Re-Roofing a Historic Home in Volusia County: The Approval Most Homeowners Do Not Know They Need

A homeowner on a brick street in DeLand calls three roofers, picks one, signs a contract, and puts down a deposit. The crew shows up, tears off, and by mid-morning a city inspector stops the job. Not because anything was built wrong. Because the house sits in a locally designated historic district, and the building permit was issued without a Certificate of Appropriateness — which, in DeLand’s own words, makes that permit invalid.

This is one of the few roofing problems in Volusia County that is genuinely invisible from the driveway. It does not depend on the age of your shingles, the pitch of your roof, or your insurance carrier. It depends entirely on a line on a zoning map, and the rules are different in every single city in this county.

We went and read them. Not the brochures — the adopted ordinances, current as of the most recent supplement for each jurisdiction. Here is what actually applies, where, and what it does to your timeline.

First: is your house actually in a regulated district?

Start here, because for most homeowners the answer is no, and the rest of this article is then just interesting reading.

There are two completely different things that both get called “historic,” and they do not carry the same obligations:

• National Register of Historic Places listing is a federal honorific administered through the state. It can open the door to certain tax credits. On a private home using private money, it does not require you to get design approval to replace your roof.
• Local designation — a local landmark, a local historic district, or a Historic Overlay zoning classification adopted by your city or the county — is regulatory. That is the one with teeth.

Plenty of properties in Volusia County hold the first and not the second. DeLand’s main residential historic district, the Northwest district listed in 1992, is a National Register listing. Both of New Smyrna Beach’s historic districts are National Register listings. Nine of Daytona Beach’s are.

How to check your own address in about ten minutes:

1. Pull up your property on your city’s zoning or GIS map and look for a Historic Overlay classification or a historic district layer. In Daytona Beach the trigger is expressly tied to land “classified as a Historic Overlay district.”
2. Check the city’s local register of historic places — a separate list from the National Register. If your city publishes a landmark list, read it for your own address, not just your street.
3. Call the planning department, not the building department. Historic review lives with planning. Ask two specific questions: “Is my address locally designated or in a local historic district?” and “If it is, is my property classified as contributing?” In Daytona Beach, non-contributing properties inside a district are treated differently from contributing ones.

Do that before you sign anything. It is free, and it is the only step here that cannot be done later.

DeLand: a re-roof always needs a certificate — but usually just from staff

DeLand has the strictest structure in the county, and it is worth understanding exactly why, because the logic surprises people.

The city’s code sets up three tiers. Work that is “ordinary maintenance” needs no certificate. Work that is not ordinary maintenance but will result in the “original appearance” of the building can get a certificate issued administratively by the planning director. Everything else goes to the Historic Preservation Board.

Here is the trap. DeLand defines ordinary maintenance as “work which does not require a construction permit.” A re-roof in DeLand requires a building permit. Therefore a re-roof can never be ordinary maintenance — the no-certificate tier is structurally unavailable to roofing work. Every re-roof on a locally designated property needs at least a staff-issued certificate.

The good news is that the middle tier is genuinely light. If you are putting back the same look — the code’s test is an appearance that “closely resembles” either the original feature or the appropriate present one, including color and defining architectural details — the planning director can sign it, with the historic resource coordinator consulted. No hearing, no board meeting, no neighbors.

Change the look, and you are on the agenda. DeLand’s board meets the first Thursday of the month at 5:00 p.m., and the code requires your complete application to be placed on an agenda within 30 days, with public notice 7 to 30 days before the hearing.

On materials, DeLand applies the standard that runs through all of these codes: deteriorated features should be repaired rather than replaced, and where replacement is necessary, “the new material should match the material being replaced in composition, design, color, texture, and other visual qualities.”

And the sentence that makes all of this non-optional: a certificate “shall be a prerequisite to the issuance of any other permits required by law,” and a building permit “shall be invalid if it is obtained without a certificate of appropriateness required for the proposed work.”

Which DeLand districts are local? Downtown, Stetson University, and the Historic Garden District are on the city’s local register. The Northwest district — the big residential one — is identified on the city’s own mapping as National Register. If you live in the Northwest district, local review does not apply to you by virtue of that listing alone. Confirm your specific parcel with planning regardless; boundaries and individual landmark designations do not follow neighborhood names neatly. See our DeLand roofing page for how the rest of the permitting process runs there.

