licensed. Insured. Family-owned. Thirty years of experience. Those four sentences come out of every truck window on this coast, and they cost nothing to say. The difference between the companies saying them is not the sentence — it is whether there is a public record behind it that a homeowner can pull up on a phone in under a minute.

So this page is built around records, not adjectives. Six of the seven checks below end at a website or a phone number operated by somebody other than the roofer: the state licensing board, an insurance carrier, the Better Business Bureau, Google, the FORTIFIED program directory. That is deliberate. A claim you can verify is worth more than a claim you have to trust, and any roofer who resents you checking has told you something useful.

Where the storm-fraud material on this page comes from

Every red flag in the next section is drawn from guidance published by Alabama state agencies after Hurricane Sally — not from anecdote, and not from a story about any particular company. We do not name contractors. We quote the state.

Run all seven checks on us before you call anybody else. If we hold up, ask us for a number.

Get a free quote(251) 342-4338

The checklist

Seven checks, in the order they save you the most

Run 01 first. It is free, it takes a minute, and it eliminates more bad outcomes than the other six put together.

01

Run the state license number yourself

Alabama licenses residential roofing work through the Home Builders Licensure Board. The state's own guidance puts the threshold plainly: a contractor doing residential roof work directly for a homeowner where the cost is over $2,500 must be licensed. A license number on a truck door is a graphic. A license number you looked up is a fact.

Walk away when: The number does not come back, comes back under a different company, or comes back expired or inactive.

How to actually run it

  • Ask for the license number and the name it is held under — the legal entity, not the brand on the sign.
  • Open the Home Builders Licensure Board's public license search and enter the company name or the number.
  • Read the record for three things: that it exists, that the status is active, and that the expiration date has not passed.
  • No computer handy? The state publishes a phone line for exactly this: 1-800-304-0853.
Look up a license — Alabama Home Builders Licensure Boardhblb.alabama.gov

The $2,500 licensing threshold quoted above is the Alabama Department of Insurance's own wording (September 17, 2020).

02

Get the insurance certificate from the insurer, not the contractor

Two coverages matter and they protect different things. General liability covers damage to your house. Workers' compensation covers the person who falls off it — and if the crew on your roof is uninsured, the exposure has a way of finding the homeowner. Alabama's agencies list proof of insurance among the things to ask for, in writing.

Walk away when: A photo of a certificate, a certificate that expired, a certificate with no workers' comp line, or a shrug.

How to actually run it

  • Ask for a certificate of insurance showing general liability AND workers' compensation.
  • Ask that it be sent by the agency that issued it, with your name and address as certificate holder. A PDF forwarded from the contractor proves less than one that arrives from the agent.
  • Check the policy dates cover the window your job will actually run in, not last season.
03

Confirm there is a real local address and a real local history

After a hurricane the coast fills with crews who were somewhere else last month and will be somewhere else next month. That is not automatically dishonest — but a warranty is only worth the odds that whoever wrote it is still reachable in year four. Alabama's post-Sally advisory flags unsolicited contact and out-of-town outfits as the moment to slow down and check references.

Walk away when: No physical address, a brand-new business file, out-of-state plates and a same-week arrival, or references that are all from the last ninety days.

How to actually run it

  • Ask where the office is. Not a service area, not a P.O. box on a flyer — a place.
  • Look for the trail a long-running local company leaves: a Better Business Bureau file with a start date, permits pulled locally, a phone number that has been the same number for years.
  • Ask for two references from the same county as your house, from jobs at least two years old. Recent references only prove the crew showed up. Old ones prove somebody answered the phone when a problem came back.
04

Read the reviews critically, not just the star average

A star average is the least useful number on a review profile. What matters is volume, span, and how the company behaves when somebody is unhappy — because every roofer with real tenure has unhappy customers somewhere in the file, and the ones with none usually have no history.

Walk away when: A wall of five-star reviews posted inside a two-week window, reviews with no job detail, or no reply to a single complaint.

