Three quotes, a huge spread, and no obvious reason. Where the money actually goes in a reroof, and the eight things to compare instead of totals.
Short answer: usually because the quotes describe different jobs. Scaffold, disposal method, material specification, who's actually on your roof, and what happens to the structure underneath all move the price — and none of them are visible in the total at the bottom.
You've got three quotes for the same roof. The spread between the lowest and the highest is more than the cost of a car — often $10,000 or more.
The natural conclusion is that somebody is overcharging. Sometimes that's true. More often the quotes describe genuinely different work, and the difference sits in things that don't appear on the front page of either document.
This is often the single biggest line that has nothing to do with roofing.
Working at height on a residential roof carries legal duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. Proper scaffold and edge protection is a controlled work platform, hired for the full duration of the job — not just the days someone is on the roof.
A quote priced around ladders and harnesses will always be cheaper than one priced around scaffold. It's also a different job, with different risk, and the person carrying that risk is working on your property.
Worth asking: is scaffold included, and how many weeks of hire are allowed for? Where scaffold has to stay up longer for reasons outside the roofer's control, the extra hire is generally chargeable — so the allowance matters.
If spouting is in the scope, that can change the scaffold too. Replacing spouting means working at gutter height around the building, which usually calls for platform scaffolding rather than simple fall protection.
There's a real difference between a company that employs its crew and one that subcontracts by the job.
Employed crews cost more. They also mean the team that starts your roof is the team that finishes it, with no rotation partway through and no handover of half-understood detailing. On a job where most of the important work disappears from view, continuity is worth something.
Neither model is dishonest. But they don't cost the same, and the difference is real rather than invented.
Two quotes can both say "long-run steel" and mean different things.
Coating and substrate selection should match your corrosion zone — Auckland is a marine environment and proximity to the coast changes what's appropriate. Fixings have corrosion ratings too, and an under-specified screw on a coastal roof will fail long before the sheeting does. Underlay specification varies. Flashings can be fabricated on site to match your profile and colour exactly, or bought as generic stock.
None of that is visible on handover day. All of it changes how long the roof lasts.
A full strip-out generates a lot of material that has to be removed from site and paid for at a transfer station. Concrete tile is heavy and voluminous.
There's a cheaper option, which is to fix new roofing over the existing roof. It's sometimes legitimate. It's also how a well-known compliance failure happens — the LBP Board has published a case where a roofer reroofed over existing cladding using a Schedule 1 exemption, produced work that failed to meet the Building Code, and had their licence cancelled.
If one quote is strip-and-replace and another is an overlay, you aren't comparing like with like. There's more on how that exemption works in most reroofs don't need a building consent, so who checks the work?
Some of the gap is simply what it costs to run a compliant business.
Public liability insurance. A site-specific health and safety plan for each job. Licensing and the requirements that come with it. Time spent photographing the property before scaffold goes up, documenting the substrate, registering manufacturer warranties in your name, and issuing a completion certificate and maintenance log.
Every one of those is a real cost carried by the contractor and passed into the price. A quote that doesn't carry them will be cheaper. You just want to know which of them you're not getting.
Worth being direct about this, because it's the honest answer to the whole question.
A company doing everything it can to be compliant and thorough will naturally cost more. Not because it's inefficient, but because more is being delivered. Compliance takes time. Documentation takes time. Photographing the substrate takes time. Doing the ventilation properly is another line on the invoice. All of it is real work, and all of it has to be paid for by someone.
The same goes for who's on your roof. Good tradespeople are in demand and get paid accordingly, and a business that keeps them employed rather than subcontracting by the job carries that cost year-round.
There's a second reason, less obvious and probably more important.
A business with no margin has no buffer. Roofing is a trade where things occasionally need putting right — a detail that has to be redone, a flashing that doesn't sit as it should, work that has to be revisited after a storm. When that happens on a job priced with a healthy margin, the contractor can absorb it and fix it. When it happens on a job priced to win at any cost, there's nothing left to fund the fix. The incentive shifts from making it right to making it go away.
So margin isn't only profit. On a job like this it works as a built-in insurance policy — money that exists, in effect, for the possibility that something needs putting right. A quote with none of it isn't a bargain. It's a job with no contingency for its own mistakes.
No, and it's worth saying plainly.
A larger company with more overhead isn't automatically doing better work. A high price guarantees nothing on its own. And a small operator with low overheads, doing the work themselves to a proper standard, can genuinely be both cheaper and excellent.
Price alone tells you very little in either direction. What tells you something is what the quote describes.
But if you find yourself choosing purely on the lowest number, it's worth asking what's been left out to get there — and who pays for it if something goes wrong.
Put the quotes side by side and compare these:
Run that comparison and the gap usually explains itself. Sometimes you'll find the cheaper quote is genuinely good value. Sometimes you'll find it's the same price once the excluded work arrives on the final invoice.
Either way you'll be deciding on the job rather than on the number.
For what a good quote should actually contain, see what should a roofing quote include?
Why do roofing quotes vary so much?
Because they often describe different work. Scaffold, disposal method, material specification, crew arrangements and what happens to the substrate all move the price, and none of them are visible in the total.
Is the cheapest roofing quote always the worst?
No. A small operator with low overheads can be both cheaper and excellent. What matters is what the quote describes, not what it costs.
What should I compare between roofing quotes?
Exclusions first, then scaffold allowance, disposal method, material and fixing specification, and what happens if rot is found once the old roof is off.
Should a roofing quote include a contingency?
The quote itself usually can't include substrate work, because it can't be seen until the roof is off. A good quote will tell you that and suggest an allowance — we suggest 15%.
