ROOF COST · BERGEN COUNTY, NJ
What a New Roof Costs in Bergen County, NJ
Answer a few quick questions about your roof and we email you a price range for it within minutes, with the reasons behind it. No number is printed on this page because no two roofs cost the same. Free on-site estimates. Residential roofs, Bergen County only.
GET YOUR PRICE
Tell us about your roof
Answer what you know. “Not sure” is a real answer. Your range is emailed to you straight away with the scope it assumes, and a copy goes to our office so whoever comes out already knows your house.
Commercial or flat roof? Call 201-989-0999 and we will arrange an on-site inspection instead. Water coming in right now? Do not wait on the email. Call 201-989-0999.
WHAT YOU GET
What Actually Lands in Your Inbox
The email lands in your inbox straight away, worked out from the answers you gave using the same rates we price real jobs at here. Here is what is in it.
- A range for a roof like yours. Not a national average. A band built from roofs we have actually stripped and replaced in Bergen County, narrowed down to your size, your stories, your pitch and your complexity. You can see a number of those jobs on our projects page.
- The scope that range assumes, line by line. Full tear off and disposal, GAF ice and water shield, GAF FeltBuster synthetic underlayment, GAF Timberline HDZ shingles, aluminum drip edge, ridge vent, new chimney flashing and pipe flashing, skylight flashing where there are skylights, and the permit where one is needed. One manufacturer’s system, top to bottom. If someone else has already given you a cheaper number, this is the part that shows you what was left out of it.
- The reasons behind it. Which of your answers pushed the range up, which held it down, and in plain language why.
- What could still move it. Almost always the layers and the decking. We tell you what we would expect to find on a house like yours and what it would mean.
- What is not in it, so nothing lands on you later. Replacement decking is not in the range and cannot be, because nobody knows what the plywood looks like until the old roof is off. It is priced per sheet in the written estimate so you see exactly what came out and what it cost. Gutters are not in it either. They are a separate job here and carry their own number.
You do not have to apply for anything to see your range, and nobody calls you the second you hit send. Our number is in the email if you want to use it, and a reply reaches a person.
STRAIGHT ANSWER
Why the Number Is Not Printed on This Page
We would rather look at a roof than guess at a number. That has been the position here for more than fifteen years and this page does not change it.
A range is honest. Size, stories, pitch and complexity are all things you can tell us from the ground, and together they set most of the cost. We can put a real band around that and stand behind it. A firm price from a stranger who has never seen your deck is a different animal. It is a guess with confidence attached to it.
What is under the shingles decides the final number. Not the shingles. The decking. The flashing at the chimney and the wall tie ins. How many layers are up there, which is not always what the homeowner was told when they bought the house. None of that is visible from the street or from an aerial photo, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. A contractor who commits to a hard figure sight unseen is doing one of two things. He is padding it so he is covered no matter what he finds, which means you pay for problems you may not even have. Or he is going in low to win the job and will start finding things once the tear off is underway, your roof is open and you have no leverage. Neither one is a good deal for you.
As for why we do not simply post a figure here: these are real prices for real jobs, not a marketing number. Any headline price we could put on this page would describe a roof nobody in Bergen County actually owns. It would be too high for a small ranch in Dumont and too low for a cut up three story in Fort Lee, and both of those homeowners would walk away with the wrong idea in their head. Taking a few minutes to send you an honest range for your actual roof is worth more than a number that fits nobody.
Then we come out and confirm it. The visit is free. The estimate that follows is written and itemized, so you are looking at line items instead of one number at the bottom of a page.
SIZE
Size Comes First, and Your House Size Is Not Your Roof Size
Roofers do not talk in square feet. We talk in squares. One square is one hundred square feet of roof surface. Shingles are ordered in squares, labor is estimated in squares, and the dumpster fills by the square. Almost every line on a roof replacement estimate scales off that one number.
The square footage on your tax record is living space. It is not the roof. Two things make the roof bigger than the floor plan underneath it. Overhangs push past the walls at the eaves and the rake edges. Slope stretches the surface, because a sloped plane covering a given footprint is always longer than the footprint itself. The steeper the roof, the more material is sitting over the same house.
Squares drive the shingles, the ice and water shield, the synthetic underlayment, the ridge cap, the nails, the hours on the roof and the weight going out. When two Bergen County houses look about the same from the curb and come back with different numbers, squares are usually the reason. A 1960s split in Bergenfield and a center hall colonial in Tenafly can sit on similar lots and measure out very differently.