How to actually run it

  • Look at how many reviews there are and how far back they go. Thirty reviews over ten years reads very differently from thirty reviews in one month.
  • Read the one- and two-star reviews first, then read the owner's replies. A specific, non-defensive reply to a bad review tells you more than fifty five-star reviews.
  • Check that the reviews describe the work you are buying. A roofer with glowing gutter reviews has not told you anything about tear-offs.
  • Cross-check on a second surface — Better Business Bureau, or the state license file. Ratings that only exist on one platform are worth exactly one platform.
05

If the word FORTIFIED comes up, check the directory

FORTIFIED is a documented beyond-code standard from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, and it is the one roof upgrade in Alabama with a certificate insurers are required by law to price against. Because there is real money attached to the word, the word gets used loosely. There is a public directory that settles it in about thirty seconds.

Walk away when: The word FORTIFIED in the sales pitch and nothing in the directory — or one company claiming to both build the roof and certify it.

How to actually run it

  • Ask for the company's FORTIFIED ID and the credentialed provider's ID — the individual credential and the company record are two different lines.
  • Search the official FORTIFIED provider directory for either one and read the status.
  • Understand which credential you are looking at. A credentialed roofer builds to the standard. An independent FORTIFIED Evaluator documents it. They are not the same person and, by design, cannot be.
The step-by-step FORTIFIED verification walkthrough

Including why a credentialed roofer and an independent evaluator can never be the same company.

06

Make them put the scope in writing before any money moves

Most roofing disputes are not about workmanship. They are about what “the roof” meant. Alabama's agencies say it in five words: make sure quotes and contracts are in writing. The scope is where a bid becomes comparable to another bid — and where a cheap number usually turns out to be a smaller job.

Walk away when: A one-line total on a business card, “we'll figure the decking out when we're up there” with no unit price, or a contract you are asked to sign before you have read it.

How to actually run it

  • Require line items, not a lump sum: tear-off layers, decking replacement and its unit price, underlayment type, drip edge and edge metal, ridge and hip detail, vents, flashing, pipe boots, and disposal.
  • Require the workmanship warranty term and the manufacturer warranty in the same document.
  • Require a start window and a payment schedule tied to milestones.
  • Then compare two bids line by line. If one is materially cheaper, find the line where the scope shrank. It is always in there.
07

Never hand over a large payment up front

This is the single most repeated instruction in Alabama's post-storm guidance, and it is written in capital letters in the state's own release: never make a full payment or substantial down payment up front. Material deposits happen in legitimate roofing. A demand for most of the job in cash, today, is a different animal.

Walk away when: Cash only. Full payment before materials. A price that drops if you pay today. Any version of “the insurance company will never know.”

How to actually run it

  • Pay by a method that leaves a record. Not cash, and not to a personal name that does not match the licensed entity.
  • Tie payments to milestones — materials delivered, tear-off complete, final inspection passed.
  • Hold a meaningful final payment until the job is finished and you have walked it.
  • Never pay the deductible portion to the contractor as a side arrangement. If someone offers to make your deductible disappear, that is the end of the conversation, not the start of one.

“NEVER make a full payment or substantial down payment up front.” — Office of the Alabama Attorney General, September 17, 2020.

After the storm

What the state warned about, in the state's own words

Three days after Hurricane Sally came ashore, the Alabama Department of Insurance, the Attorney General's Office, and the Home Builders Licensure Board issued a joint warning to homeowners in Baldwin, Mobile, and south Alabama about unlicensed and unscrupulous contractors. That advisory is still online, and it is the most useful document a coastal homeowner can read before signing anything. The patterns below are the ones it names. Where the state said something directly, we quote it and link it, so you are reading a state agency rather than a roofing company's opinion of its competitors.

We name no companies and no individuals here, and we make no allegation about any contractor. This section describes patterns identified by state agencies, nothing more.