Daytona Beach: same material and color = a Minor certificate, decided by staff

Daytona Beach rebuilt its entire Land Development Code recently, so older write-ups you may find online cite sections that no longer exist. Under the current code, review applies to a building individually listed on the local register, or one inside a local-register district and classified as contributing — and only when the land is classified as a Historic Overlay district.

The city then does something unusually homeowner-friendly: it names roofing explicitly. “The replacement of a roof with one of the same material and color” is listed as a Minor Certificate of Appropriateness. And a Minor COA is defined as staff review and action — the code marks neighborhood meeting, public hearing, advisory review and decision-making-body review all as “not applicable.”

In practice that means a straightforward like-for-like re-roof in Seabreeze or South Beach Street is an over-the-counter item, not a two-month wait.

Change the material or the color, though, and you have an exterior alteration, which is a Major certificate — and that goes to the Historic Preservation Board. The board meets the third Tuesday at 6:00 p.m., a Major hearing must be scheduled within 60 days of a complete application, and here is the scheduling risk worth knowing: the code allows the board’s meeting to be cancelled when there is no agenda. Several were cancelled over 2024–2025. The code guarantees a minimum of four meetings a year.

One honest caveat: there is real tension inside the current code between the section that sweeps any exterior alteration into the Major track and the section that expressly puts same-material roofs in the Minor track, and a third section that points applicants only to the Major procedure. Confirm your track with planning staff in writing before you schedule a crew. Do not assume the friendly reading.

Daytona has exactly two local historic districts — Seabreeze and South Beach Street — plus eleven individually designated local sites, including Lillian Place, the Streamline Hotel, Peabody Auditorium and the Hoyle Drug Co. building. Nine additional National Register districts exist in the city and carry no certificate obligation for a re-roof.

Seabreeze is the only district with published design guidelines, and they are more permissive on roofing than people expect. They direct that prominent roof planes “shall when possible utilize upgraded architectural shingle or metal roofs” — architectural shingle is expressly contemplated. They also contain a specific color rule: “Unusual colors (blue, red, etc.) shall not be utilized for metal roofs”, because that was not common in the district’s historical period. If you were planning a red standing-seam roof in Seabreeze, that is the sentence to read before you order material. More on that trade-off in our metal versus asphalt shingle comparison, and see our Daytona Beach roofing page for the local permitting picture.

Ormond Beach: no certificate at all for a like-for-like roof

Ormond Beach is the lightest touch in the county on roofing, and the distinction from Daytona Beach is subtle but real. Daytona issues a staff-decided Minor certificate. Ormond requires no certificate whatsoever — the work is simply “approved by the planning director.”

The provision names roofs directly. Administrative approval covers repairing or replacing “Roofs with one of similar material or color or material or color appropriate to the time period the structure was constructed.” That last clause is quietly generous: you are not locked to what is up there now if what is up there now is wrong for the house’s era.

Two things to know. First, the planning director keeps an escape hatch — if the director finds a major impact or potential detriment, a full certificate is required after all. Second, Ormond has a storm-damage bypass: no certificate is required where the chief building official certifies an unsafe or dangerous condition. That matters in hurricane season, and it is the only provision of its kind we found in the county. (It is not a blank check — the building official has to make that certification.)

If you do end up needing a full certificate, Ormond is the most procedurally involved: a pre-application meeting is required, referral within 10 working days, hearing at least 21 days after referral, decision mailed within 10 days, and then a 30-day appeal period before the building permit issues. Budget six to eight weeks, not one.

Scope is narrow, and this is the part most Ormond homeowners get wrong: there is no local “Ormond Beach Historic District.” Local review reaches the 53 landmarks listed in the ordinance — The Casements, the Hotel Ormond Cupola, the Rockefeller House and others — plus contributing properties in the Lincoln Avenue Overlay District, which is 19 parcels on a single street, created in 2002. Most of the city, including most beachside parcels and most of the area around the old hotel site, has no historic review before a roofing permit at all.

