The permit record for 78704

Permit volume here is falling: 87 permits in 2024–2026 against 138 in 2021–2023, 37% down. That is not a sign that roofs stopped failing. More often it means the wave already passed — 78704 peaked in 2011, and much of the housing stock was reroofed then. Roofs put on during that peak are now 15 years old, which is early middle age for an asphalt shingle in Central Texas.

Roof permits in 78704, year by year

Repairs, remodels or new builds?

Not every roof permit means the same job. In 78704, 40% are filed as remodel — the roof being touched as part of a wider job on an existing house. The mix tells you what the neighbourhood is doing to itself — growing, maintaining, or being rebuilt one house at a time.

• Remodel — 512 permits (40%)
• Addition and Remodel — 276 permits (21%)
• Repair — 248 permits (19%)
• New — 161 permits (13%)

The work here is overwhelmingly on standing houses rather than new ones. Repair and replacement quotes on an existing roof depend on what the contractor expects to find under the shingles, which is why two honest quotes for the same job can differ by thousands.

78704 roof costs, measured rather than estimated

Most cost pages for Austin quote a national average with the city name dropped in. This one uses 78704’s own filings. The city’s permit record holds 51 residential jobs in this ZIP code that are roof work and nothing else — reroofs, replacements and repairs, not remodels that happened to touch the roof — each with a declared value. They fall like this:

• under $10,000 — 27 permits (53%)
• $10,000 to $20,000 — 8 permits (16%)
• $20,000 to $30,000 — 5 permits (10%)
• over $50,000 — 11 permits (22%)

The biggest single group is under $10,000, at 53% of them. The average across all 51 is $30,775. That is close to the citywide average of $27,916, so 78704 is a fair place to use general Austin pricing as a starting point.

Read these as orders of magnitude, not price lists. The number on a permit application is declared before the work starts, and decking surprises under old shingles are the classic reason a final invoice does not match it.

Who is registered in 78704

2 roofing and exterior contractors have a registered business address inside 78704. The register does not round. Where a website claims a decade, the state file will tell you the month.

The longest-established is Pjs Exterior Cleaning Cleaning Solutions Of Texas,, trading since January 1, 2018 — 8 years. That is long enough to have been through at least one serious hail event in this city, which is the thing that sorts roofing businesses out. One of these registered in the last two years.

None of this is an endorsement. The list is a public record, nothing more. Since Texas issues no state roofing licence, the only paperwork worth checking yourself is the insurance certificate — ask for a current one and confirm the dates.

How new is the housing here

Austin’s permit record starts in 2006, and since then 5,339 new homes have been permitted in 78704. When they went up matters more than how many, because roofs go on with the house and come off together:

• 2006-2010 — 657 homes (12%)
• 2011-2015 — 1,056 homes (20%)
• 2016-2020 — 1,739 homes (33%)
• 2021-2026 — 1,887 homes (35%)

The heaviest stretch was 2021-2026, with 35% of them. There are 657 homes here from the 2006–2010 build. UV, heat and hail take four or five years off a shingle’s rated life in Central Texas, so a 25-year product put on in 2008 is finishing now rather than in 2033. That is the wave 78704 is in.

What this means if you live here

The useful thing to take from all of this is that 78704 has a pattern, and your roof is somewhere in it. Knowing whether the houses around you were reroofed five years ago or fifteen tells you roughly how much time yours has left.