Ask Each Roofer for the Surety Bond Name, Amount and Expiry

A surety bond is a three-party promise. The roofer is the principal, a bond company is the surety, and a named party is the obligee, the one the bond is written to protect. If the roofer does not perform the contract as written, the bond company generally pays the obligee up to a stated penalty amount and then looks to the roofer for repayment. Some St. Louis roofers carry a bond. Others never mention one. Missouri does not license roofers, so a bond is not a state license, and no bond replaces checking the other paper a roofer hands you. What a bond gives you is a company name and a dollar figure you can verify, which makes it one of the few items a roofer can put in writing before the first shingle is ordered.

This page is for the homeowner who has two or three bids on the table and wants one more fact to separate them. The bond question is short, but the answers vary. Some roofers name the company at once. Some say they are bonded and cannot name the company. Some never answer. Those are three different answers, and each one goes into your comparison as its own cell.

Roofer comparison

Ask every roofer the same two questions, in the same words, on the same call. Does your company carry a surety bond? If yes, which surety company issues it, and what is the penalty amount? A roofer who has a bond should be able to name the company without checking a file, and should be willing to send the bond form before you sign. If the roofer says yes but the name changes from one reply to the next, write both names down and ask which one is printed on the form.

Keep the answers in the same grid as your price notes. A yes with a company name and an amount is a fact you can check. A bare yes is a sentence, and it belongs in a notes column rather than the bond column. A no is also an answer. It does not disqualify a roofer by itself, but it places that roofer's bid in a different group when you weigh the rest of the paper.

Read the obligee line on the form with care. It names who the bond protects. If the homeowner is not listed there, the bond may sit entirely on the roofer's side of the transaction and do little for the roof on your house. Ask whether you can be named as an obligee, and ask the roofer to say so in writing. A roofer who agrees and then sends a form with your name on it has answered the question. One who says it is not possible should explain why, and that explanation goes in the grid.

Check the dates. A bond that is current on the day of the bid can be cancelled or allowed to lapse before the crew starts. Ask for the effective date and the expiration date, and ask whether the roofer will send a renewal when the term rolls over. Put the expiration date on your own calendar next to the start date you were given. A roof booked for early spring can run into a bond that expires in January, and the roofer may not raise the point unless you do.

Keep the bond separate from the other roofer paper. A surety bond is not a liability insurance policy, not a workers' compensation certificate, and not a warranty. Each of those documents does a different job, and a roofer who offers one has not necessarily offered the others. Ask for each one as its own item, and file each under its own heading so that no single document gets credit for work it does not do.

What it costs

The roofer pays for the bond, normally through a premium to the surety company. Whether that premium appears in your price is a question every bid should answer. Ask whether the cost sits inside labor, inside overhead, or on its own line of the proposal. A separate line is not a reason to choose one roofer over another. It is a reason to ask what the line covers and whether the same cost is hidden somewhere else in a competing bid.

Do not treat a bond as a discount. A roofer who prices low because the bond was left out has not found a saving. The bond cost still exists, and it comes out of the same business that pays for the crew, the trucks and the materials. If the bid that includes a bond is higher than the bid that does not, the gap may be the bond itself, and that gap should be named in the comparison rather than treated as a difference in quality.

When you line up bids that include a bond against bids that do not, put the bond cost into the comparison on purpose. Mark the bonded roofer's line as bond with its amount. Mark the other roofer's cell as no bond stated. Those are two different answers, and a total that looks lower on the second bid may simply be the same work carrying less protection on paper.

Ask what happens to the bond cost if the start date slips. A bond bought for one season may need to be renewed or extended if the work moves to a later month. A roofer who has to pay for a second premium may carry it, pass it along, or leave it out until the final invoice. Each of those choices should be visible in writing before you sign. The answer belongs in the same notes column as the bond amount, because a slipped start date changes the total you will actually pay.

If the roofers give you a breakdown, compare the price per square with and without the bond line. Some bids roll everything into one per-square figure. Others break out materials, labor and overhead. A bid whose overhead line names the bond gives you something to compare against a bid where the same cost is buried in an overhead figure. Neither format is wrong, but only one of them lets you see the cost.

What to ask

• Which surety company issues your bond, and what is its name as printed on the bond form?
• What is the penalty amount, and does it match the full contract price or only a portion of it?
• Is the homeowner named as an obligee, or only the contractor's own business?
• What are the bond's effective date and expiration date?
• Who renews the bond if the job runs past the expiration date, and who pays for it?
• Does the bond cover only the crew's work, or also the materials and the cleanup?
• Will you send me the bond form before I sign, and will you send any renewal in writing?

A roofer who answers these questions in one pass has handed you the bond paperwork, and that is a short exchange. A roofer who answers the first question and then changes the subject has given you a different answer, and that answer belongs in the grid as written, with the date and time of the call.

If a roofer says there is no bond, ask what protection the contract offers in its place. Ask how the roofer will meet the obligations a bond would otherwise cover, and ask for that answer in writing. Do not treat a missing bond as the end of the comparison, and do not treat a bond name as proof of good work. It is one line among others, and the other lines still need their own answers.

If you want to put the bond question to Keys directly, the office number is (314) 220-2333. Ask for the same two items, the company name and the amount, and compare what comes back against the written answers from the other roofers on your list. Your grid should read the same way for every roofer you are weighing.