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>So one hard or soft slate for each square foot of your house times $1,500 will be total cost of a new slate roof. Asphalt shingles have a total cost around $200 per square.

Well, yea slate roofs cost 7X as much. No wonder people don't.

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Well yeah, nowadays contractors can charge through the nose when hardly anyone even has the necessary skills to maintain existing slate roofs anymore, much less install new ones. It didn't always used to be like that, though. The material cost is more, of course, but not nearly 7X more.

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