Ormond is also the only jurisdiction here that ties roofing material to architectural style in its ordinance. It calls for clay or concrete barrel or Spanish tile on Spanish Eclectic houses, clay or concrete barrel tile and interlocking French tile on Mediterranean Revival, sheet metal or composition shingle on Craftsman bungalows, metal or composition shingle on Frame Vernacular, and patterned shingles on the steep irregular roofs of Queen Anne houses. If your house is one of those and the tile route is on the table, our concrete versus clay tile guide covers what that actually costs and weighs.

One more Ormond rule that catches people mid-project: in the regulated alteration area, solar collectors are not permitted, and neither are skylights, roof windows, wind generators or reception equipment. If you were going to add a skylight during the re-roof — a very common upgrade — that is a no in the alteration area. Check our Ormond Beach roofing page for the rest of the local process.

New Smyrna Beach: no local districts, so no re-roof review

This is the finding most likely to save someone a wasted month, so we want to be precise about it.

New Smyrna Beach has no local historic districts. Its two historic districts — the New Smyrna Beach Historic District and the Coronado Historic District — are National Register listings. The city had been applying its historic preservation chapter to properties in those National Register districts, was challenged on it, and in 2020 the City Attorney’s office advised the city to stop enforcing Certificate of Appropriateness regulations on them and to enforce only on local landmarks and local historic districts. The city’s own published history says exactly that. Its consultant’s scope letter says the same, and adds that the city’s design guidelines were never formally adopted.

What is still regulated there: 17 individually designated local landmarks — buildings like St. Rita’s Colored Mission, the Connor Library, the Museum of History, the Woman’s Club and the Coronado Shuffleboard Courts. If you own one of those, an alteration does need a certificate, though the code limits review to “exterior changes visible to the public,” and there is a genuine ordinary-repairs exemption that, unlike DeLand’s, is not tied to whether a permit is required.

Two honest caveats. There is no administrative path in New Smyrna Beach — every certificate requires a public hearing, and the commission is only required to meet four times a year. (The code does say that if the commission fails to decide within the specified period, the application is deemed approved.) And demolition is still regulated on contributing structures in the National Register districts. There is also a “demolition by neglect” provision that affirmatively requires owners to fix deteriorated or ineffective roof waterproofing — so the city does not tell you what to re-roof with, but it can require you to keep the roof sound.

This is current as of the most recent code supplement we could verify, and it is a policy position the city could revisit — its consultant has recommended adopting a real administrative process. Ask when you pull the permit. Our New Smyrna Beach roofing page has the local details.

Unincorporated Volusia County: the historic preservation officer screens your permit

If you are outside city limits, the county’s historic preservation chapter is a standalone chapter of the county code, separate from the land development code. A certificate is required for “any alteration requiring a building permit which may change the exterior appearance” of a designated building, or a contributing property in a designated district. A certificate is a prerequisite to any other permit.

The county uses the same definitional structure as DeLand: ordinary maintenance means “any work for which a building permit is not required by law.” So a re-roof cannot qualify. Instead, the code routes it: on application for a building permit, the historic preservation officer reviews the application to determine whether the project will change the exterior appearance. If it will, you apply for a certificate. An exact in-kind re-roof is defensibly no change in appearance.

Two practical notes. First, we could not verify that any property or district in unincorporated Volusia currently holds a county certificate of designation. There is no public list we could find, and the ordinance gives property owners a veto over their own designation — and a majority of owners a veto over a district — which makes designation effectively voluntary. It is entirely possible the practical answer here is “nothing is designated, so no certificate.” We are not going to assert it either way. Ask the county’s historic preservation officer at permit intake. That question costs you one phone call.

Second, a much broader county rule that has nothing to do with designation and catches people out: the county’s demolition provisions reach any building 50 or more years old in the unincorporated area, designated or not, subject to an eligibility screening. That is not triggered by a re-roof. It is very much triggered if your project grew into taking a structure down. Worth knowing before a small job becomes a big one.

If the county board does get involved: five members, quorum of three, three concurring votes required to act, a mandatory pre-application conference, a hearing within 90 days of a complete application — and a meeting schedule the code sets at “at least four each year, but no more than six.” Plan around that calendar, not around your shingle delivery date. Our Volusia County roofing page covers the county permitting process generally.

