Roof replacement
The first thing that separates two quotes here is not the shingle brand. It is whether the bidder priced the roof the house actually has — because on a large share of this region’s housing, the main roof is flat, the covering is a membrane, and the work is a different trade entirely.
When replacement is the right call
On a pitched roof the signals are the familiar ones: granules collecting in the gutters, curled or brittle edges, ridge caps working loose, and a covering past its early twenties. On a flat roof the reading is different — you are looking for seams opening, the membrane shrinking away from the parapet, blistering across the field, and water still standing two days after rain. A flat roof rarely looks dramatic before it fails; it looks tired, and then it leaks.
On the older stock there is a third signal that has nothing to do with the covering: ice at the eaves every winter, and a ceiling stain that follows it. That is an attic telling you it has no ventilation, and it will do the same thing to a brand-new roof unless the replacement addresses it.
What a complete quote includes
The roof type named, and each section priced in its own material where a house has both a pitched and a flat part. Tear-off and disposal with the layer count stated — code allows two, and a third is a regular find on housing from the mill years. Decking priced per sheet, plus a stated answer on spaced sheathing, because anything roofed a century ago sits on gapped boards that have to be sheeted over first. New flashing rather than reused at every wall and chimney. And on anything flat: the drainage, by name — scupper, internal drain, parapet detail — because a membrane laid over an old drainage problem fails the same way the last one did.
Then two lines this region makes likely. The rear porch roof on a multi-family, priced separately, which is the most commonly omitted item in a local quote. And ventilation, which on a pre-1940 house usually means creating intake and exhaust that never existed — the highest-value correction available, and the only day it is inexpensive.
The Boston factor
Three local realities shape every project. The housing is old — much of this crown was built between 1880 and 1930, which means layers, spaced sheathing and attics designed before anyone ventilated one. The building type is unusual: the three-family house with a flat main roof and a rear porch stack is the regional default in Malden, Medford, Quincy, Lynn and Brockton, and it needs a low-slope crew rather than a shingle crew. And the coast changes the metal: within a mile of the water in Revere, Lynn or east Quincy, flashings and collars corrode years before the covering they serve.
The working season runs roughly April into November, and it is narrower still for membrane work, which has a minimum application temperature. Seven usable months on a century-old housing stock means the capable crews commit early — so quotes gathered in late winter get both attention and a choice of dates.
Questions that separate two quotes on the same house
- Which sections are pitched and which are flat, and what material for each?
- This is the first question on this housing, not a detail. A membrane and a shingle roof are different trades with different lifespans, and a house with both needs two numbers rather than one.
- How many coverings are up there, and who pays to haul them off?
- Code allows two and a third turns up regularly on housing built between 1890 and 1930, which turns a recover into a full strip and doubles the disposal weight. Ask for the count the estimator observed on the roof.
- What is the per-sheet decking rate, and what if the sheathing is spaced?
- Spaced boards under a roof that once carried slate cannot take modern shingle nails, so the deck has to be sheeted over first. That is real material and labour, and a bid that never mentions it has not been in the attic.
- On a flat roof: where does the water leave, and is that path being corrected?
- Scupper, internal drain or edge — the drainage is the roof. A new membrane laid over a settled slope or an undersized outlet ponds exactly where the old one ponded, so ask whether the path is being reused or fixed.
- Is the rear porch roof included, and in what material?
- On a three-decker it is a separate roof, smaller and usually older, and it is invisible from the street. Left out of the quote, it becomes a second job at a price nobody competed for.
- Is intake and exhaust being created here, or just reinstalled?
- Both, sized to each other. On a pre-1940 house they usually have to be created rather than corrected, and that is what stops the ice at the eave from returning on a brand-new covering.