Someone knocks on your door with news about your roof

Unsolicited contact is not proof of anything by itself, and plenty of honest crews canvass a neighborhood. It is a reason to slow down, not to panic. Take the name and the license number, close the door, and run check 01 before anything else happens.

The state's words: “Ask for and check references, especially if the builder makes unsolicited contact with you or is from out-of-town.” — Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020.

The truck is from out of state and the company arrived this week

The Gulf Coast is a destination market after a landfall. The question is not where someone is from — it is whether they will be reachable in four years when a flashing detail lets go. Ask for local references from jobs old enough to have been tested.

The state's words: “Ask for and check references, especially if the builder makes unsolicited contact with you or is from out-of-town.” — Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020.

A “free roof” or a disappearing deductible

A roof is never free. What that sentence usually means is that the deductible is going to be absorbed somewhere, and absorbing it is the part that creates a problem — for the homeowner as well as the contractor. The safe version of this conversation is simple: your policy pays what your policy pays, you pay your deductible, and the contract reflects both.

Pressure to sign the same day

Nothing about a roof gets worse because you read the contract overnight. A tarp buys weeks. Urgency that is manufactured for the signature rather than for the weather is the tell, and it is the reason Alabama built a cancellation window into the law in the first place.

The state's words: “Contractors MUST provide homeowners a “NOTICE OF CANCELLATION” disclaimer in a contract for roof repairs… Homeowners have five days to give notice to cancel the contract.” — Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020.

Emergency tarping that comes with papers

The state addressed this exact sequence directly: the crew that tarps your house cannot turn that emergency work into a signed repair contract. Take the tarp. Read the papers later, somewhere dry, with your insurer on the phone.

The state's words: “A contractor who provides emergency services such as tarping your house cannot then use those services to bind a homeowner into a contract.” — Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020.

“We'll handle the insurance company for you”

In Alabama this is not a service a roofing contractor is permitted to offer. A roofer can document damage, meet your adjuster on the roof, and quote the work. Representing you to your carrier or negotiating your claim is a different job with a different license.

The state's words: “Under Alabama law, a residential roofing contractor shall not represent or offer to negotiate on the homeowner’s behalf with the insurance company.” — Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020.

Paperwork handed to you as “just the repair contract”

Read what you are signing, all of it, including the paragraph above the signature line. A document that assigns your insurance benefits to a contractor is not the same document as a scope of work, even when it arrives in the same folder. The next section explains exactly what that one does.

The state's words: “Contractors MUST provide homeowners a “NOTICE OF CANCELLATION” disclaimer in a contract for roof repairs… Homeowners have five days to give notice to cancel the contract.” — Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020.

Read the full advisory yourself: Beware of unlicensed or unscrupulous contractors in the wake of Hurricane Sally (Alabama Department of Insurance, September 17, 2020; retrieved 2026-08-18), and the Attorney General's companion release.

The paperwork question

What signing an assignment of benefits actually does

This comes up more than anything else on a storm-damaged street, usually as a single page inside a folder of other pages, and usually described as “just the paperwork so we can get started.” Here is the plain version, with no spin in either direction.

An assignment of benefits is a legal document that transfers your rights under your insurance policy — for that claim — to somebody else, usually the contractor. Once it is signed and accepted, the insurer's dealings on that claim run through the assignee rather than through you, and the claim money is paid to them.

It is a real instrument, not automatically a trap, and there are legitimate situations where a homeowner signs one knowingly. The problem is almost never the document existing. The problem is a homeowner signing it believing it was the repair contract, and finding out later that the decisions on their own claim are no longer theirs to make.

So the practical rule is simple and it costs nothing: read every page you are asked to sign, including the paragraph directly above the signature line, and if you cannot tell what a document does, do not sign it in the driveway. Call your insurance company and read them the heading. They will tell you what it is in about a minute, for free.

