The stain on the back bedroom ceiling showed up after the last big storm in August, a tan ring the size of a dinner plate that’s now the size of a trash can lid. You climb up and find the flashing around the old swamp cooler curled like a potato chip. Three licensed roofers give you the same answer. They can take a look in April.
Anyone who’s tried to get work done on the hill knows the wait. Good contractors are booked solid, most of them are driving up from Española or Santa Fe, and the first snow could be six or seven weeks out.
So when a guy on the community Facebook page says he can do it Saturday for $4,500 cash, it’s tempting. Before you say yes, there are a few questions worth asking, and one of them is about you, not him.
The question nobody asks: who’s covering him?
Saturday goes fine until it doesn’t. His helper steps off the ladder wrong, drops eight feet onto the flagstone, and shatters an ankle. An ambulance ride to Los Alamos Medical Center, surgery, hardware in the joint, and months without work follow. A bad ankle fracture can run $30,000 to $70,000 in medical bills before anyone counts lost wages.
Numbers like that are the reason licensed contractors carry workers’ comp and liability coverage. A two-man cash crew often carries neither. When there’s nothing on their side, an injured worker and his attorney start looking at who else was involved, and the homeowner is standing right there.
Whether your policy responds in a situation like that tends to depend on the wording, how the arrangement was set up, and details neither of you thought about before the ladder went up. It is not a question you want to be researching from the ER waiting room.
Three things to check before Saturday
- Ask for a certificate of insurance showing general liability and workers’ compensation, then call the insurance company listed on it to confirm it’s current. Certificates are easy to let lapse and easy to fake.
- Look up the license. New Mexico’s Construction Industries Division has a public lookup, and it takes two minutes. If he’s not in there, ask why.
- Get the scope, the price, who buys materials, and what happens if it leaks again in November down on paper. Faulty workmanship is commonly excluded from homeowners policies, so a bad repair usually becomes a problem between you and him, not you and your carrier.
What about your side of it?
Most homeowners policies include medical payments coverage, and most people assume it would handle something like this. It’s typically $1,000 to $5,000, built for a guest’s urgent care visit, not orthopedic surgery. Your liability limits and whether you carry an umbrella matter far more, and how your policy treats someone working at your house is worth a ten-minute conversation with your agent. One who has seen a few of these on the hill can usually tell you where the gaps are before you find them yourself.
A Final Thought
Plenty of small crews are honest, skilled, and worth hiring. The good ones will hand you a certificate without blinking, and they’ll understand why you asked.
The wait for a licensed roofer is real, and it’s frustrating. But a tarp and a $200 patch to get through winter beats a $4,500 fix that turns into a $60,000 problem on your patio. The cheapest bid is only cheap if nothing goes wrong.