There is one thing raw squares do not capture, and it matters. Waste. Every cut at a valley or a hip leaves a piece of shingle that goes in the trash. A plain rectangle wastes almost nothing. A roof that runs in six directions wastes a lot, and you buy what gets wasted. That is also why complexity is not a vague word on an estimate. It is a count of the places the crew has to stop, cut, fit and seal. Our questions ask about shape as much as size for exactly that reason.
PITCH & ACCESS
Pitch, Height and Whether the Crew Can Stand Up
Pitch is how steep the roof is, written as rise over run. A roof that climbs four inches for every twelve it runs is comfortable to walk. A crew carries bundles up, works off their feet and moves. Past a certain steepness that stops being true, and the same number of squares turns into a different job.
On a steep roof nobody walks. The crew sets roof jacks and planks, works off them, then pulls them and resets them a few courses at a time. Everyone is tied off. Material is staged in smaller loads, because a pallet of shingles will not sit still on a slope. The roof is identical in squares and takes far longer in hours. Labor is a large part of every replacement, so hours are the number.
Height stacks on top of pitch. A one story ranch is ladders and a dumpster at ground level. A three story house is longer ladders, more staging, a longer carry for every bundle going up and every piece of debris coming down, and more care about what sits below.
Then there is access, which nobody thinks about until the trucks arrive. Where the dumpster can sit. How far a bundle travels from the truck to the ladder. Whether a narrow street in Palisades Park or Leonia leaves anywhere to park. What has to be protected underneath, whether that is a patio, a deck, plantings or a neighbor’s driveway a few feet away. Tight lots and mature oaks add hours. None of it is interesting and all of it is in the number.
Bergen County has both kinds of roof. The 1960s splits through Bergenfield, Dumont and Maywood are often low and walkable. The older colonials in Englewood, Tenafly and Closter are steeper. Steep sheds snow and water well. It also costs more to cover.
WHAT IS UNDERNEATH
What Comes Off, and What Is Waiting Underneath
Everything so far is knowable from the ground. The next two things are where roofs surprise homeowners.
First, layers. Plenty of North Jersey homes carry a second layer of shingles that went on over the first one decades ago, because at the time it was cheaper than tearing off. Two layers means double the tear off labor and double the weight in the dumpster, and disposal is paid by weight. You can often check this yourself from the ground. Look at the edge of the roof above the gutter, or at the gable end where the shingles stop. A double layer shows a noticeably thicker, stepped edge. If you cannot tell, say so. Not sure is a real answer and we would rather have it than a guess.
Second, the decking. This is the line nobody can price from the street, and it is the reason we will not hand out hard numbers over the phone. Once the shingles and the old felt are off, the deck is in daylight for the first time in decades. Older Bergen County homes often have plank decking with gaps between the boards. Plywood goes soft around chimneys, in valleys, along the eaves where an ice dam pushed water back up under the shingles, and on the shaded north slope under a mature oak where moss holds moisture against the wood.
A sound deck means we pull only the bad sheets and show them to you. A deck that is finished means a new deck. On the Fort Lee replacement the house went back with a full new five eighths inch plywood deck before anything else was laid on it. The honest way to handle this is to price decking per sheet in the written estimate, replace what needs replacing, and let you see what came out.
Shingles are a covering. Once water gets past them and sits in the plywood, you are not buying a roof any more, you are buying a roof plus carpentry. That is the real cost of waiting. It also cuts the other way: if your roof is sound and the problem is one flashing or one valley, that may be a repair and not a replacement at all. We will tell you that too.
COMPARING QUOTES
Why Two Estimates for the Same Roof Are Almost Never the Same Job
Two roofers stand in the same driveway, look at the same house, and come back with numbers that are nowhere near each other. Most homeowners read the lower one as the same work for less money. It almost never is.
An estimate is not one item. It is a stack of decisions, and every decision has a cheaper version. Tear the old roof off, or shingle over the layer that is already there. Replace the step flashing where the roof meets the chimney and the sidewalls, or leave the old metal and run a bead of sealant. Run ice and water shield at the eaves and up the valleys, or skip the rolls. Use synthetic underlayment, or use felt. Set a real starter strip along the eaves and rakes, or cut up field shingles and use those. Cap the ridge with proper ridge cap, or bend three tab shingles over the peak. Every one of those shortcuts is invisible from the ground the day the dumpster leaves. Both roofs look new. The difference shows up the first February the ice sits at the eaves and backs water up under the tabs, or the first nor’easter that drives rain sideways at a chimney whose flashing was never replaced.
