Roofs in Los Angeles go wrong in a handful of fairly predictable ways, and the right person to call depends on which one you’ve got. This page runs through the work the contractors we work with handle, so you can head straight to the page that fits your roof.
Quick note on what this site is, in case you’ve landed here cold. LA Roof Experts isn’t a roofing company. We’re a referral service. You tell us what’s going on with your roof, and we match you with one licensed, insured roofing contractor who works in your part of Los Angeles County. They come out, look at it properly, and give you a written quote. You get their CSLB licence number up front, so you can check it yourself on the state register. It’s free, there’s no obligation, and if the contractor isn’t the right fit, tell us and we’ll match you with someone else.
Leaks and roof repair
Most calls start once the rain does, roughly October through March. The tricky part with a leak is that the wet patch on your ceiling is hardly ever directly under the hole. Water runs along rafters and sheathing and drops wherever it likes, so the job starts with finding the real entry point: a slipped tile, a failed pipe boot, a rusted valley, flashing that’s lifted away from a chimney or parapet wall. Some of that is a couple of hours’ work. Sometimes it’s the first sign the roof has had its day. A straight answer on which one you’re looking at is the thing worth getting.
Read more about roof repair and leak tracing.
Full roof replacement
Age is the quiet driver of most roof work here. The median home in LA County was built in 1965, and 49% of homes in the City of LA predate 1960, so an awful lot of roofs are on their second or third covering. Replacement is where the detail matters: tear-off versus overlay, what the sheathing looks like once the old covering is off, underlayment, ventilation, and the permit. City of LA jobs go through LADBS, while Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and the other independent cities run their own building departments on their own timelines.
Read more about roof replacement.
If you have solar panels
Panels have to come off before a roof can be replaced and go back on afterwards, and that detach-and-reset runs roughly $4,000 to $10,000 on its own. So the rule of thumb is simple: if your roof is 15 years or older and you’re thinking about solar, do the roof first, or you’ll end up paying for the reset later.
Tile roofs and lift-and-relay
Around Pasadena, Glendale, San Marino, Hancock Park, Silver Lake and Palos Verdes, tile is everywhere, and tile roofs almost never fail at the tile. They fail at the underlayment underneath, which has a life of a few decades while concrete and clay tile can last far longer. That’s what “lift and relay” means: the tile comes off carefully and gets stacked, the old underlayment and battens are stripped and replaced, and the same tile goes back down, with breakage made up from salvage. It costs a good deal less than a new tile roof and it’s the right call more often than people expect.
Flat and low-slope roofs
Mid-century houses, duplexes and most small commercial buildings sit under flat or low-slope roofing, which is a different trade from shingle work. Ponding water, seams, drains and scuppers, parapet flashing, and single-ply or modified bitumen instead of shingles. If your roof is flat, it’s worth making sure whoever quotes it does this kind of work regularly.
Commercial and multi-unit buildings
Apartment buildings, small retail, offices, warehouses and HOA-managed property bring their own problems: tenants underneath, roof-mounted HVAC, access and scheduling, and a budget that has to be justified to someone else. Property managers usually want a condition assessment and a repair-versus-replace opinion before anything else.
Read more about commercial roofing.
Roof inspections and second opinions
Not every enquiry is an emergency. Plenty of people just want someone to get up there and say how many years are left, or to look at a roof before they buy the house, or to sanity-check a quote that felt off. That’s a good enough reason to get matched, and the inspection and written quote are free either way.
Fire-rated Class A roofs
Across the foothills and the burn areas, Chapter 7A of the California Building Code applies, and it asks for a Class A roof assembly rather than just a Class A shingle. That distinction trips people up. The rating is earned by the whole build-up together, including the underlayment and the way it’s put down, not by the top layer on its own. Chapter 7A also covers ember-resistant vents and non-combustible gutters, since embers landing in a vent or a gutter full of leaves is how a lot of houses are lost. If you’re rebuilding after the Palisades or Eaton fires, or you’re in a high fire severity zone and re-roofing anyway, this belongs in the conversation from the first visit.
Not sure which one you need?
You don’t have to work it out first. Describe what you’re seeing, in whatever words you’d use, and the contractor we match you with will tell you what’s going on once they’ve looked at it. Tell us about your roof and get matched.