Burbank
Roofing Contractors in Burbank
Burbank ordered every wood roof in the city off, and it set dates. Shakes and shingles already up there had to be gone by August 14, 2005 inside the fire zones and August 14, 2014 everywhere else. Nothing new may be laid over wood, which still shapes what a re-roof looks like here.
Free, and there is no obligation to go ahead.
- Free roof inspection
Someone comes out, gets on the roof, and tells you what they find.
- The price in writing
A written quote before anyone starts, with nothing to sign on the day.
- Licensed roofers
The roofer who turns up holds a current California license.
- Across Los Angeles County
From the Valley and the foothills to the Westside and the South Bay.
Burbank runs its own building department and its own water and power utility, and it bans wood roof coverings on every building in the city, new or existing. Its fire map was redrawn in 2025, and the zone your parcel carries decides what has to go on under the covering. All of that lands on a roofing quote.
- Housing stockClay barrel tile on the pre-war quarter, low-pitch composition on the 1940s and 1950s tracts
- Permit authorityCity of Burbank Building & Safety: a charter city with its own department
- Typical hereComp re-roof $9,000 to $25,000
- Worth knowingNo new covering over wood shakes, and wood anywhere in the stack means all of it comes off
What Burbank's housing means for your roof
Burbank filled up in one go. The city's own housing element puts 54.0% of owner-occupied homes in the 1940 to 1959 band and another 22.8% at 1939 or earlier, so more than three quarters of the houses people own here went up before 1960 (Burbank 2021-2029 Housing Element, Table 1-16, Census ACS 2014-2018). The same table counts 24 owner-occupied units built in 2010 or later, in the whole city.
That shows up as two different jobs on the same street. The houses from 1939 or earlier, 3,961 of the owner-occupied ones by the same table, are where the clay barrel tile and stucco parapets sit, and on those the tile outlives the underlayment by decades. The roof reads fine from the sidewalk while the felt under it has gone to powder, so usually the answer is a lift and relay: sound tile off, new underlayment, the same tile back down. The 1940s and 1950s tracts are the bigger half, 9,374 owner-occupied houses on their own, and Magnolia Park on the west side is the one everybody knows. Those are low-pitch composition, much of it on a second or third covering, and they let go at the ridge, at the plumbing jacks, and where a back addition meets the main slope.
Then there is the rule that trips people up. Burbank Municipal Code 9-1-2-1507.8 and 1507.9 say no wood roof covering shall be installed on any new or existing building or structure, and 9-1-2-1501.1.1 gave the wood shake and shingle roofs already in place a removal date, August 14, 2005 inside the Burbank Fire Hazard Severity Zones and August 14, 2014 outside them. Section 9-1-2-1512.3.1 goes further. Nothing may be laid over existing wood shakes or shingles, and where a roof carries two or more layers with wood anywhere in the stack, every layer comes off first. The city readopted all of it with the 2025 code under Ordinance 25-4,034, effective January 1, 2026. On an old Burbank roof covered over more than once, the bottom layer can still turn out to be shake, and a price written as an overlay stops being the price the moment it does.
The hillside is a third case. North of Glenoaks Boulevard the streets climb into the Verdugo foothills toward Stough and Brace canyons, and a tear-off up there means narrow roads, short driveways and long carries. Wherever you are in the city, though, the permit comes from one counter. Burbank is an independent city with its own Building and Safety Division under Community Development, at 150 North Third Street, so no county office and no City of LA office is in the picture. More is on the roof repair and roof replacement pages.
What roof work costs in Burbank
Estimate ranges for Los Angeles County, not quotes.
- Small repair(slipped tiles, resealing a vent, clearing a drain): roughly $400 to $900.
- Single-source leak(chimney or skylight flashing, a localized shingle repair, a flat-roof seam): roughly $800 to $2,500.
- Composition shingle replacement:roughly $9,000 to $25,000.
- Tile lift and relay:roughly $12,000 to $30,000.
- New tile throughout:roughly $25,000 to $60,000 and up.
- Flat or low-slope (TPO, modified bitumen, cap sheet):roughly $12,000 to $30,000.
