Detroit, MI
ROOFING ESTIMATING.

Roofing Estimating in Detroit Moves Fast — Your Bids Should Too

Detroit's housing stock is old. The median home in the city was built before 1960, which means you're regularly quoting tear-offs on worn-out three-tab shingles, rotted decking, and ice-dam damage that doesn't reveal itself until you're already on the roof. Writing those bids by hand or in a spreadsheet costs you time you don't have between April and October, when every homeowner in Wayne County calls at once.

Estimate.Pro gives you a field-to-bid workflow built for that pace. Walk the job, record measurements on your phone, and get a priced estimate in a median of 8 minutes. No credit card required to start.

What Makes Detroit Roofing Bids Different

Ice and water shield requirements. Michigan Residential Code requires ice barrier protection extending from the eave edge to a point at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line. On a low-slope or complex roof in a Detroit winter, that coverage adds material and labor that out-of-state estimating templates miss. Estimate.Pro's roofing scope builder accounts for eave-to-wall measurements so your ice barrier quantities are calculated against actual roof geometry, not a flat rule of thumb.

Tear-off labor on older structures. Detroit's aging bungalows and colonial-revival two-stories often have multiple roofing layers — sometimes three or four — applied over original skip sheathing. Your teardown labor per square on a three-layer job is not the same as a single-layer suburban re-roof in Livonia. The app lets you set material and labor costs per line item in your saved workspace, so your Detroit-specific tear-off rates stay locked in across every bid.

Permit pull timing. Detroit's Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department (BSEED) processes roofing permits for residential projects, and permit fees run on a project valuation schedule. Getting the valuation number right on your bid affects both what you quote the homeowner and what you declare to BSEED. Estimate.Pro generates a line-item scope of work you can hand directly to a permitting clerk — no retyping from a napkin.

Flat and low-slope work. Detroit has significant commercial and mixed-use building inventory — former industrial buildings converted to residential lofts, flat-roof bungalows, and commercial strip retail — where TPO, EPDM, and modified bitumen are standard. The app supports low-slope material types alongside steep-slope shingle work in the same estimate, so you're not maintaining two separate systems.

AR Measurement in the Field

On supported devices, Estimate.Pro uses ONNX-assisted live AR measurement to capture roof dimensions during the walkthrough. Measurements taken by camera or photo are marked as estimates in the output — you see exactly which numbers are field-verified versus approximated. That distinction matters when you're explaining a bid to a homeowner who just got a lower number from a competitor who never got on the roof.

Priced Output, Not Just a Scope

Every estimate includes:

• Material line items — shingles, underlayment, ice and water shield, ridge cap, drip edge, flashings, pipe boots
• Labor by task — tear-off, decking repair, installation, cleanup and haul
• Crew time estimates tied to square footage and pitch factor
• Permit fee placeholder you fill with the BSEED valuation-based number
• Client-facing PDF ready to send from the job site

You're not building a template every time. The saved material cost workspace stores your Detroit-market prices — current lumber costs, shingle pricing from your supplier in Dearborn or Sterling Heights — so the next estimate pulls from numbers you already trust.

Pricing That Fits a Roofing Crew

Estimate.Pro runs at $39/seat/month (Pro), $79/seat/month (Elite), or $399/month flat for a crew. The Crew tier covers your whole operation under one number — no per-seat math when you add a laborer mid-season.

The Free forever tier gives you full estimating functionality with no credit card. Pro and Elite add Stripe Connect invoicing with 0% platform fee on Pro+, invoice exports, and crew management tools.

If you're a Detroit roofer losing Saturday afternoons to bid writing, that's the problem Estimate.Pro solves. Eight minutes from walkthrough to sendable bid. Start free today.