How the data is made

1. What this site does

Before you sign a roofing estimate, see what homeowners in your area actually paid for the same job, and where your estimate lands next to them. Every page shows up to three numbers for the same job, and we never mix them: what owners said they paid (from a government survey), what was listed on the permit (from city records), and what homeowners reported to us. Each number is made a different way. This page shows the recipe for each one, step by step, so you can judge how much to trust it.

2. "Paid": the American Housing Survey

What the survey is

The U.S. Census Bureau and HUD ask a large sample of American households about their home. Through 2023 the survey ran every two years, from May to September. The Census Bureau is moving it to year-round collection, starting January 2026 or later. Owners who did a major job in the last two years are asked what it cost. For a new roof the question is: "How much did the entire roofing job cost, including your costs and any amount covered by insurance, not counting your time?" The survey doesn't ask about roof size or roof covering, so we can't show those from it.

Which answers we use

We keep an answer only if all of these are true:

• the home is a single-family house (detached or attached), owned by the people living in it;
• the job was adding or replacing the roof, not a repair;
• someone outside the household did most of the work;
• the job was finished;
• the owner gave the amount themselves (the Census Bureau fills in missing answers with estimates; we leave those out);
• the amount is $1,000 or more, because anything lower is not a new roof.

How we count

Each household in the survey stands for a number of similar homes in its area, so each answer carries a weight. We line up the weighted answers from lowest to highest and take the median: the amount where half the roofs cost less and half cost more. We take the first amount at which the weighted count reaches half. This is the same way the Census Bureau gets its own U.S. median of $10,000, and our program reproduces that number exactly. The middle half on our pages is the range from the 25th to the 75th percentile: one quarter of roofs cost less than its low end, one quarter cost more than its high end.

What "area" means

A survey number covers a metro area with its suburbs, as the Census Bureau defines it, not the city limits. The Dallas number, for example, includes Fort Worth and the towns around both.

Which years

The 2023 survey covers jobs done in the two years before the interviews, roughly 2021 to mid-2023. Where a metro area is not in the 2023 files, we use the 2021 survey (jobs from roughly 2019 to mid-2021), and the page says so.

When we don't show a number

A metro area gets a survey number only when at least 30 roofs are behind it. We also checked every number against the Census Bureau's own reliability rule, which drops any number whose standard error is 30 percent or more of the number itself. Where there is no reliable local number, the page says "No local number" instead of guessing.

3. "Listed on the permit": city records

What a permit value is

When a contractor applies for a building permit, most cities ask for the value of the work. That amount is written on the permit, and some cities publish it as open data. It is not a price and not what the homeowner finally paid. Some cities use it to work out the permit fee; others charge a flat fee. Some people round it, estimate it, or leave parts of the job out. We show it because it is a public record of what was declared for a real roof in a real city.

Where the records come from

We download the city's own public file or export. Where a city shows each permit's value only one permit at a time on its public permit site, as Dallas does, we read each listed permit's page, slowly and only once, and keep just the job details. We use a city's records only if its data terms let us, and only in the way they allow. The list of cities, with links and each city's terms, is on our Sources page, together with the cities whose records we don't use and why.

How we clean them

The main steps are the same in every city. Each city page and the Sources page list exactly what we left out there.

• Keep only permits for replacing the roof on a house with one or two families (in New York, up to three). Drop repairs, partial jobs, solar work, garages and sheds on their own, apartment buildings, and jobs that mixed the roof with other work.
• Keep only permits the city actually issued. Drop ones that were denied, withdrawn, expired, or never issued.
• Drop permits with no amount, amounts under $1,000, and amounts over $500,000, which are not single-house roofs.
• Drop duplicates: the same permit listed twice, or the same roof filed again.
• Remove names and street addresses before we work with the data. Where we need to spot repeat permits for the same property, we replace the parcel number with a scrambled code.
• Read the roof size, the covering (shingles, metal, flat membrane) and whether the deck was replaced from the permit's own fields, or from the job description where the city has no field for them. Where a permit gives the roof size in roofing squares (one square is 100 square feet), we convert it to square feet when the record makes clear that it is squares; where we can't tell, we leave that size out, and the city page says so.

How we count

The median and the middle half are counted as for the survey, but without weights: we line the permits up from lowest to highest and each permit counts once. With an even number of permits, the median is halfway between the two middle amounts. Where the page splits permits by covering, by year, by ZIP code or by roof size, each group shows its own median only when it has at least 30 permits; smaller groups are marked as too few for a number.

What the page never shows

No addresses, no names, no parcel or permit numbers, no exact dates. Only the year or month, the ZIP code or borough, the job details and the amount.

4. "Estimates and bills": homeowner reports

Readers send us an estimate they got, or a bill they paid, with the form on each city page. The form asks for your estimate or estimates, your final bill if the job is done, the job, the year and the house type, plus optional details like the roof covering and size. The city comes from the page you send it from. It never asks for a name or an email address, and it has no free-text box.

We read every report by hand before it appears. We don't see the estimate or the bill, so we can't check the amount or the details. Reports are marked "reported by the homeowner". City pages show only full-replacement reports. We don't change anything in a report. We only approve it or reject it. A city's estimate median shows once it has 10 approved reports, counting every estimate in them (a report can hold up to 4). Final bills get their own median at 10 bills, never mixed with estimates. With an even number, the median is halfway between the two middle amounts. Reports we reject are deleted within 7 days of review.

5. "Where does your estimate land?"

On each city page you can type in your own estimate and see where it sits. We compare it with each set on its own: with the survey roofs for your metro area (against the median, the middle half and the top quarter), with the city's permits where we have them (what share of them list less), and, once the city has 10 homeowner reports, with those estimates (how many are lower). We never compare your number with another city, and we never mix the sets. The amount you type stays in your browser; nothing is sent or saved unless you choose to send it as a homeowner report.

6. What we never do

• We never invent an average. Every number is counted from real survey answers, permits or reports, and the main numbers show how many are behind them.
• We never mix cities. Each number belongs to one city or one metro area; where a chart shows the whole US or a wider region next to it, that bar is labeled and counted on its own.
• We never mix the three kinds of numbers.
• We never hide unusual amounts quietly. We leave out only amounts that can't be a house roof — under $1,000 or over $500,000 — and each city page lists what we left out. Everything else stays in the numbers, high or low.
• We are not connected with any city, contractor, brand or manufacturer, and nobody pays us to be listed.

7. When the numbers change

The 2023 survey is the latest one published. The Census Bureau is moving the survey to year-round collection, starting January 2026 or later; it hasn't said when the first new numbers will come out. When new survey numbers come out, we update the pages and say so. We re-export city records from time to time; the source line under each city's permit numbers says when we exported them or which period they cover. A page's "Data checked" date changes only when a number on it actually changed, not when we fix a typo.

8. Found a mistake?

Email us and we will look into it. If a permit on this site is about your home and you want it removed, email us and we will remove it.

[email protected]

9. Who runs this site

HomeFixPaid is made by a small team in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is not an estimate for your job and not construction, financial, legal or insurance advice; get written estimates from licensed contractors before you sign. Write to us at [email protected].