Santa Fe has more concrete and clay tile roofs per capita than any city in New Mexico. It also has more badly-inspected tile roofs, because most local roofers cut their teeth on asphalt shingle and treat tile like a shingle system. It's not.
This is what we look for on a tile roof inspection, what's actually failing when a tile breaks, and why almost every tile roof leak we find is really an underlayment leak.
The tile is a rain shield, not a waterproof layer
Concrete and clay tiles are designed to shed water — not stop it. The waterproof layer is the underlayment underneath: originally 30-lb felt, now typically synthetic or self-adhered membrane. Tile lasts 50+ years. Underlayment on a Santa Fe roof at 6,900 feet elevation with 300+ days of UV lasts 18–25.
Which means every tile roof in Santa Fe built before 2005 is either due for underlayment replacement or leaking already.
What we inspect
A real tile roof inspection covers: tile condition (broken, slipped, spalled, or delaminated), fastener corrosion, mortar and cement joint integrity at hips and ridges, flashings at chimneys and walls, valley metal (often the first failure point), and — most importantly — underlayment condition where visible at eaves and rakes.
If we can lift a tile at a valley or eave without breaking it, we do. What we see under the tile tells us more than what we see on top.
Broken tiles are usually not why you're leaking
The most common call: "I have broken tiles, my roof is leaking." Almost always wrong. Broken tiles cause leaks only if the underlayment underneath has already failed. A single broken tile over a 5-year-old underlayment sheds water fine. A perfect tile field over a 25-year-old degraded underlayment leaks at every seam.
If we're seeing tile damage AND underlayment failure, you need a full underlayment replacement (a tile lift-and-relay, $12–$18/sqft in Santa Fe) — not tile repair. If we're seeing tile damage on a young roof, you need $200 in tile replacement, not $22,000 in scaring.
The Santa Fe premium
Tile roofs in Santa Fe cost 20–30% more to inspect than asphalt shingle for four reasons: fragility (tiles crack under foot traffic), pitch (most tile roofs are 5:12 or steeper), access (walled compounds and shared driveways), and time (a real tile inspection takes 3–4 hours on a 3,000 sqft roof).
Our Tile Roof Report starts at $349 for single-story homes under 2,500 sqft and scales up for two-story and larger. If we can't safely walk it, we bring the drone. Either way, you get lifted-tile underlayment photos, not just aerial imagery.