Let a drone roof scan stand in for an inspection. $9,400.

The line I'd underline is the one about the inspection window. You didn't make a bad call about drones. You made a bad call about a deadline and then went shopping for a tool that fit inside it.

I've done the same thing twice with sewer scopes. Both times the actual decision was made when I agreed to a fifteen day inspection period on a property with a hundred year old lateral.

Ponding being invisible from straight overhead is the detail I'm taking away. That's genuinely not obvious and I'd have made the same read off those photos.

Was the $475 wasted, or did it tell you anything you kept?

Six properties in and the low-slope section is always the one that gets me. Every building I own with two roof types, the flat part is where the money goes and the pitched part behaves.

Sextant, did your operating partner walk it at any point? I'm asking because in my experience the local partner usually has been on the roof and just doesn't think to mention it.

I want to slow down on one thing. You said the roofer was three weeks out. Was there any other roofer? Not being difficult, I ask because when I've been in a hurry I've called two people and decided the market was full, and it turned out I'd called the two busiest.

Thank you for defining the terms. I've read four threads in this room and this is the first time I understood what Part 107 actually certifies. So the pilot did nothing wrong here?

Juniper, the pilot delivered exactly what was ordered. Sextant ordered images of a roof and got images of a roof.

The gap is that a roof condition opinion is a different service from a roof photo set, and the second one gets bought as if it were the first one all the time. Some drone operators do partner with a roofing consultant and sell an actual assessment. Those cost several times $475 and they include a person who is qualified to say what the images mean.

Sextant, did the pilot represent it as an inspection, or did you make that leap on your own?

The part I'd copy is holding a cushion at all. You had one and it got eaten, which is what a cushion is for. Most people I read about didn't have one.

$9,400 in month two on a deal projecting $61k. That's rough but you're still alive.

I'll disagree with keystone slightly. The deadline is real but the actual error is the number you wrote in the model. Five to seven years of remaining life on a low-slope roof you have never stood on, based on a photo set, is a confident number from thin evidence. If you'd written it as "unknown, reserve $12,000" you'd have bid differently and you wouldn't have a story. The drone didn't lie to you. You promoted a photograph to a conclusion.

In rural markets the three week wait is the normal wait and there is no second roofer. Genuinely curious what people do in that situation, because "pay for the extension" assumes a seller who'll grant one.

Flint is right about the model line and I'd push it one further. What was the seller's disclosure on the roof? Age, last work done, any prior claims. Not because that's binding, disclosure requirements vary by state and some of them are thin, but because a seller who says "membrane replaced in 2009" has handed you an age you can reason from. Sixteen years on a low-slope membrane is a reserve number regardless of what any photograph shows.

Sextant, do you know how old that section was?

Reading this as somebody still learning how deals get funded. If you'd had a lender on this rather than being the money yourself, would a lender have required a physical inspection and saved you from it?

The number that jumps out at me is $475 versus $9,400. I'm building my first-deal cost list and I keep finding items like this where the cheap version and the real version aren't the same product at all. Adding a line for "roof, walked by a person" with a real dollar figure instead of an inspection line item that covers everything.

Two soft spots on decking means somebody's been leaking a while and the previous owner knew. They always know.

On the ponding, the tell in a dry-weather photo is usually a dirt ring, a gray or dark oval where sediment settled out of the standing water and stayed. It's faint from overhead and obvious from an angle. If you're going to use aerial for roofs at all, tell the pilot to give you oblique shots from all four sides at low altitude, not just the top-down set. Top-down flattens everything.

Doesn't replace walking it. Would have given you a question to ask.

Harrow's dirt ring is the useful piece of the whole thread. That's a thing you can actually look for in an image.

I use aerial constantly on land and the same limit applies in a different form. I can see the shape of the ground and I cannot see what's under it. Every time I've forgotten that it's cost me.

I've read plenty here, and this is the first post that changed something in my checklist rather than just adding to it. The rule I'm writing down is that a tool that shortens a timeline is doing something other than what the tool it replaced was doing, and I should be able to say what.