The part nobody expects: historic status does not exempt you from the building code

This is the most important section in this article, and it runs against most people’s intuition.

There is a widespread belief that a historic designation buys you relief from Florida’s tougher re-roofing requirements — that you can put back what was there and skip the modern retrofits because the house is old and protected. That is not how Florida works.

We read the Florida Building Code, Existing Building volume, Chapter 12 — the chapter literally titled “Historic Buildings” — in full. It contains no roofing provision at all, with one narrow exception noted below. The code routes alterations of historic buildings to the general alteration chapter “except as modified in Chapter 12,” and Chapter 12 modifies nothing about roofing. So the general roofing section applies to your historic house exactly as it applies to a 1994 subdivision.

Concretely, that means:

• The 25% rule applies. Repair, replace or recover more than 25% of a roof section in any 12-month period and the whole section has to come up to current code. Its one exception turns on when the roof was built — 2007 code or later — not on historic status. A historic building’s roof is almost by definition older than that, so the exception usually does not help it. We cover the mechanics in our Florida 25% roof rule guide.
• Deck re-nailing and the secondary water barrier apply. When the covering comes off a wood-decked structure, those mitigation requirements attach. The listed exceptions are narrow — structures already permitted under the Florida Building Code, certain low slopes with a continuous system, and clay and concrete tile systems that are deemed to comply. Historic buildings are not on that list. See our guides to the secondary water barrier and to the full set of re-roof mitigation retrofits.
• Roof-to-wall strengthening applies on qualifying higher-value structures in the wind-borne debris region, subject to a cost ceiling tied to a percentage of the re-roofing cost.
• The underlying statute says nothing about historic buildings. We read the whole section. The word “historic” appears only in the legislative history note at the bottom.

What flexibility does exist is discretionary, not automatic. The historic buildings chapter allows a structure that does not strictly comply to be considered in compliance if the building code official is satisfied that equivalent protection has been provided or that no hazard is created. That is a conversation with your building official, initiated by someone who can document the alternative — not a box you check. There is also one genuinely roofing-specific piece of relief: salvaged historic Cuban tile, reapplied to a roof that historically bore it, is exempt from the code’s product-approval and preinstallation testing requirements. That is a real provision and a narrow one.

So the honest summary for a historic homeowner in Volusia County is: you have an extra approval to obtain, and you get no break on the construction itself. Plan for both.

What the review actually judges

Across all of these codes, the substantive standard is the same one, drawn from the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation: repair rather than replace where you can, and where you must replace, match the original in design, texture, color and visual qualities, and in materials where possible. Volusia County’s code says it that way. Daytona’s says composition, design, color and texture. DeLand’s adds “other visual qualities.”

Which means the practical questions a reviewer asks about a roof are narrow and predictable:

• Is the roof shape and are the roof features being preserved? Including eaves. Ormond says this explicitly. Changing a roofline is a much bigger deal than changing a shingle.
• Is the material family the same? Metal to metal, tile to tile, shingle to shingle is the path of least resistance. Metal to asphalt on a house that historically had metal is where you will get questions.
• Is the color period-appropriate? This is the one homeowners underestimate. Seabreeze’s guidelines ban unusual metal roof colors outright.
• Are you adding anything the district does not allow? Skylights, solar, vents and antennas get scrutinized on visible slopes, and Ormond prohibits several of them in the alteration area regardless.

A note on what we did not find, because there is bad information circulating: no code or guideline in any of these five jurisdictions names a specific metal roofing profile as required, and none contains a written rule forbidding dimensional or architectural asphalt shingle on a house that historically had metal. Seabreeze’s published guidelines actually permit upgraded architectural shingle. If someone tells you a specific product is mandated in your district, ask them to show you the sentence.

Fees and timelines, side by side

Figures below are what each jurisdiction published as of this writing. Fee schedules change, and in one case two primary sources disagreed — confirm the current number with the city before you budget it.

