Brick Roofing has spent more than 20 years on roofing in Manasquan and the surrounding shore, and the work here rarely looks the same from one house to the next. On a single block we can be patching flashing on a cottage framed before the Second World War in the morning and checking a ten-year-old roof on a large new house that afternoon. The questions an owner needs answered are different for each, and we treat them that way.
What stays the same is how we start. A leak call gets a look in the attic as well as on the roof, because water that shows up over a bedroom ceiling often got in somewhere else entirely. Once we know where it enters, we tell you plainly whether the roof can be repaired, and only then do we talk about replacement if it is truly needed.
Every estimate we hand over is written line by line: tear-off, decking, underlayment, flashing, ventilation and gutters each priced on their own. That lets you set our number beside anyone else’s and compare the same items, instead of guessing what a single lump sum includes.
What Sandy Left Behind in Manasquan
The borough’s housing stock today is the product of a storm and the rebuild that followed it. Understanding that history is the quickest way to understand why roofs here split into two very different groups.
The scale of the flooding
In March 2013, Mayor George Dempsey told WCBS 880 that 60 percent of the town had been under water, and he put the number of homes affected at 1,800 out of 3,700. A CBS New York report that October gave a lower figure, about 1,400 flooded homes, so the two counts do not agree. Either way, a large share of Manasquan sat in salt water after Sandy.
The record from the borough is one of flooding and what came after it. That matters for an owner today because the decisions made in the following years, about which houses stayed and which went, set the age of the roof over your head now.
Houses taken down after the storm
In the same October 2013 report, the mayor said 83 houses had either been taken down or would be taken down shortly. That was a count in progress at the time, not a final tally, and the demolition did not stop with the storm cleanup.
What followed was a steady pattern of teardowns. Lots that once held a small seasonal house were cleared and built again, and that pattern has shaped the street-by-street mix we see when we climb ladders in town today.
For anyone buying or inheriting a house here, the first useful question is simple: is this one of the houses that stayed, or one that replaced a house that went? The answer tells us roughly how old the roof structure is before we ever set foot on it, and it shapes what we look for first.
Looking for roofing closer to Toms River? See Roofing Services in Toms River.
Bungalows Out, Larger Houses In
Wikipedia describes the change in one line: the demolition of traditional beach bungalows and their replacement with much larger single-family dwellings. It credits that shift with helping turn Manasquan into a year-round community rather than a summer one.
What the census shows
The American Community Survey’s 2024 five-year figures count 3,354 housing units in the borough. Of those, 388 were built in 2010 or later, while 1,380 were built before 1950, and 871 of those older units date to 1939 or earlier. Single-family detached houses make up 2,925 of the total, so most of what we work on is a standalone house with its own roof.
That split is unusual. Plenty of towns have an old core and a new edge, but in Manasquan the old and the new sit lot beside lot, because the rebuild happened one property at a time.
A bigger roof on the same lot
A larger house usually means a larger and more complicated roof: more valleys, more wall intersections, more penetrations for vents and mechanical equipment. Each of those is a place where flashing has to be done correctly, and each is a place we check closely when a newer house develops its first leak.
We do not assume what any particular new house was built with or how it was framed, because that varies from builder to builder. We look at what is actually on the roof, write down the materials we find, and base the scope on that rather than on a guess about the era.
Solar panels and gutters on newer homes
Some of the larger houses carry solar arrays, and a roof under panels has to be planned around them. We put the panel removal and reinstall into the schedule from the start, so nobody discovers on the first morning that the crew cannot reach half the roof.
Gutters matter more on a bigger roof, too, because more square footage sends more water to each corner. We price seamless aluminum gutters, leaders and gutter guards as their own lines, and we check that each downspout carries water away from the foundation rather than onto a neighbor’s lot a few feet away.
Two Generations of Roofs on One Street
Because the rebuild happened in waves, an owner in Manasquan can be dealing with a roof that is barely a decade old or one that has been reroofed several times over the better part of a century. The work is not the same, and the estimate should not read as if it were.
Decade-old roofs on rebuilt houses
The houses that went up after 2010 are now reaching the age when the first problems tend to appear. Most of these are not failing roofs. They are pipe boots that have started to crack, sealant at a wall step that has dried out, or a ridge vent that was never balanced with enough soffit intake.
On these houses our first job is usually a repair, and we say so. If the shingles themselves are sound, a targeted fix at the flashing or a boot replacement is the honest answer, and we write it up that way rather than steering toward a full tear-off.
Matching wind ratings to the address
When a newer roof does need replacing, we match the shingle wind rating to the design wind speed for your exact address, using the address-specific method New Jersey points to in DCA Bulletin 19-1. That is more precise than picking a rating for the whole town, and it tells you whether an ASTM D3161 Class F or D7158 Class H shingle is the right fit. Where the rating calls for it, we use high-wind six-nail fastening on every shingle.
Manasquan sits in the National Weather Service’s Eastern Monmouth forecast zone, NJZ014, served from the Mount Holly office. We watch those forecasts when scheduling tear-offs so a roof is not left open ahead of incoming weather.
Salt air and the metal in the estimate
With the ocean on one side and the Manasquan Inlet close by, fasteners, drip edge and flashing all face salt exposure. We choose stainless steel or hot-dipped galvanized parts for that reason, and the estimate names the metal so you know exactly what is going onto your house.
That applies to older and newer homes alike. A cottage getting a small repair deserves the same corrosion-resistant fastener as a new house getting a full roof.
Prewar Cottages Still Standing
Not every bungalow came down. The houses built before 1950 still account for well over a third of the borough’s homes, and they bring their own set of roofing questions that a newer house never raises.
Layers, decking and the old framing
An old cottage may carry more than one layer of shingles, and New Jersey’s rehabilitation subcode calls for tear-off where a roof already has two or more layers. Once the old roofing is off, we often find decking that has softened over the decades. We photograph any damaged sheets and show them to you before replacing them, at the per-sheet price set in the contract.
Replacing the roof covering on a detached one- or two-family house is treated as ordinary maintenance under N.J.A.C. 5:23-2.7, so a straightforward reroof on a cottage does not add a permit step. We still walk you through the scope in writing so nothing about the old structure comes as a surprise.
Small roofs, careful details
Cottage roofs are smaller, but the details are often fussier: an old chimney with tired flashing, a dormer added decades after the original roof, or a low porch roof tied into the main slope. We look in the attic at each of these spots, since that is where a slow leak in an older house usually shows itself first.
Where a chimney is part of the problem, we cover step and counter flashing, the crown and any repointing in the scope as separate lines. You can then decide which items to do now and which can wait.
Seasonal houses and absent owners
The census counts 628 homes in Manasquan held for seasonal or occasional use, which means a lot of roofs go weeks at a time with nobody inside to notice a stain on the ceiling. We can inspect and photograph a second home while you are away and send the report the same day.
Our contracts follow New Jersey’s home improvement rules, including the three-day cancellation notice, so an owner signing from a distance has the same protection as one standing in the driveway. At the end of every work day we clean the yard, driveway and gutters and run a magnet over the ground for nails, whether you are home to see it or not.
If a storm does leave damage on a house nobody is living in, we photograph it and write it up for your own insurance claim. When you ask, a member of our crew will meet the adjuster on site, so the person handling your claim sees the roof with someone who has already been up on it.
- 20+ Years in Roofing
- Attic and Roof Leak Checks
- Line-Item Written Scopes
