Most cities bury their roofing rules in code books. Greenwood Village publishes an actual handout, the Roofing Guidelines, revised July 2026, that answers nearly every question homeowners ask us about permits, inspections and materials. It just reads like it was written for contractors, because it was. Here is the homeowner translation, section by section, with the parts that matter when you are hiring.
Greenwood Village is a home-rule city with its own Building Division at 6060 S Quebec St, and the Division publishes the Roofing Guidelines as a free download. It covers permits, fees, licensing, inspections and the design criteria roofs must meet, all in a few pages. The current revision is July 2026, and details do change between revisions, so check the date on anything a roofer hands you. If a bid and the handout disagree, the handout wins. Homeowners rarely see the document because permits are usually the contractor's job. Read it anyway. Twenty minutes with it will let you question a bid line by line, and it is the same document our estimators carry.
A permit is required for installing or replacing 100 sq ft or more of roof covering; repairs under that are exempt. The application must name the existing and proposed materials with manufacturer and product information, plus ICC-ES reports when required, which is how the city catches everything from below-minimum slopes to weight increases. Fees are valuation-based and stack several pieces: permit, plan review, use tax and the county Open Space tax. Instead of guessing, run the city's own fee calculator. The contractor needs a city Level D trade license plus a certificate of insurance showing $1M in general liability. The license is cheap; the insurance is not, which is exactly why the city asks for the certificate rather than a promise. If your roofer cannot produce both, stop there.
Plenty of roofer blogs claim every Denver-area reroof gets a mandatory mid-roof inspection. For Greenwood Village that is wrong, and the handout says so explicitly: mid-roof inspections are not required for reroofing projects unless the Building Division directs otherwise. New-construction roofs do get one. Tile and metal panel systems get their own checkpoint instead, an inspection after underlayment, flashing and battens are in, with up to 25 percent of the covering allowed to go on before it. So a contractor who pads your reroof schedule with a required mid-roof visit, or one who skips the underlayment inspection on a tile job, has misread the same document in opposite directions. The distinction matters for schedule and cost, because a phantom inspection day pads both.
Every permitted roof ends with a final inspection, and the logistics are specific: work complete within 6 months of permit issuance, a secured ladder extending 3 ft above the roof edge for the inspector, and an adult 18 or older on site. Miss any of those and the visit gets rescheduled, which delays closing out your permit. The design criteria behind the rules, quick version: 100 mph 3-second gust design wind, 30 psf roof snow load, and ice barrier at all eaves extending 24 inches inside the exterior wall line. That measurement runs from the inside face of the wall, not the roof edge, so wide eaves push the barrier several feet up the roof. Asphalt roofs also need metal drip edge at eaves and rakes and a minimum of 6 nails per shingle, which our fastening guide covers in depth.
A bid tells you fast whether a contractor has read this document. Look for the permit as a line item, the 6-nail spec, ice barrier called out at the eaves, drip edge included, and on tile jobs the underlayment inspection built into the schedule. A bid that ignores the guidelines is telling you how the rest of the job will go. For who files the permit, when, and what happens at each step, read our permit walkthrough.
Want your roof scoped against the city's actual rules? Book a free documented inspection with a written photo report. Call (720) 702-8770, contact us, or start with a professional roof inspection.
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