Scranton Quality Roofing has handled roofing in Dunmore for owners and landlords over more than 20 years, and every job begins by finding out what the roof is actually doing before anyone talks about price. A leak call gets a look in the attic as well as on the roof, so the water is traced to the spot where it gets in rather than the spot where it happens to show on a ceiling.
We tell you plainly whether a roof can be repaired before replacement comes up at all. When it cannot, the written scope puts tear-off, decking, underlayment, flashing, ventilation and gutters on separate lines, so a second estimate can be laid beside ours and compared one item at a time. Nothing is bundled into a single number you have to take on faith.
This borough has its own reasons for that kind of paper trail. A large share of its housing is rented, and every rental unit now needs a license from the borough, so a landlord’s roof sits inside a set of local rules that an owner-occupant never has to think about. The sections below explain those rules and how they shape the roofing work we do here.
Dunmore’s Rental License and the Code Behind It
What Ordinance #4 of 2025 requires
On April 14, 2025, Borough Council adopted Ordinance #4 of 2025, the Residential Rental Unit Occupancy Ordinance. Under it, renting out a unit in Dunmore without a Residential Rental License is unlawful, whether the property is one apartment or a building with several. The license runs from July 1 to June 30 and has to be renewed every year.
The fee is charged per unit. The ordinance sets $75 per unit for the first one to four units, $60 per unit for the fifth through tenth, and $45 per unit from the eleventh up. Owners who do not live nearby must also name a manager who lives in the borough, in Lackawanna County or within 20 miles, so that someone local answers for the property.
The 2018 International Property Maintenance Code
The same ordinance adopts the 2018 International Property Maintenance Code, along with its future amendments, as the Borough Property Maintenance Code. That is the standard a rental unit is held to, and the borough backs it with a phased systematic inspection program. Owners receive 30 days of written notice before an initial inspection takes place.
The ordinance’s own text does not single out roofs, and we have not found any published checklist describing what an inspection covers. What we can say is that a property maintenance code is written about the condition of a building as a whole. A roof that lets water into a tenant’s unit is not a condition any landlord wants to be explaining, and keeping it sound is the simplest way to avoid that.
Notices, deadlines and appeals
When a violation does not warrant condemnation, the owner gets a 30-day Notice of Violation. A violation serious enough to warrant condemnation brings a 10-day notice instead, after which the license is revoked and a vacant unit must remain vacant. Owners who disagree with a decision can appeal to the Building Code of Appeals under the 2018 code.
Those windows are why we schedule landlord work around the dates on a notice rather than around our own calendar. If a notice touches anything on the roof or its drainage, give us the deadline on the first call. We will say early whether a repair fits inside that window, and we will tell you just as plainly when it does not.
Looking for roofing closer to Moosic? See Roofing Services in Moosic.
Two-Unit and Three-to-Four-Unit Rentals in Dunmore
Who rents in the borough
The census numbers show why the ordinance reaches so many owners. The 2024 five-year American Community Survey counts 6,022 occupied households in Dunmore, and 2,344 of them rent. Of those renter households, 1,534 live in buildings with two units or with three to four units, which makes the small multifamily building the most common rental type here.
The housing is old as well. Of the 6,658 housing units the survey counts, 3,691 were built before 1950, and 3,054 of those date to 1939 or earlier. On a rental building that age, the roof has often been reworked by several owners over the decades, and what sits underneath only becomes clear once the old layers come off.
One roof over several households
A two-unit or three-to-four-unit building usually has a single roof over more than one household. Water entering above one unit can run along a rafter and appear in another tenant’s ceiling, and the person who calls is not always the person whose unit has the problem. Tracing the leak from inside the attic framing is how we find the real entry point.
Scheduling matters more when tenants are home all day. We give the owner a start date and expected duration that can be passed along to each unit, and at the end of every work day the crew cleans the driveway, yard and gutters. That cleanup includes a magnet sweep for roofing nails where tenants park, walk and bring children in and out.
