Roofing & exteriors in Hackensack, NJ

The city sits on the west bank of the Hackensack River at an average elevation of about 20 feet. The Pascack Valley Line splits it north to south: single-family streets mostly west of the tracks, the Prospect Avenue high-rise ridge and the Main Street corridor parallel to the river. About 46,000 people live in 4.35 square miles and roughly 20,000 housing units, so the stock leans toward apartments and two- and multi-family houses rather than detached homes.

Hackensack has been the county seat since 1710, and Washington camped on The Green in 1776, but the houses we work on are younger. Population went from 9,443 in 1900 to 24,568 in 1930, so most of the west-side stock dates from the streetcar and railroad years, with capes, splits and brick two-families filling in after the war. A century on, the frame houses show it: shingle at the end of its second layer, claddings stacked over the original wood, sash painted shut, five-inch gutters never sized for the roof. The flat-roofed two-families and downtown mid-rises fail at membrane seams, parapet caps and clogged drains.

We work on both: shingle and low-slope membrane roofing, siding over pre-war frame walls, window and door replacement, gutters and downspouts planned for a small lot on low ground, and decks.

Twenty feet above sea level. The water table is close everywhere, and the streets west of the railroad between Central Avenue and Passaic Street sit on a combined sewer that backs up into basements in heavy rain. The city announced a $9.2 million sewer-separation project there in May 2026. A downspout that dumps at the foundation is the one part of that problem a homeowner controls. We extend downspouts away from the wall and run them to daylight or a drywell where the lot allows.

Neighbors close enough to share a gutter. Lots are small on the west side and smaller downtown. A downspout cannot discharge onto the house next door, debris moves from the street, and a two-family's roof edge is often inches from the neighbor's. We plan access and drainage before we price the job.

Two roof geometries on one block. A pitched frame colonial stands beside a flat-roofed brick two-family. The colonial fails at eaves, valleys and chimney flashing; the two-family at membrane seams, parapet cap and drain. A leak in each starts in a different place.

Buildings that have been layered. A pre-war frame house is more often layered than stripped back to the wood: shingle over shingle, aluminum over asbestos-cement over clapboard, a replacement window inside the old frame. We open a corner and read the layers before we write a scope.

ZIP code served: 07601.

• Fairmount — one of the three surviving neighborhoods of old New Barbadoes; early-1900s frame houses on small west-side lots
• Red Hill and Cherry Hill — the other two historic neighborhoods, pre-war frames with post-war infill
• Clay Street, Railroad Avenue, Berdan Place, James Street and Berry Street — the combined-sewer drainage area west of the railroad, where downspout routing matters most
• Prospect Avenue, Beech Street to Passaic Street — the mile-long high-rise district around Hackensack University Medical Center; flat roofs and terraces
• Main Street to State Street — downtown, apartments over storefronts and the new mid-rise buildings
• Around The Green, the Bergen County Courthouse and the Anderson Street and Essex Street stations — the city's oldest streets, two-families and apartments near the river