This is general information, not legal advice. Insurance contracts differ, facts differ, and the consequences of assigning claim rights depend on both. If a document has been put in front of you and real money is attached to it, talk to your insurer or a lawyer — not to the person who handed it to you, and not to us.

Three things Alabama law already gives you

A five-day cancellation window
“Contractors MUST provide homeowners a “NOTICE OF CANCELLATION” disclaimer in a contract for roof repairs… Homeowners have five days to give notice to cancel the contract.” The statute is Ala. Code § 8-36-2.
A roofer cannot run your claim
“Under Alabama law, a residential roofing contractor shall not represent or offer to negotiate on the homeowner’s behalf with the insurance company.”
A tarp is not a contract
“A contractor who provides emergency services such as tarping your house cannot then use those services to bind a homeowner into a contract.”

All three quoted from the Alabama Department of Insurance advisory, September 17, 2020; retrieved 2026-08-18.

Where we stand, as a matter of our own policy

  • We do not take an assignment of benefits, and we will not ask you to sign one.
  • We do not offer to waive, absorb, discount, or “eat” your deductible.
  • We do not represent you to your insurer or negotiate your claim — Alabama law does not allow a roofing contractor to do that, and we do not try.
  • We do not knock doors after storms, and we do not ask anyone to sign the day we meet them.
  • Every scope we quote is in writing, itemized, before any money changes hands.

Those are statements about how we work. They are not claims about how anyone else works.

Our own homework

Now run the seven checks on us

It would be a strange page that told you to verify everything and then asked to be taken at its word. Here are our answers, with the links to check them. Two of these records are maintained by the State of Alabama and neither of them is ours to edit.

01 · State license

Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board license #7430, held by Liberty Roofing Company, Inc. of Fairhope, Baldwin County, with Dane DeValk as the designated qualifying representative. Read live on the state registry on 2026-08-17, status active. Do not take that from us — run it.

Run the state license search

02 · Insurance

Licensed and insured in Alabama, with general liability and workers' compensation. Ask us for the certificate and we will have the agency send it to you directly with your name on it. That is the version that means something.

03 · Local presence and years

A Fairhope company working Baldwin and Mobile County. The Better Business Bureau file records the business start as 1987 and accreditation since 1988, currently rated A+. We are not from out of town and we were not here first in 1987 by accident.

Our BBB profile

04 · Reviews

4.5 stars across 117 Google reviews as of 2026-08-17. Read the low ones. We would rather you did.

Read the reviews

05 · FORTIFIED

Company 011483 in the official FORTIFIED provider directory, status Compliant; Dane DeValk credentialed as a provider, ID R011603, designation Roofer, status active. Read live 2026-08-17. We are the roofer, not the evaluator — that separation is the point of the program.

How to verify any roofer's FORTIFIED status

06 · Written scope

Every quote is itemized in writing before anyone signs anything, with the decking unit price on it — because that is the line that moves once the roof is open, and you should know the number before it does.

07 · Payment

No large cash up front, no deductible arrangements, and no contract that has to be signed the day we meet. If it takes you a week to decide, it takes you a week.

Google rating and review count read live 2026-08-17; FORTIFIED directory record read live 2026-08-17; Alabama license record read on the AL Home Builders Licensure Board registry 2026-08-17. Statuses and counts change — that is the whole reason to check them yourself rather than to read them off a web page.

