General home inspectors are competent professionals doing a broad job under real constraints. But the roof section is consistently the weakest part of a general inspection, and understanding exactly why lets you fill the gap deliberately rather than assuming it was covered.
Home inspection standards of practice generally describe a visual, non-invasive examination of readily accessible systems. Each of those words is doing work.
Visual means nothing gets lifted, opened, or disassembled. Shingles are not lifted to check sealant bonds. Flashing is not probed to see whether it is woven or surface-applied.
Non-invasive means no water testing, no removal of anything.
Readily accessible is the biggest one, because it permits an inspector to decline to walk a roof that is steep, wet, high, moss-covered, or of uncertain structural integrity — which in Seattle, in the wet season, describes a great many roofs on a great many days.
Inspectors are also permitted to inspect from the ground or from a ladder at the eave when walking is unsafe, and to note the limitation. Most do note it, in a sentence that buyers frequently skim past.
Broken sealant bonds. The most common Puget Sound wind damage, and undetectable visually. It requires lifting shingles by hand across a slope, which is outside a visual, non-invasive scope. A roof full of unsealed shingles inspects as satisfactory.
Flashing construction. An inspector can see that flashing exists. Determining whether step flashing is woven course-by-course or is a single caulked length usually requires lifting shingles or already knowing what the failure signs look like.
Missing kickouts. Small, at the bottom of wall junctions, often partially obscured by a gutter, and not on most general checklists. Their absence damages walls rather than ceilings, so there is no interior symptom to prompt a closer look.
Ventilation adequacy. Reports commonly say ventilation appears adequate. Actual adequacy requires calculating attic area, determining required net free area, and comparing it to installed vents by published NFA — which is engineering, not observation, and is well outside general scope.
Condensation versus leak. Both produce deck staining. Distinguishing them requires reading distribution patterns, checking nail tips, tracing duct terminations, and correlating with weather. Reports often note staining without diagnosis, which leaves the buyer to guess at the most consequential distinction in the whole assessment.
Decking condition under insulation. Where an attic floor is fully insulated or partially finished, the deck may only be viewable from the hatch.
Worth being fair about this rather than treating it as negligence.
A general inspector covers structure, roof, exterior, plumbing, electrical, heating, cooling, insulation, ventilation, and interior in a few hours for a fixed fee. Depth on any one system is arithmetically impossible.
There is also a liability dynamic. Inspectors carry professional liability and operate under standards that define their duty. Working beyond those standards — lifting shingles, water testing, making definitive diagnoses — increases exposure without increasing fee. The rational professional response is to stay within scope and document limitations, which is exactly what happens.
Read the limitations section first. Before the findings, find out what was and was not assessed. If the report says the roof was inspected from the ground, or from a ladder, or that attic access was limited, you have learned that the roof was not really inspected.
Get a specialist inspection when the roof is the material variable. On an older home, a home with a roof of unknown age, or after a storm season, a separate roofing assessment is worth the additional fee. It is a small number against a five-figure exposure.
Ask targeted questions. Give your general inspector specific things to look at: kickouts at wall terminations, cricket behind the chimney, duct terminations in the attic, soffit intake condition. A good inspector will look, and the answers are useful regardless.
Attend the inspection. The verbal commentary is consistently more informative than the written report, because the report is constrained by liability and the conversation is not.
Drone photography has become common in roof inspection and it genuinely helps with one specific constraint: it gets a camera over a steep, wet, or high roof that nobody should be walking.
What it delivers well is overall condition, obvious damage, missing components, debris in valleys, and a documented visual record. Those are real gains, particularly on a February inspection where walking was never going to happen.
What it cannot do is anything tactile. A drone cannot lift a shingle to test whether the sealant bond is intact — the most common Puget Sound storm damage. It cannot feel for a spongy deck underfoot. It cannot press a vent boot collar to see whether it cracks. It cannot lift a course to see whether step flashing is woven or is a single caulked length. Every one of those findings requires hands.
So a drone inspection is a genuine upgrade over a ground-level look and is not equivalent to someone on the roof. When a report says drone inspection performed, read it as thorough visual, no tactile assessment, and decide whether the tactile findings matter for your situation.
General inspectors will usually answer targeted questions willingly, and answers given verbally on site are often more specific than the written report, which is constrained by liability language. Ask these directly:
1. Did you walk the roof, and if not, why? This determines how to read everything else in the roof section. Get the answer before you read the findings.
2. Is there a kickout flashing where the roof meets the wall above the gutter? Naming the component gets you a real look. Its absence damages walls rather than ceilings, so nothing else in the inspection will flag it.
3. Where do the bathroom and dryer ducts terminate? A five-second check in the attic that frequently explains an entire moisture problem.
4. Can you see daylight through the soffit vents from inside the attic? Distinguishes vents that exist from vents that work.
5. Is the deck staining in a path or spread across the whole slope? This is the leak-versus-condensation fork, and framing it this way often gets you a useful answer even where the report will only say moisture staining observed.
Not every purchase warrants a second inspection. The cases where it clearly does:
The general inspection explicitly limited its roof assessment. The roof is of unknown or disputed age. The house predates about 1950, where skip sheathing is likely and decking is the largest cost variable. The report notes attic moisture staining without diagnosing it. There is a vaulted or cathedral ceiling, which cannot be assessed through a hatch because there is no hatch. The roof has visible moss or is under heavy canopy. Or a significant storm season has passed since the roof was last examined.
In each of those, the specialist fee is small against the exposure, and the outcome is either a negotiating position or genuine peace of mind. Both are worth buying.
This post is part of our in-depth coverage of roof inspection in Seattle.
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