Tile or shingle: what the decision actually costs
Around Tampa Bay you can drive one street and see both materials on houses of the same age. That is unusual — most markets settle on one — and it means local owners face a genuine decision at replacement time rather than simply repeating what is already there.
How each one actually fails
Asphalt shingle fails from the surface down and in plain sight: granules go, edges curl, the material turns brittle. Under year-round ultraviolet exposure, twenty years is a realistic working life here for builder-grade product, and the replacement is a straightforward tear-off.
Concrete tile fails from the inside out and invisibly. The tile is a shell that can last fifty years or more; the underlayment beneath it does the waterproofing and lasts twenty to thirty. So a tile roof reaches a point where it must be entirely lifted, re-membraned and relaid — and afterwards it looks exactly as it did before, which is why the price surprises people who were expecting a visible transformation.
The arithmetic, honestly
Tile costs substantially more up front and the re-underlayment cycle is not cheap either, but the shell is reusable and the total horizon is longer. Shingle is cheaper each time and the cycle comes around faster. The honest comparison is not the two quotes side by side — it is each one divided by the years it credibly buys, weighed against how long you plan to own the house.
Three other factors matter locally. Structure: tile is heavy, and a house framed for shingle cannot simply receive it without an engineer looking at the framing first. Association rules: a good deal of the newer stock is governed by an approved materials list that may settle the question for you. And resale: on streets where tile is the norm, a shingle roof reads as a downgrade whatever the arithmetic says.
Next step: How long a roof actually lasts here
A contractor who installs only one of the two materials is not the person to ask which one you should have — sometimes a perfectly honest adviser, but the incentive is what it is. If the decision will steer tens of thousands of dollars, get an opinion from someone who does both.