Roof Repair in Dawson

The permit record for Dawson

Roof permits in Dawson, year by year

The busiest year on record for Dawson was 2018, with 11 permits. Peaks like that are the paper shadow of a storm. Roofs do not age in unison; insurance claims arrive in unison.

The last six years split 8 permits in 2023–2025 against 11 in 2020–2022, slightly down. No wave, no drought — just roofs coming due at the pace roofs come due.

Roughly 32% of the roof work permitted in Dawson is on commercial buildings rather than houses — a mixed area, and worth remembering when you compare the total against a purely residential one.

Spread out, or packed in?

Dawson covers 0.50 square miles, which works out at 149 roof permits per square mile — 22nd densest of the 91 neighbourhoods with a measured area. The city average is 99.

Density like that changes what a job costs before anybody climbs a ladder. Where houses sit close together a crew can do two or three in a week without moving the truck far, and dumpster access, scaffolding and the neighbour’s driveway all become part of the conversation.

The two rankings disagree, and in the interesting direction: Dawson is 69th by total permits but 22nd by density. Compact and busy — a lot of roof work packed into very little ground, which is the profile of older, tightly built streets.

What the work in Dawson actually is

• Remodel — 30 (41%)
• Repair — 19 (26%)
• Addition and Remodel — 12 (16%)
• New — 11 (15%)

Most of this is maintenance on standing houses rather than anything new. In that situation the quote depends on what the contractor expects to find under the shingles, which is exactly why two honest numbers can be thousands apart.

What the neighbours declared

30 residential roof permits in Dawson carry a declared value. The median is $25,000. Half the jobs came in above that and half below. An average would have been higher and less useful, because a couple of big projects always sit at the top end.

That sits close to the $21,890 median across Austin neighbourhoods, so general city pricing is a fair starting point in Dawson.

Treat it as the size of the job rather than the price of it. Declared values are filed before anyone knows what is under the old roof, and that is where surprises live.

Dawson and the twenty-year clock

Since 2006 the city has permitted 427 new homes inside Dawson. 35 of them — 8% — went up between 2006 and 2010.

Only 35 homes from that window means the housing here is mixed in age. That is easier to live with: no year when the whole street needs scaffolding, and no scramble for crews.

Whose weather was it?

Austin as a whole peaked in 2024. Dawson peaked in 2018 — a different year entirely. That year ran 166% above this neighbourhood’s own average, which is the signature of a hail band rather than ordinary wear.

This is why citywide roofing statistics mislead. Storms are local: 79 of the 91 mapped neighbourhoods peaked in a year the city as a whole did not. Dawson took its hit in 2018, and the roofs replaced then are now 8 years old.

For scale: Dawson holds 0.5% of every roof permit issued in Austin.

If you own a roof in Dawson

None of this replaces an inspection. It does mean you can walk into one knowing what the street has been paying and when it was last done, which is more than most people have.

Sources: City of Austin issued building permits, joined to the city’s own neighbourhood boundaries by permit coordinates; Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, active sales tax permit holders. Both public records, retrieved September 2026.