No photo sets to assemble, no sketch to draw, no back-and-forth about what you forgot to capture. We show up, document the loss ourselves, and hand back a finished Xactimate estimate.
Most estimates get written from someone else’s photos. If the moisture readings weren’t taken, the ceiling height wasn’t noted, or nobody photographed behind the vanity, the estimate has a hole in it — and you find out when the carrier kicks it back.
When we inspect it ourselves, the person taking the measurements is the person writing the line items. Nothing gets lost in the handoff, because there isn’t one. If something on site raises a question — a hidden layer, an unclear water line, a transition that changes the flooring scope — it gets resolved standing in the room instead of guessed at three days later.
That’s the whole argument for sending us instead of sending us photos. Your crew stays on production, and the file comes back complete the first time.
We’re your estimator on that property, not the carrier’s. We document the full extent of the loss, write the scope the way it should be written, and deliver it to you. Anything the homeowner or the carrier needs to hear comes from your team, not from us.
Enough to write the estimate and enough to defend it. Everything comes back to you along with the file.
Room-by-room dimensions, ceiling heights, openings, and elevations — built directly into the Xactimate sketch, not transcribed later from a hand drawing.
Wide shots and damage detail on every affected area, plus the overviews carriers expect. Labeled and organized, delivered with the estimate.
Readings, affected materials, and the water category and class established on site — the piece most often missing when a mitigation scope gets challenged.
Flooring type and transitions, cabinet grade, trim profile, texture, and anything custom that changes the line item from a default to the real thing.
Layers, pitch, accessories, flashing, and damage location verified from the roof rather than inferred from an aerial report.
The finished Xactimate file — ESX and PDF — scoped, priced, and reviewed before it reaches you. This is the deliverable; the inspection is how we get there.
These are the areas we cover on the ground. Outside them, we still write your estimate remotely — and for a large enough loss, we’ll quote the travel.
Wind and hail on the benches, freeze and burst-pipe losses through the winter, and the interior water damage that follows. Dense claim volume and short drives between properties.
Wind-driven rain, monsoon-season roof and water losses, and heavy tile and stucco exposure. A market where a lot of files get written from photos because nobody local is available.
Ice dam and freeze losses, lake-effect snow load, and the slow interior water damage that shows up months after the leak started. Older housing stock with layered materials that photos rarely explain.
Hurricane and wind-driven rain, roof and envelope damage, and humidity-driven secondary damage. Condo and multi-unit work where scope disputes turn on documentation.
Property more than 100 miles from one of these? Send it over anyway — a flat $150 trip fee applies and we’ll confirm before anything is scheduled.
Large commercial and multi-building losses are quoted per project rather than straight percentage. We’ll confirm the number in writing before scheduling.
We coordinate access with whoever lets us in, and that’s the extent of it. We don’t discuss coverage, settlement, or strategy with the homeowner, and we don’t contact the carrier. The estimate comes to you and you handle the claim relationship. If you’d rather we route scheduling through your project manager instead of the homeowner, say so and we will.
The $250 minimum applies. On a small loss, 2% won’t cover the drive and the site visit, so that’s the floor. If you know going in that it’s a minor loss, tell us and we’ll be straight with you about whether an on-site visit is worth it — sometimes a desk estimate from your photos is the better call, and we’ll say so.
Usually within 48 hours of the inspection. Large or multi-building losses take longer, and we’ll tell you the timeline when we schedule rather than after.
No. Our fee is a percentage of the estimate we write, calculated when the estimate is finished. It doesn’t change based on what the carrier approves, what gets paid, or how the claim settles. That keeps our incentive on writing the scope correctly rather than on the outcome of your claim.
Yes. If your team runs Matterport, DocuSketch, CompanyCam, or a specific photo-labeling convention, we’ll capture into it so the file lands in your system the way your other jobs do. Tell us the workflow when you book.
For a large enough loss, yes — send us the address and we’ll quote the travel. For everything else, we write estimates remotely nationwide from your photos, measurements, and documentation. The on-site service is where we can physically get to.
Yes. Firms running several inspections a month get on-site work folded into a volume rate with monthly invoicing instead of per-job pricing. That’s worth a short conversation — start on the For Firms page.
Tell us where the property is and what happened. We’ll confirm whether it’s in range, what it’ll cost, and when we can be there — before anything gets scheduled.
Request an inspectionGive us the address and the loss type. We’ll come back with the fee, the timeline, and a scheduling window — no commitment until you say go.
Need it scheduled fast? Email info@directestimating.net and put the property address in the subject line.