Repair first, replacement when it is due
Landlords with several units feel every dollar, so the repair question gets a direct answer before replacement is ever priced. A lifted run of shingles, a cracked pipe boot or failed step flashing at a sidewall is a repair, and we price it as one. Where a building still carries a sound slate roof, it is repaired slate by slate with copper nails and slate hooks.
When a roof is past repair, step, counter and chimney flashing are replaced with it rather than reused under new material. Damaged decking found once the old roof is off is photographed and shown to the owner before it is replaced, at a per-sheet price already written into the contract. A bad sheet of plywood should never turn into a surprise on the final bill.
Buying a Rental in Dunmore: The 60-Day License and Inspection
What Section 10 requires of a new owner
A sale does not carry the old license with it. Section 10 of the ordinance says that when a licensed rental is sold or transferred, the new owner must secure a Residential Rental License for each unit and have each unit inspected within 60 days. For an investor closing on a three-unit building, that is a short runway that starts once the deed changes hands.
Registration questions go to the Dunmore Borough Code Enforcement Office, which takes calls about completing registration at 570-343-7611, extension 101. The borough also links an online rental portal for the registration itself. We point buyers to that office for anything about the license, because the rules are the borough’s to explain and not ours.
Looking at the roof before closing
We will look at a Dunmore rental before the sale closes, so the buyer knows what the roof needs while the price can still move. A visit on the roof and in the attic tells you whether you are buying a repair, a replacement or a roof with years left in it. The written scope then gives you line items instead of a rough guess.
That report is about the roof and nothing else. Our job is to describe its condition accurately, with photographs, so that the buyer, the seller and their agents are all talking about the same building. What the parties do with that information during the negotiation is their decision to make, not ours.
Fitting roof work inside the 60 days
If the roof needs work and the new owner wants it finished before the unit inspections, the calendar gets tight quickly. We map the job against the 60-day deadline at the first visit. Then we say clearly whether a repair can be completed in time or whether a replacement should be scheduled around tenants and the weather.
Gutters and downspouts are sized and pitched with the roof on these jobs, never added as an afterthought. On a building with several households, water spilling at a foundation corner or over an entry door is something every tenant notices. Fixing it alongside the roof means one crew, one scope and one cleanup instead of two separate visits.
Working in Dunmore: Contractor License, NEIC and Local Ground
The borough contractor license and permit fees
Dunmore issues its own contractor license. The borough’s Contractor License Application carries a fee of $100.00 per calendar year, January to December, requires certificates of public liability and workers’ compensation insurance, and is approved by the Zoning Officer. Completed applications go back to the borough office at 400 South Blakely Street.
Alongside inspection and plan review fees, the posted zoning permit schedule charges $35.00 for the first $2,000.00 of project cost, $7.00 for every additional $1,000.00, and 1.25% on any project over $50,000.00. The borough website does not publish a roof-specific permit rule. Every municipality we serve sets its own, so we confirm how Dunmore treats the specific job before we price it.
Northeast Inspection Consultants
Dunmore opted in to local building code enforcement on April 26, 2004, and that work runs through Northeast Inspection Consultants (NEIC). The borough’s forms page names NEIC as the zoning contact and says most permits and applications can be found on NEIC’s website. The listed building code official can be reached at (570) 280-2111.
When a job needs an application or a plan review, that is the office it goes through. We sort out which paperwork applies before the crew arrives, so an owner is never left waiting on approvals with the old roof already torn off. Building Plan Review Requirements and the Certificate of Occupancy or Compliance application are among the forms the borough points to.
Water, slopes and storm documentation
The ground in Dunmore shapes how water leaves a roof. Roaring Brook runs through the Nay Aug Gorge toward the Lackawanna River, Meadow Brook drains a western area, and the southeastern part of the borough sits on the slopes of the Moosic Mountains. On a sloped lot, where a downspout discharges decides whether runoff moves away from the building or toward the house next door.
When a storm does damage a roof here, we photograph it and write it up for the owner’s own insurance claim. If asked, the crew will meet the adjuster on site and walk the roof together. We do not negotiate the claim, though; that conversation stays between the owner and the insurer, and our part is an accurate record of what the roof shows.
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