FAQ

Yes in almost every municipality, and here is the part that matters far more than the answer: DO NOT PULL IT YOURSELF. Obtaining permits is the registered contractor's responsibility under M.G.L. c. 142A. A homeowner who pulls their own permit falls into the homeowner exemption, which disqualifies them from recourse under c. 142A and from the Guaranty Fund -- the fund that compensates eligible homeowners up to $25,000 toward unpaid judgments against a contractor. So when a roofer suggests it would be quicker if you pulled it, what is actually being proposed is that you give up your protection to save somebody an afternoon.

A standard asphalt replacement on a Greater Boston single-family house typically runs $12,000 to $22,000, reaching about $30,000 on larger or more complicated roofs. Per square foot that is $6.75 to $11.50 for architectural shingle against $3.50 to $5.50 for three-tab. Boston-area labor puts these figures roughly 10 to 15 per cent above western Massachusetts, which is worth knowing if you are comparing against a statewide average.

Almost nobody in this trade quotes roofing by the hour, and you should be wary of one who offers to. Replacement work is priced by the square -- 100 square feet of roof area -- because the quantity is measurable and the risk of the job running long sits with the contractor rather than with you. Hourly pricing turns delays into your problem. Small repairs and diagnostic work are the exception and may carry a call-out or minimum charge, which should be stated up front.

Not on age alone. Twenty years is well inside the normal service life of architectural asphalt and at the end of it for three-tab, so the first question is which you have. Then it is condition: granule loss, brittleness, how flat the covering lies, whether the deck is sound. North of Boston, add one more -- whether it has been damming. A roof with twenty winters of meltwater under its bottom courses is considerably older at the eaves than it is anywhere else, and that is where it will fail.

Rarely the full term in this climate. The rating describes the material under test conditions, not a roof on a particular house north of Boston. What shortens it here is the melt-refreeze cycle at the eaves, roof space ventilation, and how well the thing was nailed on day one. A 30 year product commonly gives 20 to 25 real years here, and a roof with proper ice barrier coverage and a working ventilation path will beat one without by several of them.

For a standard asphalt roof on an average house, it is at the top of the range -- most Greater Boston single-family replacements land at $12,000 to $22,000. It is entirely reasonable for a large or steeply pitched house, a roof with a lot of dormers and valleys, or cedar shake at $12 to $20 a square foot. The number alone does not answer the question; what the quote itemizes does. If it does not break out area, tear-off, decking and the ice barrier, no figure can be judged.

Nobody selling roofs is a neutral source on that, so here is what is known rather than a forecast. Roofing prices follow asphalt input costs, freight and local labor availability, and in this region they spike every spring because an entire winter's worth of damage gets reported in the same two weeks after the first real thaw. The practical consequence is not about the year -- it is that the cheapest time to replace a roof is when you choose to, and the most expensive is the month everybody else has decided at once.

It is a Florida rule and it has no force in Massachusetts. The 25% rule comes from the Florida Building Code Existing Building, where repairing or replacing more than a quarter of a roof within a year can require the whole roof to be brought up to current code. Massachusetts has no equivalent provision -- what governs here is the state building code and your own municipality's permitting. It turns up in searches because national content repeats it without saying which state it belongs to.