Roof Repair in Novi, Michigan

• One city, one building department — 45175 Ten Mile Road, (248) 347-0415
• A modest application fee, a plan review fee under a set value threshold, and a base permit fee plus an incremental amount per additional increment of value
• Contractor license registration with the city required before work commences, for a flat fee
• Inspections and re-inspections each carry a flat fee
• Novi publishes a commercial re-roofing requirements sheet but no residential one, so we confirm the inspection sequence with the department on every job

The one address trap actually runs backwards here

It is worth knowing, because it costs people time. While every Novi ZIP is 100% inside Novi, the reverse is not true: about 3.18 square miles of the City of Novi sits inside ZIP 48167, which is a Northville mailing address. A smaller sliver carries Wixom's 48393.

So thousands of homes in Novi get Northville mail and are permitted, inspected and served by Novi. The proof is a city park: ITC Community Sports Park is a City of Novi facility, and its address is 51000 Eight Mile Road, Northville, MI 48167.

If your mail says Northville and you are not sure which side of the line you are on, we check the parcel before anything gets ordered. And 48376 is a PO Box ZIP with no delivery area at all, so it never answers the question.

What a Novi roof permit actually costs

Novi does not publish a flat re-roof price. We looked, and there is no roofing line item on either fee schedule the city has online — and note that there are two, an older one from October 2023 that still surfaces in search results and the current one effective July 1, 2026. Use the current one.

A re-roof is priced as a repair or alteration by construction valuation. The pieces are a modest non-refundable application fee, a plan review fee for jobs valued under a set threshold, and a base permit fee plus an incremental amount for each additional increment of value above a low starting point. Inspections and re-inspections each carry their own flat fee.

Doing that arithmetic — and this is our calculation from the published formula, not a figure the city prints — a modest re-roof works out to a modest total and a somewhat larger job to a bit more. There is a real cliff at the plan-review threshold, where the plan review fee jumps sharply and the same job lands noticeably higher. If your project is near that line it is worth knowing.

One thing we could not verify: whether Novi charges a penalty or double fee for work started without a permit. It is not on either published fee schedule and the city's code is not readable from outside. What we did find is that Zoning Board of Appeals fees run higher when a violation is involved than when one is not, so the city clearly does price violations differently. We are not going to quote you a penalty figure we cannot source.

The exemptions that usually apply to you

Three of them matter. First, hazard trees: if you are worried a tree may pose a hazard to people or property, you can ask the city's Forestry Asset Manager to evaluate it, and the city's own guidance says that if the Manager agrees the tree or tree part is hazardous, a letter allowing removal will be provided — and replacement trees would not be required. That contact is Keith Salowich at 248-347-0439, and it is the first call to make, not the last.

Second, unprotected trees: under eight inches inside a woodland, under 36 inches outside one, and not a specimen or historic tree — no permit, no replacement.

Third, Section 37-26(c): once building areas were approved as part of a subdivision or site condominium use permit, no additional woodland use permit is required to erect structures within that building area.

One more thing worth knowing: regulated woodlands have to be maintained in a natural condition. Trees and undergrowth stay, including shrubs, branches, wildflowers and leaves — they are not to be cleared for lawn or play areas, and encroachment triggers mandatory restoration at the owner's expense. If the back of your lot is mapped woodland, that is not neglect. That is the ordinance.

And check with your association before you check with the city

The City of Novi publishes an official directory of homeowner associations, and it lists 91 of them. That is a lot of private architectural control layered on top of the public rules.

The city itself points this out. Its Woodland Review Application for an Individual Lot opens with the instruction: please check with your Homeowners' Association before completing this form. Its woodland FAQ tells residents who see a neighbor cutting trees to report it to their HOA as well as to Community Development.

Practically, on a Novi site condominium or subdivision lot, the shingle color and profile question is usually settled by the association, not the city. We read the master deed or the bylaws before material is ordered, not once pallets are sitting in the driveway. It costs an hour and it has saved several of our customers a re-do.

The ice-dam numbers, and where they come from

There is no NOAA climate normals station inside Novi, so we will tell you which one we are using. Detroit Metro Airport, about nineteen miles south-southeast, is the nearest station publishing a complete set: 45.0 inches of snow a year, roughly 119.5 nights falling to 32°F or lower and about 41.8 days that never climb back out of it. Pontiac's airport is closer at thirteen miles but publishes no snowfall normal, and its figures run noticeably colder — 135.5 and 54.2 — which gives you a sense of the spread across a county this size.

Whichever station you take, roughly forty nights a winter never climb out of the freezing range, and that is the window an ice dam needs. Novi's newer subdivisions make it worse in a specific way: wide low-slope garage-to-house returns and deep front overhangs collect a shelf of ice that a steep open field never would, and cathedral entries push warm air straight at the coldest part of the roof. Our main roof repair page sets out exactly how the dam forms and why a shingle cannot stop it.

Michigan's ice-barrier rule carries the membrane up from the roof's lowest edge to a point two feet past the warm wall below. On a house that has already had intrusion, or one with deep overhangs, we run two full courses. And we will always tell you whether you are buying a repair or a fix: the repair addresses saturated decking and damaged courses, the fix addresses the attic — air sealing, insulation coverage, clearing the soffit intake and balancing it against ridge exhaust. A repair without the fix means we are back next winter.