Half of Houston's housing predates 1982 and the single largest cohort is the 1970s — 192,199 homes, 18.5% of the city, now around fifty years old. Add the 1960s, 1950s, 1940s and everything earlier and you have 488,605 Houston homes built before 1980. Most of those roofs have been replaced twice. Doing the third one properly means opening the deck, running the wind numbers for your address, and pulling the permit the city genuinely requires.
Roof Experts is the roof replacement partner Houston TX property owners trust. We bring DFW-quality crews and materials to every Houston project — asphalt shingles, metal, tile, and slate. Free inspections, transparent pricing, workmanship warranties. Need an estimate? Call Roof Experts at (469) 936-7663 or request your free roof inspection online.
Everything comes off. On a Houston roof that matters more than most — 173,371 homes here predate 1960, and pre-1960 decks in this city carry plank sheathing, previous coverings and half a century of repairs. You cannot inspect a deck you have not uncovered.
Houston deliberately publishes no citywide wind speed. Its code sends you to the ASCE 7 hazard tool with the property's physical address at Risk Category II and requires the printout on the plans. We run it, attach it, and size the fastening schedule to it.
Soft sheathing, split boards, delaminated plywood and gaps too wide to hold a nail all come out. You see the bad sheets before they leave and the replacement count goes on the invoice — never a lump-sum allowance written before the roof was open.
Houston's own high-wind appendix states that roof coverings shall be installed and fastened in accordance with the roofing chapter or the manufacturer's instructions, whichever is most restrictive. That is our standing rule anyway, and in a city with a measured 96.7 mph gust on record it is the part of the job that decides whether the roof stays on.
Anything over an aggregate of 100 square feet requires a permit, and the city's own permit record specifies plan review and inspection. The permit and the worksheet stay on site until final approval. Starting without one carries an investigation fee of $333.42 minimum or double the fee, whichever is greater.
Beds, AC units, pool and drive covered before the first shingle moves, debris hauled in our roll-off because Houston will not take roofing material at the curb, and two magnet sweeps of the drive, yard and street at the end.
Squares, pitch, penetration count, visible deck condition and the ventilation the roof actually has against what it needs. A written number for the roof in front of us, not a per-square figure from a satellite image.
The ASCE 7 printout for your address goes into the file first, then the shingle line, starter, ridge, underlayment and metal get chosen against it. Houston bars wood shingles and shakes in new construction, so that choice is off the table from the start.
Administrative fee $33.56, permit fee with a $91.06 minimum, plan review at 25% of the estimated permit fee, ten business days processing, six months validity. We apply with the city's own Residential Re-Roof Only Worksheet and keep the paperwork on site as required.
Tear-off and dry-in the same day — an open deck does not sit overnight on the Gulf Coast in spring. Then decking, underlayment, metal, field, ridge, the city inspection, and a walk-through with you before the truck leaves.
Laminated asphalt covers the great majority of Houston roofs. What separates a good one from a poor one here is not the brand but the fastening and the ventilation — this is a wind city, and uplift begins at the eave, the rake and the ridge.
Houston runs 3.3 hail days a year within fifteen miles, with 21 golf-ball-or-larger days in the record. Class 4 is a laboratory impact rating that many carriers discount. We will explain what it is and is not, and quote the roof both ways so the premium is visible rather than folded in.
41,296 Houston homes predate 1940 and another 132,075 came in the 1940s and 1950s. Metal solves the low-slope porch runs and additions that keep failing in asphalt, and designer profiles suit the steep cut-up rooflines of the older inner-loop stock.
Five years on our labor for a full replacement, written and specific about what it covers, handed over at the end of the job rather than promised on a doorstep.
Install a complete manufacturer system — starter, field, ridge and underlayment from one line — and the manufacturer's system warranty applies in your name, with the registration and documentation handed to you.
Open-deck photographs, the sheathing replacement count, the products installed, the ASCE 7 wind printout and the permit. When you sell — and Houston turns over constantly — that file is what an inspector asks for.
Don't see your question? Call us at (469) 936-7663 — we're happy to talk it through.
Yes. Houston's Residential Code exempts roof covering work only up to an aggregate of 100 square feet, which is one square — nothing like a replacement. The city's own permit record for residential roofing states plan review required and inspection required, permits valid six months, and a ten-business-day processing time. The permit and the worksheet must be kept on site until final approval is granted. If a bidder tells you Houston does not permit re-roofs because it has no zoning, they are confusing two completely different things.
Houston publishes no flat re-roof fee, so we will not invent one. What is published: a $33.56 administrative fee, a $91.06 minimum permit fee for most Building Code Enforcement permits, and a non-refundable plan review fee of 25% of the estimated permit fee, with the permit fee itself calculated from the city's valuation tables by construction type and square footage. Most city fees rose 1.3910% on 1 January 2026 under a CPI policy. We get the real number and put it on the contract.
Whatever the ASCE 7 hazard tool returns for your specific address. Houston replaced the wind-speed cell in its design-criteria table with a footnote requiring the property's physical address to be entered into that tool at Risk Category II, with the printout attached to the plans for verification. Across a city of 640 square miles that is a sensible rule, and it means anyone quoting a single Houston wind number is quoting something the city has declined to publish.
We are not going to tell you it does, because we could not establish it. Houston's high-wind appendix contains tie-strap, sheathing and overhang provisions, but whether that appendix is mandatory or is one of several alternative compliance paths is not settled by the adopted documents we read. What is settled: Houston imposes no local secondary-water-barrier or sealed-roof-deck mandate, and amends no part of the roofing chapter except the wood shingle provision. Enhanced fastening arrives here through the address-specific wind speed instead.
Not in Houston. The Texas Department of Insurance designated catastrophe area takes in Harris County only where a property is east of State Highway 146 and inside the city limits of Seabrook, La Porte, Shoreacres, Pasadena or Morgan's Point. Houston is not one of those five, so no WPI-8 or WPI-8-E applies to a Houston re-roof. Pearland is different — part of it sits in Brazoria County, which is inside the designated area.
Possibly two previous roofs and a deck that has never been looked at. The 1970s are Houston's largest single decade at 192,199 homes, and 488,605 homes here predate 1980. We quote with a stated decking allowance, photograph every bad sheet before it leaves, and bill the actual count — rather than writing a low number and discovering the deck on the day.
Most single-family tear-offs are one day, sometimes two on a steep cut-up inner-loop roof or where decking replacement runs heavy. The calendar variable is the permit rather than the crew: the city's published processing time is ten business days, so we apply the week you decide rather than the week we mobilize.
Outside the spring, if the roof will hold. Houston's hail and damaging-wind days both cluster in spring, and the worst recent wind event in the measured record — the 96.7 mph gust at Bush Intercontinental — fell in June. A roof replaced in autumn or winter gets better crew availability and better material lead times, and it is already new when the season arrives rather than queued behind a city's worth of claims.
Free inspection, honest scope, real warranty. Most service work scheduled within 24–48 hours.
(469) 936-7663