Roofing Market Survey pt. 2

In March, Skyco Skylights surveyed over 2,500 commercial roofers about their expected work logs following the historic rains last winter. The consensus was strong; severe weather backed up a lot of work, and created significantly more moving forward.

The long drought (leading up to this past winter) allowed building owners to delay most major roof maintenance. When the rains started, pent-up demand was exposed sending roofers into chaos first addressing thousands of emergency leak calls deferring re-roof prospects.

Almost half of the roofers surveyed expect the bulk of re-roofs to begin summer time into fall. The nicer weather will finally give them a chance to “make hay.”

Now that the re-roof market is on fire, vendors are experiencing huge demand for products from coatings and polycarbonate skylights thus causing an increase in lead times. For roofers with strict deadline, the best way to ensure timely receipt of essential building materials is to place orders in advance. “Getting on the books” will help everyone involved.

Major roof upgrades are a big investment for building owners. Some roofers avoid addressing new skylights for fear of bidding themselves out of the project. Most see skylights as a great opportunity to increase revenue and provide a proper re-roof worthy of their leak-free warranties.

Note: Dome-only Replacements are not code compliant and hardly address leaking issues, consider it more a band-aid. In most cases, roofers would create more costly warranty and liability issues than the money they think they would save.

Building owners want a roof that will perform as promised and even though new skylights boost their investment, it is well worth it. Conveying the value is the hard part.

The following charts and graphs list out the responses from the second half of our Roofing Market Survey.  For Part 1: Click Here.

Moving forward, roofs with aged industrial skylights are perfect suiters for replacement. This is a great opportunity for roofers to increase revenue and bottom line numbers. Soaring demand for polycarbonate skylights is causing manufacturers, like Skyco Skylights, to urge roofers to get orders in so they can orchestrate material and assembly schedules.

It would be hard to find a commercial roofer that is not working at max capacity right now. Capitalizing on the opportunities presented is crucial. At least half of the low slope industrial roofer in most markets are prime for re-roof. Of those roofs, many are in drastic need of other upgrades, like skylights.

Skyco Skylights is an industry leading industrial and custom structural skylight manufacturer located in Costa Mesa, CA. They build polycarbonate Industrial Skylights, UL Listed Smoke Vents, Custom Structural Skylights, Photovoltaic Skylights & Canopies, rooftop safety and security products. Each product comes with a 10 year warranty. For additional information, call 949 629-4090 or email [email protected]