Why a high-end new construction home in Florham Park needed a $21,800 pre-closing credit

— and what it tells you about inspecting new builds in northern NJ

Summary: In March 2026, Novalis Roofing & Siding performed a pre-closing roof and siding inspection on a high-end new construction home in Florham Park, New Jersey. The inspection identified $21,800 in corrective work across three scopes: $15,000 in NuCedar siding remediation, $4,750 in James Hardie clearance and flashing corrections, and $2,050 in roof penetration repairs. The buyer submitted the inspection and corrective proposal to the seller before closing and received a credit for the full amount.

A buyer under contract on a new construction home in Florham Park ordered a second inspection before closing. The standard home inspection had already been done. Most buyers stop there on a new build — the house is brand new, the certificate of occupancy is fresh, nothing has had time to go wrong. This buyer ordered a dedicated roof and siding inspection anyway.

The inspection found $21,800 worth of corrective work across the roof, the siding, the flashing, the penetrations, and the drainage. The buyer submitted the findings and the corrective proposal to the seller before closing and received a credit for the full amount. They closed on schedule. The house is beautiful. The family lives there now.

Here is the part worth sitting with: the clients had no control over any of the work that needed correcting, and didn’t know anything was wrong until we showed up the day of the walkthrough. Every defect we documented had been installed by someone else and signed off on by someone else before they ever saw the keys.

Why new construction often needs more scrutiny, not less

There’s a common assumption about new homes: new means right. New means warrantied. New means someone supervised the work, pulled the permits, checked the details. On a house built by a local builder who builds four or five homes a year and stands behind every one, that assumption holds up reasonably well.

This house was not built by that kind of builder. This house was built by a real estate investor — someone who bought a lot, tore down what was on it, and built a new home to sell at a profit. The business model is different. The investor is not a tradesperson. They subcontract every trade, and the subs are paid by the square on flat-rate work with an incentive to finish fast and move on. Nobody on the site is responsible for how the building performs as a system. Everyone is responsible for their piece.

That model produces a specific pattern of defect, and this house has most of them.

What the inspection found

Novalis Roofing & Siding documented 25 photographs across seven systems. The three biggest items were the siding, the roof penetrations, and the flashing at windows and doors.

The NuCedar siding — premium material, non-compliant installation

NuCedar is one of the most expensive siding products on the market. It’s a solid-cellular PVC shingle designed to replicate cedar without the rot, the insect damage, or the maintenance — the kind of product you specify on a high-end build because it looks right and it will still look right in twenty years. The material on this house was correct. The installation was not.

NuCedar’s published specifications call for a 7″ maximum exposure and a 1/8″ gap at all butt joints to allow for thermal expansion and contraction. The installer went with 8″ of exposure and butted the shingles tight with no gap. In the cold-to-hot cycle of a northern NJ year — January nights at 15° and August afternoons at 92° — PVC expands and contracts measurably. A shingle butted tight to its neighbor has nowhere to go. It will buckle, it will push at its fasteners, it will telegraph the stress along the course. None of that is a material problem. It’s a spec-compliance problem. And per NuCedar’s published warranty terms, an 8″ exposure voids warranty coverage on the affected area.

The bigger issue was where the material was installed. NuCedar is specified for vertical wall applications only. It is not a roofing product. On this house, the installer ran NuCedar across the sloped roofs of the front bay windows as if it were a roof shingle. That use is outside the manufacturer’s intended application and voids warranty coverage on the affected area. It also means those bay window roofs are not actually roofs in any functional sense — they’re siding laid at an angle over a surface that needs to shed water and integrate with flashing.

Correcting this required removing the NuCedar from the front elevation entirely, installing Benjamin Obdyke peel-and-stick housewrap with full integration at all openings, flashing the windows and penetrations with manufacturer-approved flashing tape, and reinstalling the NuCedar at the correct 7″ exposure with 1/8″ butt-joint spacing — vertical applications only. The bay window roofs then needed actual roofs: GAF WeatherWatch ice and water shield across the entire surface, GAF Timberline shingles, full starter and ridge components, and proper step flashing integrated into the roof-to-wall transitions. That scope alone came to $15,000.

The James Hardie clearances — siding in direct contact with roof

Hardie fiber cement siding has a published 2″ minimum clearance requirement between the bottom edge of the siding and any adjacent roof or horizontal surface. This is not an aesthetic preference. Fiber cement is a cementitious product that wicks moisture at the cut edge. Sitting it tight to a roof surface — or worse, in direct contact with one — means that edge is wet every time it rains and slow to dry, and the siding degrades from the bottom up.