• DeLand — Administrative review $100; board hearing $200, plus a per-sign mailing-label charge. Board first Thursday monthly; agenda placement within 30 days of a complete application. Like-for-like roof: staff certificate, no hearing.
• Daytona Beach — Minor certificate $100; Major $150. Board third Tuesday; Major hearing within 60 days. Certificate expires if work does not start within a year or finish within five. Like-for-like roof: Minor, staff-decided.
• Ormond Beach — Alteration certificate listed at $600 on the current application form, while an older adopted fee schedule shows $300 plus $300 advertising. Verify which controls. No published fee or turnaround for the lighter administrative roof approval. Like-for-like roof: administrative approval, no certificate.
• New Smyrna Beach — No adopted fee for an alteration certificate appears in the fee schedules at all, which is itself consistent with the city not currently processing them. Demolition is $750. Landmarks only; districts not reviewed.
• Unincorporated Volusia County — We could not locate a published certificate fee. Mandatory pre-application conference; hearing within 90 days; board meets four to six times a year.

The lesson in that list is about scheduling, not money. Two hundred dollars is noise on a roof replacement. Waiting eleven weeks for a board that meets four times a year, in August, with a leak, is not. If you know you are in a regulated district, start the approval before you start collecting bids — the approval does not depend on which contractor you pick.

How this interacts with everything else you have to do

Historic review sits on top of the normal process, it does not replace any of it. On a designated property you may be dealing with all of the following:

• The historic certificate or administrative approval, first, because it is a prerequisite to the permit.
• The building permit and inspections themselves, including the mandatory in-progress inspections on a Florida re-roof.
• HOA architectural review, if you also have an association — a completely separate private approval that can impose different, sometimes conflicting, requirements. A city certificate does not satisfy your HOA, and HOA approval does not satisfy your city. If you have received a letter about your roof from either one, our guide to roof violation and code enforcement letters walks through the difference.
• Your insurer’s requirements, which care about wind mitigation features and not at all about historic appearance — and which occasionally point in the opposite direction from a preservation standard.

That last tension is real, and it is where a contractor who has actually done this work earns their fee: finding the assembly that satisfies a period-appropriate appearance and the current code’s attachment and water-barrier requirements and gets you the wind mitigation credits. Those are usually all achievable at once. They are rarely achievable by accident.

What we do on a historic-district roof

We have been roofing Volusia County for more than 20 years, which means we have worked on a lot of this county’s older housing stock — and we hold both a certified roofing license (CCC 1327602) and a certified general contractor license (CGC 1509441), which matters on old houses specifically, because deteriorated fascia, rafter tails and wall top plates are the norm rather than the exception once the covering comes off.

On a designated property, before you sign anything, we will:

• Confirm which review actually applies to your parcel — local designation versus National Register, contributing versus non-contributing, and which approval track your specific scope falls into.
• Scope the roof so it can pass both reviews — a material and color that hold up to the match-the-original standard, and an assembly that meets current code for deck attachment, underlayment and the secondary water barrier.
• Give you a written line-item estimate you can take to a preservation board without translating it, with the code-required items broken out so nobody thinks you are gold-plating.
• Tell you the realistic calendar, including the board’s meeting schedule, so you are not promised a start date that the approval process cannot support.

Affordable Roofing & Construction is licensed and insured, CertainTeed ShingleMaster credentialed with dual Master Craftsman certification, and every roof we install includes wind mitigation documentation and a 5-year labor warranty. Estimates are free and there is no obligation attached to them.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a Certificate of Appropriateness to replace my roof?

Only if your property is locally designated — a local landmark, or a contributing property in a local historic district or Historic Overlay classification. National Register listing alone does not require one. In DeLand and unincorporated Volusia County a re-roof on a designated property cannot qualify as ordinary maintenance, because both codes define that as work not requiring a permit. In Daytona Beach a same-material, same-color roof is a Minor certificate decided by staff. In Ormond Beach a similar-material-or-color roof needs no certificate at all, just planning director approval.

My house is on the National Register. Does that mean I need approval to re-roof?

Not by itself. National Register listing is a federal honorific and does not, on its own, require design approval for a re-roof on a private home using private money. Local designation is the regulatory one. This distinction matters a great deal in Volusia County, where DeLand’s main residential historic district, both of New Smyrna Beach’s districts, and nine of Daytona Beach’s districts are National Register listings.