Common questions

What homeowners ask us before they hire anybody

How do I verify a roofer is licensed in Alabama?
Residential roofing is licensed by the Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board. Ask the contractor for the license number and the legal entity it is held under, then search it yourself on the Board's public license lookup, or call the state's verification line at 1-800-304-0853. Read three fields: that the record exists, that the status is active, and that the expiration date is in the future. Alabama's own post-hurricane guidance states that a contractor performing residential roof work directly for a homeowner where the cost exceeds $2,500 must be licensed.
Is a free roof inspection a scam?
Not by itself — free inspections are ordinary in this trade and most of them are exactly what they say. What matters is what happens after the ladder comes down. An inspection that ends with a written report and no pressure is normal. An inspection that ends with a contract to sign today, a claim someone else will file for you, or a photograph of damage you are not allowed to see up close is the part worth pausing on. Run the license check before the inspection, not after.
Someone knocked on my door after the storm. Should I hire them?
Maybe, but not today. Unsolicited contact is not proof of anything, and honest crews do canvass storm-hit neighborhoods. The Alabama Attorney General's Office, the Department of Insurance, and the Home Builders Licensure Board issued joint guidance after Hurricane Sally advising homeowners to check references, especially where the builder makes unsolicited contact or is from out of town. Take the name and license number, close the door, verify, then decide.
What does signing an assignment of benefits actually do?
In plain terms, it transfers your rights under your insurance policy for that claim to somebody else, so the insurer deals with them instead of you and the claim proceeds are paid to them. That is a real legal instrument with real consequences, and it is not the same document as a scope of work even when the two are handed over together. Read every page before you sign anything, and if you are unsure what a document does, ask your insurer or a lawyer — not the person asking you to sign it. Liberty does not take assignments of benefits and will never ask you to sign one.
Can a roofer negotiate my insurance claim for me in Alabama?
No. The Alabama Department of Insurance states it directly: under Alabama law, a residential roofing contractor shall not represent or offer to negotiate on the homeowner's behalf with the insurance company. A roofer can document what they see, be on the roof when your adjuster is, and quote the repair. Anyone offering to run your claim for you is describing something Alabama law does not permit.
Can I cancel a roofing contract I already signed?
Alabama gives homeowners a specific cancellation right on roofing contracts that are to be paid from insurance proceeds. The Department of Insurance summarizes it this way: contractors must provide a NOTICE OF CANCELLATION disclaimer in a contract for roof repairs, and homeowners have five days to give notice to cancel. The statute is Ala. Code § 8-36-2. This is a general description of a law and not legal advice — read the statute and, if money is at stake, talk to a lawyer.
What if a contractor offers to cover my deductible?
Decline it and keep looking. Your deductible is the part of the loss your policy says is yours. An arrangement designed to make it disappear changes what your insurer is being told about the transaction, and the homeowner is standing right next to that problem, not outside it. Liberty does not waive, absorb, or discount deductibles.
How many roofing bids should I get?
Two or three, and compare them line by line rather than by the total. Roofing bids diverge because the scopes diverge — decking replacement allowance, underlayment type, edge metal, ventilation, flashing, disposal. When one number is materially lower, the reason is almost always a line that is smaller or missing, not a contractor who found a cheaper way to do the same work.

Keep reading

The rest of the homework

Verification, claims, and what a coastal roof is actually up against.

Verify a roofer's FORTIFIED status

The directory walkthrough, why the claim needs checking, and what to ask before a FORTIFIED job.

Read it

What a FORTIFIED roof is

The beyond-code standard, the three designation levels, and where the extra money goes.

Read it

Roof insurance claims

The five stages of a coastal Alabama roof claim, and who is allowed to do what at each one.

Read it

Storm damage repair

Wind, hail, and hurricane damage — documented for your claim, repaired for the next one.

Read it

Roof inspections

What we look at, what you get in writing, and why the report matters more than the visit.

Read it

About Liberty Roofing

A Fairhope company working Baldwin and Mobile County since 1987.

Read it

Free inspection · no obligation

Check us out, then let's talk about your roof

Run the seven checks on us first — we would rather you did. Then tell us what your roof is doing and we will come look at it, put what we find in writing, and leave you alone to think about it. No same-day signature, no assignment of benefits, no deductible arrangements.

4.5(117 Google reviews)

Alabama roofing license #7430 · BBB A+ since 1988

(251) 342-4338Contact us

Liberty Roofing is a licensed Alabama roofing contractor. We are not a public adjuster, not a law firm, and not an insurance agency, and nothing on this page is legal advice.