On this house, the Hardie was installed in direct contact with roof surfaces at multiple roof-to-wall transitions and in direct contact with the rear deck surface. Correcting this required a “Hardie cut” — removing the lower section of siding at each affected area — and installing PVC Azek trim, either 5/4 x 4 or 5/4 x 6 depending on location, with proper concealed flashing behind the trim to direct water outward. That scope came to $4,750, which also included the radius-window flashing corrections described next.

The radius windows — flashing skipped where it was hardest

Every window and door penetration on an exterior wall needs rigid head flashing to direct water away from the opening. Sealant is not a substitute. Sealant has a service life measured in years; flashing is part of the building envelope and is expected to last the life of the wall.

On this house, the rectangular windows had head flashing. The three radius windows and the radius entry door did not. Instead, the top of each curved opening was sealed with a bead of caulk applied between the window frame and the siding cut.

That choice is worth naming. The installer knew how to flash a window — the rectangular openings on the same house were flashed correctly. Radius openings take more time. The curve has to be formed, the flashing has to be fabricated or bent, the siding has to be cut to the arc. On a flat-rate, paid-by-the-square installation, that time costs the crew money. So they skipped it on the curves and caulked instead. It’s a shortcut taken exactly where it was hardest to catch from the ground.

Correcting the radius openings required removing the siding at the head of each one, installing rigid aluminum head flashing integrated behind the siding, installing radius head trim to properly terminate the siding above the openings, and reinstalling the siding. That work was part of the same $4,750 Hardie scope.

The roof penetrations — the pattern you’ll find on almost every spec build

This is the pattern we see on almost every spec build, and it’s worth naming because any homeowner can check for it on their own bids. There are two separate defects here, with different failure mechanisms. Both were present on this roof.

The vent penetrations — sealant doing flashing’s job

On a new build, the roof is framed and sheathed. The roofer comes in next and installs the roof — usually before the soffit and fascia trim is complete, and always before the plumber, the electrician, and the HVAC contractor have installed their rooftop penetrations. The roofer finishes, collects payment, and leaves. Then the three mechanical trades each need to get their vents through the roof.

What we find, and what we found here, is that each of those later trades cuts a hole, tucks a small piece of flashing under exactly one course of shingles, and seals the rest of the perimeter with roof cement or caulk. The flashing is surface-applied, not integrated into the shingle courses. The waterproofing depends entirely on the sealant, which has a service life of a few years at best in NJ weather and will fail long before the shingles do. On this house there were four plumbing vent penetrations and one HVAC penetration installed this way.

The pump jack holes — open penetrations left in a brand-new roof

The more serious defect on this roof is harder to see from the ground and worse in its consequences. When the siding crew ran their exterior work, they used pump jack scaffolding to reach the upper portions of the house. Pump jack brackets are fastened to the building by driving nails through whatever the bracket is sitting against — in this case, through the finished roof. Two nails per bracket, driven straight through the shingle, through the underlayment, and into the decking below.

When the siding job finished, the crew pulled the brackets. The nails came out with them. The holes stayed. There is no sealant, no patch, no replacement shingle — just two small open penetrations through a brand-new roof at each bracket location. The shingle surface looks intact from the ground. From up close, the holes are unmistakable.

We found this pattern in roughly twenty locations across the roof, spaced along the eaves and rake edges where the pump jacks had been set. That is approximately forty open penetrations through the roof system on a house that had not yet had its first owner move in.

This defect is worse than the vent penetrations, and it’s worth being clear why. The vent penetrations are sealant-dependent — the waterproofing will fail in a few years when the sealant gives out. The pump jack holes are not sealant-dependent. They have no sealing at all. The clock on those failures isn’t years. It’s the next heavy rain.

Correcting both the vent penetrations and the pump jack holes required the same kind of work: removing and reinstalling the vent flashings integrated into the shingle courses, and sealing every exposed pump jack penetration beneath the shingle system rather than on top of it. A gutter at a roof-to-wall intersection that had been pitched toward the transition (concentrating discharge exactly where we didn’t want it) was also corrected as part of the same scope. The total for this work came to $2,050.

Across all three scopes: $21,800. Submitted to the seller pre-closing as part of the buyer’s credit request. Paid. The work is scheduled.

What this means for anyone buying a new build in northern NJ

A standard home inspection is a generalist’s tool. It catches the things a generalist can see from the ground or from an attic hatch. It does not catch an 8″ exposure on a shingle spec’d at 7″. It does not catch NuCedar installed where it’s not supposed to be. It does not catch a plumbing vent sealed with caulk instead of flashed correctly, because from the ground it looks fine and from the attic the ceiling hasn’t stained yet.