So when the low number lands, the useful question is not why he is cheaper. It is what he is not doing. Put both estimates on the table and read down them looking for what is missing.
- Does it say tear off, or does it say overlay? If the words “shingle over” or “second layer” appear anywhere, you are comparing a different job.
- Is ice and water shield named, and does it say where it goes? “Where needed” is not an answer.
- Underlayment, synthetic or felt? The estimate should say which.
- Is flashing listed as new? Chimney, sidewalls, valleys, drip edge, pipe boots. If flashing is not on the page, assume the old metal is staying.
- What happens if the decking is bad? A fair estimate states a per sheet price for replacement plywood up front. A vague one leaves that conversation for the day your roof is open.
- Is ventilation addressed at all? Intake low, exhaust high, or it is not a system.
- Who is on the roof, and are they insured? Ask for the NJ contractor registration number and the insurance certificate. Ours is #13VH11535000.
Two totals on two sheets of paper tell you nothing. Line items tell you who is tearing off and who is going over the top, who is flashing the chimney and who is not.
One more thing belongs here, because the roof comes off once. Whatever else you have been putting off up there, the sensible time to deal with it is while the deck is exposed and the flashing is being set anyway. Old skylights get replaced then, and on the Fort Lee job four new VELUX units went in with the roof. Some homeowners want the opposite, so in Oradell a skylight came out, the opening was framed and closed, and the roof went over it for good. Both are on our skylight page. Ventilation is the same conversation. A hot, dead attic shortens shingle life and feeds ice dams in January, and on that Fort Lee house we set two GAF attic fans along with the new roof. Chimney flashing that was tarred over last time gets cut in properly now rather than tarred again. Gutters are a separate job here with their own number. We do not touch your existing gutters during a roof job, but if yours are undersized or pulling off the fascia, new seamless gutters can go up right behind the roof. For how all of this runs across the county, see our page on residential roofing.
QUESTIONS WE GET
Roof cost questions from Bergen County homeowners
Because any price we printed would describe a roof nobody actually owns. These are real prices for real jobs, not a marketing number. Too high for a small ranch, too low for a cut up three story, and wrong for both homeowners. Tell us about your roof and we will send a range for that roof instead. A copy stays with our office, so the person who answers when you call already has your house in front of him.
Straight away. The range is calculated from the size, stories, shape and layers you give us, using the same rates we price real jobs at in Bergen County. It is not a national average and it is not a number designed to get us in the door. If your roof is flat, rubber, slate, tile or cedar, we do not put a number on it from a form at all. Those vary too much, so we will call you and arrange a look instead. And if something in your answers does not add up, we will call before we do anything else.
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. A range is built from what you can see from the ground: size, stories, pitch and complexity. The final number depends on what is under the shingles, mainly the number of layers and the condition of the decking. The free on-site visit is where the range becomes a written, itemized estimate.
You do not have to let anyone come out. Fill in the questions, read the email, and that is the end of it if you want it to be. If you do want the firm number, on-site estimates are free anywhere in Bergen County. We measure the roof properly, look at what can be seen from the ladder and the attic, and leave you with a written, itemized estimate you can hold up next to anyone else’s.
No. This page is for residential roofs only. Commercial and flat roofs vary too much for a range from a form: the membrane, the drains and scuppers, the parapet detail and how the crew gets on the roof all move the number, and none of it reads from an aerial photo. Call 201-989-0999 and we will arrange an on-site inspection instead. You can see the kind of commercial work we do on our commercial roofing page.
Yes. We offer financing through Wisetack, including 0% for 24 months for qualified homeowners, subject to credit approval. You do not need to apply for anything to receive your range. Financing is a conversation for after you know the number, not before, and we can walk you through it at the estimate.
FREE ON-SITE ESTIMATE
Or Skip the Email and Have Someone Look at It
The emailed range is the fastest way to get a real number without anyone standing in your driveway. If you already know the roof is done, or water is coming in, go straight to the part that ends in a firm number. The on-site estimate is free, we measure the roof properly, and you leave with a written, itemized estimate.
Top Roof LLC, 4 W Palisade Ave #1206, Englewood, NJ 07631. Call 201-989-0999 or email info@toproofnj.com. NJ Home Improvement Contractor Registration #13VH11535000. Licensed, insured and GAF Certified, working across all of Bergen County.
Book a free on-site estimate, or fill in the questions above and we will put your range in writing.