- Solar panel removal and reinstall:roughly $4,000 to $10,000, on top of the roof itself.
Composition replacement at $9,000 to $25,000 is the commonest job in Burbank, and a lot of the city sits in the lower half of that band, because much of the valley floor is one story on a plain gable. What pushes a number up is tile, a hillside address with nowhere to put a dumpster, and a parcel the 2025 map put in High or Very High, where the fire assembly adds cost underneath the covering. The roofing costs page breaks that down.
Common questions about roofing in Burbank
Which fire zone is my Burbank house in?
There are three of them now. The council introduced the new zones on May 20, 2025 and took them up for adoption on June 3, 2025, following the state fire marshal maps released March 24, 2025, and the code says what happened: the designated fire zones were reclassified into three severity levels, Moderate, High and Very High (Burbank Municipal Code 9-1-7-302.1.1). Which level your parcel carries decides whether the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code applies to the roof, and with it an assembly tested to Class A under ASTM E108 or UL 790, ember-resistant vents and noncombustible gutters (CWUIC 504.2, 504.4 and 504.10.1). High and Very High both bring it in (CWUIC 101.3.1). Moderate is worth a call to Building and Safety, because Burbank adopted the whole code and put a Moderate zone inside it (Burbank Municipal Code 9-1-7 and 9-1-7-302.1.1). That code took effect January 1, 2026 and holds the rules that used to sit in Chapter 7A of the building code. Inside a zone the brush clearance rules reach the roof as well: five feet of vertical clearance between the roof and any tree overhanging it, and the roof kept free of leaves, needles and twigs (9-1-7-604.3.1).
Can I change my roof material in Burbank?
Wood is out, whatever the house looks like. Past that it turns on whether your house carries a designation. Under Burbank Municipal Code 10-1-927 a single property becomes a Designated Historic Resource only on the owner's own application, with the owner's consent, and the city records a covenant that runs with the land. After that, changing the appearance of the property needs a Permit to Alter before any building permit will issue (10-1-928). Whole blocks run on a separate track: a Historic District takes a petition signed by more than half the owners in it, and once one is adopted, work on a contributing house is measured against the Secretary of the Interior's Standards, which is where a change of roof material gets looked at (10-1-930 through 10-1-933). So check what your address actually carries before you assume either that the neighborhood decides or that nothing does. The zoning code names roof materials elsewhere too. In the R-1 and R-1-H single-family zones, roofing with a reflective surface that produces glare sits on the list of prohibited materials, and on a manufactured home continuously rolled metal roofing and any reflective roofing material are out as well (Burbank Municipal Code 10-1-603). In the Rancho, development review applications go to the Rancho Review Board, and the standards ask for long roof lines, wide eave overhangs and clay tile (10-1-630).
Should I re-roof before putting solar on a Burbank house?
If the roof is fifteen years or older, yes, and Burbank makes this easy to get backwards. Your power does not come from Southern California Edison. Burbank Water and Power is the city's own utility, a not-for-profit owned by the citizens of Burbank, and by its own count it serves more than 50,000 residential and business customers here. So the job runs on two rails. The interconnection agreement goes to BWP first, and BWP sends back a meter spot and a confirmation number to use when you apply. The permit end is quick, because Building and Safety runs an instant residential solar permit, so the permit can be in hand before anyone has been up on the roof. New solar here also moved to Solar Net Billing on January 1, 2026, with existing net metering customers grandfathered, so ask BWP what a change to your system does to that. Coming back later to lift an array and reset it runs roughly $4,000 to $10,000 on top of the roof.
Tell us the address and what is happening up there: tell us what's going on. We also cover roofing contractors in Glendale, roofing contractors in North Hollywood and roofing contractors in the Hollywood Hills.
The offer
$500 off a new roof, 10% off any repair
Start online and it is attached to your request, with nothing to remember.
- We get on the roof, and into the attic if that is where the answer is
- You get photographs of whatever we find
- The price in writing, with nothing to sign on the day
Tell us what is going on
A description is enough to start. We will come out, look at the roof properly, and give you the price in writing.