About Roof Age
Roof Age is a Nearmap product available for properties in the US. It predicts the roof installation date and therefore age of both residential and commercial roofs. The prediction uses Nearmap imagery, Gen 6 AI data and additional third-party data including climate data, building permits and assessor year-built data to arrive at an accurate roof age estimation.
The Roof Age Gen2 product uses multiple bespoke AI models to determine roof age by detecting a new roof installation in imagery or using images of a roof to estimate its age, as well as utilizing the additional information provided by building permits and assessor year-built data. This ensures comprehensive roof age estimates for every parcel.
Roof Age predictions are aligned with property ownership by using parcel boundaries. This enables roof age predictions on only the portion of the roof within a particular parcel rather than the entire building, for example, in the case of row homes.
To deliver the unprecedented scale of property intelligence offered by Roof Age, we analyzed 2.8 billion roof images spanning 2.5 million square miles of aerial imagery and covering a total of 151 million parcels nationwide. This massive dataset is backed by a rich temporal history, with over half of all parcels featuring 10 or more historical captures, allowing for a deep understanding of roof evolution over time.
Since Roof Age’s dataset is precomputed at a national scale, it enables sub–two-second lookups, empowering insurers to quickly evaluate roof-related risks and make faster, more informed underwriting decisions.
Updated: October 8, 2026 - Nearmap Roof Age now runs on model A.1. This is a minor model update focused on supporting historical retrospective testing, with no changes to your integration or workflow.
Roof Age calculation
The method of calculation of Roof Age is dependent on the data available for a given location.
- When multiple images are available, a specialized deep learning model detects whether a new roof installation has occurred between captures. If a new roof is detected, the roof installation date is calculated as the mid-point between the capture dates.
- In cases where a new roof installation is not detected in the imagery, or only one image is available, a separate machine learning model uses the available roof imagery, along with other third-party data, to predict the age of the roof.
- In cases where no imagery is available, roof age estimates can still be provided by analyzing other data sources such as building permits or assessor year-built data where available.
In addition to providing the roof installation date and roof age, the Roof Age product also provides an Evidence Type and a Trust Score with every prediction. These measures help assess the reliability of the predicted roof age and offer additional context for every prediction.
- Evidence Type indicates what data and method was used to calculate the roof age.
- Trust Score quantifies the reliability of each prediction. It reflects both the strength of the evidence available and the model’s confidence in its prediction.
These combined measures provide transparency around the roof age prediction and allow insurance carriers and other users to evaluate prediction quality and make informed decisions such as the likelihood of a roof replacement being required. For more information about Evidence Types, see this article.
Accessing Roof Age
Currently, Roof Age is available in Betterview with additional access options now being introduced. You can access Roof Age for a property in the following ways:
- In Betterview via the Construction tab - you can view imagery and compare roof age between two different survey dates.
- Via the Roof Age API - If you're a Nearmap customer, you can use this API to retrieve roof age data that includes roof instances, age and type. You can augment this with information about roof condition, materials, objects and so on, using Roof Age API in conjunction with the AI Feature API.
- Via the Property Insights and Property Now APIs - If you're a Betterview customer, you can use these APIs to get roof age data.
Using this information, insurance carriers can assess the cost of replacing the roof at the end of its life when issuing a new policy.
Model updates
Nearmap Roof Age moved to a new model, A.1, on October 8, 2026. This is a minor update: your integration and workflow stay the same, and the update mainly adds support for historical retrospective testing.
Retrospective testing
Roof Age A.1 supports retrospective testing. You can run Roof Age against your own book of business at any historical date, so you can see how the model performs in a claim predictive lift study.
Refreshed data
Roof Age A.1 refreshes at least twice a year. The previous A.0 model refreshed annually, and was last refreshed in September 2025. More frequent refreshes mean Roof Age results track more closely with current roof conditions, reducing the lag between a change on a roof and a change in your data.
Improved accuracy
Roof Age A.1 delivers stronger precision and F1 scores than A.0. Precision, recall, and F1 measure whether the model correctly predicts a roof installation in imagery.
Score Type | Description | Example Values |
|---|
F1 | Combines precision and recall into a single metric. A higher F1 score means Roof Age is both reliable and comprehensive. | 78.0% (+2.4 percentage points) |
Precision | Measures how often Roof Age is correct when it detects a roof installation within imagery. Higher precision means fewer false positives. | 70.9% (+6.0 percentage points) |
Recall | Measures the share of properties that had a roof installation in imagery that Roof Age correctly detected. Higher recall means fewer false negatives. | 86.8% (-3.7 percentage points) |
When Roof Age correctly detects a roof installation in imagery, it now predicts the replacement date within one year 96% of the time, up from 95% with A.0.
Because A.1 and A.0 are different models, they can return different roof age results for the same property. Most results land within plus or minus one year of each other, and A.1 tends to skew toward slightly older roof ages than A.0.
Frequently Asked Questions
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