If you are buying new construction in northern NJ, especially a spec build, you should be ordering a separate roof and siding inspection before you close. Not because new builders are dishonest. Because the business model of a spec build is not designed to produce a building that performs as a system — it’s designed to produce a building that looks finished and sells. Those are different goals.

On an older home, you’re inspecting for wear. On a new home, you’re inspecting for whether the house was actually built correctly the first time. Those inspections look different, and a roof-and-siding specialist will catch things the home inspector isn’t trained to catch.

When you do order that inspection, you want findings tied to specific manufacturer requirements — published exposure specs, published clearance requirements, published warranty conditions. That’s what gives the report its leverage. A builder will argue with “this doesn’t look right.” A builder will not argue with “this is installed at 8″ against a published 7″ maximum that voids the warranty.” One is opinion. The other is a document. In our work across northern NJ, that distinction is the difference between a defect a seller acknowledges and a defect a seller disputes.

And a small, important point for anyone still evaluating bids: you can put the most expensive product on the market on a house and end up with a warranty-voided, failure-prone install. The product isn’t the outcome. The labor is. This house had some of the best material specifications you can buy. It also had $21,800 of corrective work, because whoever installed the material didn’t know — or didn’t care — what the installation required.

If you’re looking at two roofing or siding bids and one is meaningfully less expensive, the difference usually isn’t the material. The material is close to a commodity. The difference is who’s on your roof, how they’re paid, who supervises them, and who’s going to answer the phone in year six when something starts to leak. Those are harder to see on a line-item comparison, and they matter more than anything else on the page.

For context: a properly installed asphalt shingle roof in northern New Jersey should deliver 25 to 30 years of service. Unlike hail markets in the Midwest and Plains states, where homeowners sometimes replace roofs every five to ten years because of storm cycles, northeast roofs aren’t fighting hail on a regular basis — they’re fighting time, water, freeze-thaw, and installation quality. Which means for most homeowners in this market, a roof replacement is a once-per-ownership decision. Maybe twice, across a lifetime. There isn’t a third chance to get this right.

Common questions about pre-closing roof and siding inspections

Is a standard home inspection enough on a new construction home?

Not usually. A standard home inspection is performed by a generalist covering the whole house — structure, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roof, and siding — in a few hours. That works well for catching large-category problems. It does not catch published-spec violations on specific siding products, manufacturer clearance requirements, or the difference between flashing-integrated and sealant-dependent roof penetrations. On new construction, those are the defects that matter most, because they will not show as damage for years.

Why would a new construction home have installation defects?

Because many new homes — especially spec builds, where a real estate investor tears down a lot and builds a new home to sell at a profit — are built by subcontracted trades paid by the square on flat-rate work, with no single person on site responsible for how the building performs as a system. The financial incentive is speed. The coordination required for a building to shed water correctly across roofs, walls, windows, and mechanical penetrations is time-intensive. On a typical spec build, that coordination is the first thing to suffer.

How does a pre-closing inspection turn into a seller credit?

The buyer orders the inspection before closing. If the inspector documents defects tied to specific manufacturer requirements — published exposure specs, clearance requirements, warranty conditions — those findings carry weight in a negotiation. The buyer submits the inspection and a corrective proposal to the seller as part of the credit request. On this Florham Park house, the seller agreed to the full $21,800 credit and the sale closed on schedule. The corrective work is being performed after closing, paid for by the seller’s credit.

Who pays for a pre-closing roof and siding inspection?

The buyer pays for the inspection, typically a few hundred dollars depending on the size and complexity of the house. If the inspection identifies defects, that inspection cost is routinely recovered many times over in a seller credit — or, in cases where the defects are severe enough, in a price reduction or a decision to walk away from the purchase. In this case, the inspection cost was recovered roughly 100 times over.

How long should a properly installed roof last in northern NJ?

A properly installed architectural asphalt shingle roof — correctly ventilated, correctly flashed, using a full manufacturer system — should deliver 25 to 30 years of service in northern New Jersey. Premium designer and luxury products can push further. Northern NJ is not a hail market like much of the Midwest and Plains, where roofs are routinely replaced after storms every five to ten years. In our market, what shortens a roof’s life is almost always installation quality, ventilation failures, or water management problems — not the weather.

If you’re under contract on a new build in northern NJ and want a roof and siding inspection before you close, that’s the kind of work we do.