Can I get the approval after the permit, or after the work?

No. Every jurisdiction here makes the certificate a prerequisite to the permit, and DeLand and Daytona Beach both state in their codes that a building permit obtained without a required certificate is invalid. Ormond Beach calls it a condition precedent and adds a 30-day appeal period that runs before the building permit issues. After-the-fact review is the expensive way to do this, and some jurisdictions charge a separate after-the-fact fee for it.

Does being in a historic district get me out of the 25% rule or the secondary water barrier?

No. We read the Florida Building Code’s “Historic Buildings” chapter in full. It contains no roofing provision other than a narrow allowance for salvaged historic Cuban tile. The general alteration requirements apply to historic buildings unmodified, so the 25% rule, deck re-nailing and the secondary water barrier all attach to a historic re-roof. The 25% rule’s exception depends on when the roof was built, not on historic status. The building official can accept an alternative that provides equivalent protection, but that is discretionary and has to be documented, not assumed.

Can I switch from metal to shingles, or shingles to metal, on a historic house?

Possibly, but it changes the review track. Same material and color is the light path everywhere. A material change is an exterior alteration, which in Daytona Beach means a Major certificate and a board hearing. The governing standard is matching the original in design, texture, color and visual qualities, and in materials where possible. Notably, no code or guideline in these five jurisdictions names a required metal profile, and Daytona’s Seabreeze guidelines expressly permit upgraded architectural shingle on prominent roof planes.

Are there roof colors I am not allowed to use?

In one district, yes, in writing: the Seabreeze Historic District design guidelines in Daytona Beach state that unusual colors such as blue and red shall not be used for metal roofs, because they were not common in the district’s historical period. Elsewhere, color is judged under the general period-appropriateness standard rather than a published list. Ormond Beach’s ordinance ties expected roofing materials to specific architectural styles.

My roof is leaking right now and I am in a historic district. Do I have to wait for a board meeting?

Emergency stabilization is a different matter from replacement, and drying the building in is always the first priority. Ormond Beach has an express bypass: no certificate is required where the chief building official certifies an unsafe or dangerous condition. Elsewhere, call the planning department the same day and ask specifically about emergency and temporary repairs — and keep photographs of the condition before anything is covered up. New Smyrna Beach’s code actually requires owners to correct ineffective roof waterproofing on regulated structures.

Does historic district approval replace my HOA’s approval?

No, and neither replaces the other. City or county historic review is a government land-use approval. HOA architectural review is a private contractual one under your covenants. They can impose different and occasionally conflicting requirements, and you may need both before you start. Get each in writing.

Does New Smyrna Beach review roof replacements in its historic districts?

Currently no, for the districts. New Smyrna Beach has no local historic districts — its two districts are National Register listings, and in 2020 the city stopped enforcing Certificate of Appropriateness regulations on them on City Attorney advice, enforcing only on local landmarks and local districts. Its 17 individually designated local landmarks do require a certificate for alterations, limited to exterior changes visible to the public. Demolition remains regulated on contributing structures. This is a policy position the city could revisit, so ask when you pull the permit.

How long does the approval take?

A staff-level approval for a like-for-like roof can be days. A board-level review is measured in weeks to a couple of months: DeLand places a complete application on an agenda within 30 days, Daytona Beach schedules a Major hearing within 60 days, unincorporated Volusia within 90 days, and Ormond Beach adds a 30-day appeal period before the permit issues. The real risk is meeting frequency — the county board is required to meet only four to six times a year, New Smyrna Beach’s commission at least four, and Daytona Beach’s board can cancel a meeting when there is no agenda. Start early.

Related reading

• Do You Need a Permit to Replace a Roof in Florida? The Volusia County Process
• HOA Roof Replacement Approval in Florida
• The Florida 25% Roof Rule, Explained
• Re-Roof Mitigation Retrofits: Deck Re-Nailing and Roof-to-Wall
• Secondary Water Barrier and Underlayment in Florida
• Tile Roofing in Florida: Concrete vs. Clay
• Metal Roof vs. Asphalt Shingles in Florida
• Roof Violation Letters: HOA vs. Code Enforcement
• Roof Replacement in Volusia County · Roof Repair · Our Recent Projects