Ask the internet how long a roof lasts and you’ll get the same recycled 15-to-30-year range, unsourced, on every contractor blog. Permits can do better. This page publishes what ScoutStack’s permit database — 13.7 million roofing permits, 12.9 million of them residential, across 1,312 counties — actually shows: how old homes are when the roof gets done, how long replacement intervals really run, and what projects are declared to cost. 732,943 residential roofing permits were issued in the past 12 months alone. All figures derived August 17, 2026; methodology at the bottom.
The median home is 42 years old when the roof gets done
Across 4,766,139 residential roofing permits issued since 2020 on homes at least five years old, the home’s median age at permit is 42 years — a quarter of permits go to homes under 25, a quarter to homes over 64. That number is about housing stock as much as roofing: in storm-cycled Texas the median is 32, while in New York, with some of the country’s oldest housing stock, it’s 89.
How long roofs actually go between replacements
Where the same home shows more than one roofing permit, the gap between them is a direct observation of a replacement interval — something no survey measures. Across 309,255 observed intervals of three years or longer, the median is 14 years (quartiles: 7 and 20). The state pattern is the insurance map:
| State | Median observed interval | Intervals observed |
|---|---|---|
| Ohio | 8 years | 5,123 |
| Texas | 9 years | 8,725 |
| Colorado | 10 years | 18,595 |
| Michigan | 11 years | 5,099 |
| Minnesota | 12 years | 15,477 |
| California | 12 years | 35,161 |
| Florida | 16 years | 185,740 |
Hail-belt states replace early — insurance-funded storm claims reset the clock in Texas and Colorado at 9–10 year medians. Florida runs longest at 16, a hurricane-code market heavy on tile and metal. One structural caveat: this sample only contains roofs that were replaced twice within our coverage window, so long-lived roofs are under-represented and every median here is a floor on true roof life. Both dynamics are why storm-damage targeting and roof-age targeting are different plays.
Residential roofing permits by year
| Year | Residential roofing permits (tracked) |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 470,676 |
| 2016 | 551,850 |
| 2017 | 619,582 |
| 2018 | 703,341 |
| 2019 | 665,974 |
| 2020 | 674,920 |
| 2021 | 715,089 |
| 2022 | 772,875 |
| 2023 | 915,233 |
| 2024 | 899,300 |
| 2025 | 810,667 |
| 2026 (through mid-Aug) | 412,708 |
Roofing permitting peaked in 2023 at 915,233 tracked permits and has stayed near that level since — unlike solar permitting, which fell 28% off its peak. Part of the early-years growth is our coverage expanding, so the 2015–2018 slope overstates market growth; the 2023–2025 plateau is real within tracked jurisdictions.
Roofing permits by state
The 15 states with the most tracked residential roofing permits over the past 12 months. Median home age is the home’s age when the permit was issued (permits since 2020); median value is the declared valuation on permits issued since January 2024.
| State | Past 12 months | Median home age at permit | Median project value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | 263,666 | 35 | $17,445 |
| California | 123,691 | 60 | $14,500 |
| Texas | 53,990 | 32 | $15,000 |
| Colorado | 43,483 | 38 | $12,000 |
| Minnesota | 24,354 | 51 | $13,000 |
| Kansas | 19,011 | 47 | $10,903 |
| Illinois | 18,907 | 55 | $17,512 |
| Michigan | 17,986 | 61 | $13,600 |
| Washington | 15,619 | 48 | $14,000 |
| Ohio | 14,298 | 60 | $11,764 |
| Massachusetts | 10,183 | 67 | $14,445 |
| Wisconsin | 9,411 | 60 | $15,913 |
| Georgia | 8,494 | 40 | $12,500 |
| New York | 8,466 | 89 | $18,414 |
| Connecticut | 8,466 | 62 | $14,500 |
Florida’s lead is not a coverage artifact — its post-2022 insurance market pushes replacement volume that no other state approaches. States missing from this table aren’t necessarily small roofing markets; several are simply under-covered in our permit ingestion today, so we leave them out rather than publish a misleading rank.
Methodology
- Source. ScoutStack’s production permit database: 120M+ building permits of all types across 2,456 U.S. counties, ingested from permitting jurisdictions and refreshed continuously. Roofing figures cover the 1,312 counties where the database contains residential roofing permits.
- What’s counted. Permits classified as roofing work on residential properties, deduplicated to one record per permit. Commercial and industrial roofing is excluded.
- Home age at permit. Permit issue year minus the home’s recorded build year, for permits issued since 2020 on homes at least five years old with a plausible build year (1900 or later). Records without a usable issue date (0.41% of residential roofing rows) are excluded from time-based figures.
- Replacement intervals. For homes with two or more roofing permits, the year gap between consecutive permits, keeping gaps of three-plus years to avoid counting corrections and re-filings of the same job. The sample is censored by coverage windows: intervals longer than a jurisdiction’s history cannot appear, so medians are floors on true roof life.
- Coverage. Not every U.S. jurisdiction publishes permits, and we don’t ingest every one that does. All counts are floors on true activity; the state table ranks only states where our coverage is materially complete. “Past 12 months” is August 1, 2025 through August 17, 2026.
Derived August 17, 2026. Spot something that looks wrong? Tell us — we’d rather correct a number than defend it.
Frequently asked questions
How often do roofs actually get replaced?
Among homes where we observe two or more roofing permits, the median interval between them is 14 years (a quarter are 7 years or shorter, a quarter 20 or longer, across 309,255 observed intervals). That sample skews short — a roof that lasts 30 years rarely shows both permits inside our coverage window — so treat 14 years as a floor on typical roof life, not an average.
What is the average roof age in the United States?
Nobody measures roof age directly at national scale — including us. What permits do measure: the median U.S. home is 42 years old when a roofing permit is pulled on it, and observed replacement intervals cluster between 7 and 20 years depending heavily on state. Any site quoting a single national “average roof age” without a method is guessing.
How much does a roof replacement cost?
The national median declared valuation on residential roofing permits issued since January 2024 is $15,000, ranging from about $10,900 (Kansas) to $18,400 (New York) across the highest-volume states. Declared permit valuations run below real contract prices in many jurisdictions, so these are conservative floors.
Why do Texas and Colorado roofs get replaced so much sooner than Florida’s?
The observed intervals track weather and insurance, not shingle chemistry. Texas and Colorado sit in the hail belt, where insurance-funded replacement after a storm resets the clock early — 9 and 10 year median intervals. Florida’s 16-year median reflects a hurricane-code market with more tile and metal roofs and replacement cycles shaped by insurers and building codes.
Can I cite these statistics?
Yes — cite freely with a link to this page. Figures come from ScoutStack’s own permit database, and the methodology section explains exactly what is and isn’t counted.