Roofing Contractors in Boston, MA Who Show Up, Explain the Work, and Clean Up

For a typical Greater Boston single-family home, an architectural asphalt shingle replacement usually lands somewhere between $9,000 and $18,000. A flat EPDM or TPO roof on a three-decker runs roughly $10,000 to $22,000 depending on insulation and drainage work. Slate restoration and standing seam metal are their own category and can exceed $30,000. Those are market ranges, not a quote — pitch, access, tear-off layers, and decking condition move the number more than square footage does. Our free roof inspection ends with a written itemized figure for your actual roof.

Yes. A residential reroof with no structural work goes through Boston Inspectional Services on a Short-Form Permit, which costs $20 plus $10 for every $1,000 of the work estimate. The contractor files the trade license, a Certificate of Liability Insurance, the Massachusetts Workers Compensation Affidavit, the signed homeowner contract, a Site Safety Plan Affidavit, and the Mattocks-Higgins Affidavit of Workplace Safety. We pull it, we close it out, and you get the paperwork. Full details are in our Boston roof permit guide.

Sometimes legally, rarely wisely. Massachusetts allows a maximum of two layers of asphalt shingles, and slate, clay tile, cement tile, wood shake and asbestos-cement tile must always be torn off rather than overlaid. Even where an overlay is permitted, it hides rotted decking, adds dead load on rafters already carrying a 40 to 50 psf design snow load, and voids most manufacturer warranties. We tear off. If a contractor is pushing an overlay to win on price, that is what you are actually buying.

Under the state residential code, an ice barrier — either two cemented layers of underlayment or a self-adhering polymer-modified bitumen sheet — has to run from the lowest edge of the roof to at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line. On slopes of 8:12 or steeper it also has to extend at least 36 inches measured along the slope from the eave. On a steep Victorian or a triple-decker with deep overhangs that means two or three courses of membrane, not one. Read the full breakdown in our ice and water shield code guide.

Almost always because the failure is not in the shingle field — it is at a transition. Wind-driven rain gets pushed sideways under step flashing, up a valley, or behind a chimney counterflashing that a light drizzle never reaches. It can also be volume: clogged gutters or an undersized valley backing water up under the courses. The stain on your ceiling is rarely directly below the hole, which is why we inspect the whole roof and the attic rather than patching the nearest shingle.

A straightforward asphalt replacement on a single-family home is usually one to three days from tear-off to final magnet sweep. A three-decker with a flat deck, staging on all four sides, and no driveway takes longer — often three to five. Slate restoration and historic-district work run one to two weeks because the material handling is slower and the approvals come first. We do not open a roof we cannot dry in before the next storm, so New England weather is the real variable.

Yes. ALL PRO PHOENIX CORP carries Massachusetts contractor credentials plus general liability and workers compensation coverage, and certificates come with every written estimate. You should verify any roofer you talk to: Massachusetts publishes a free Home Improvement Contractor lookup, and the Construction Supervisor License is the license of record on your building permit. A legitimate Massachusetts roofer carries both — our licensing guide explains how to check.

Around the clock. Call +1 (209) 758-8550 and you get a person, not a voicemail box. We will walk you through containing the water — buckets, a tarp inside if it is safe, moving what you can — and get a crew out to tarp the roof properly. Do not climb onto a wet, steep, or snow-covered roof yourself. See emergency roof repair for what happens next.