Siding Contractor Software in Minnesota

Minneapolis and St. Paul are stucco cities. A large share of the houses built before 1940 are stucco over wood lath, and a lot of siding work inside the two cities is either repairing stucco or siding over it. The ramblers in the first-ring suburbs, from Richfield and Bloomington to Roseville and Brooklyn Center, are a different job. Many of them got hardboard siding in the 1980s and early 1990s, and much of that hardboard swelled and rotted badly enough that it became one of the largest siding lawsuits in the country. Replacing it is still a steady share of Minnesota siding work thirty years later.

The newer suburbs are vinyl and engineered wood from the start, and hail is what drives the replacement calls there. The same storms that put roofs on the phone crack vinyl on the north and west walls, and an adjuster who writes for the roof often writes for two elevations of siding as well.

Licensing depends on how many trades the company does. A company that only does siding, with residential receipts over $15,000, is a single special skill and does not need the state license. A company that does siding and roofing, or siding and windows, is doing more than one special skill and needs the Residential Building Contractor license from the Department of Labor and Industry. That license takes an exam of 110 questions, most of them on the state residential code, and a payment into the Contractor Recovery Fund instead of a bond.

Insurance work carries a rule of its own. Minnesota law says a contractor being paid from a claim cannot offer to cover any part of the deductible, has to hand the homeowner a written notice of that rule with the first estimate, and can have its estimate thrown out by the insurer if it breaks the rule. On a hail job where the siding is on the claim, that notice goes out with the siding bid.