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> It may be because of height restrictions - people build up as high as they can to get the view.

Here in London, a flat roof means you can add on an extra floor (raising the property value) without towering above adjacent homes (which would make it hard to get approval to build)

Does it leak? Not in the first few years - and if you're a house builder, anything after that is the buyer's problem.

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Exactly. Depending on where you live it’s hard to impossible to get permission to go above the existing ridgeline of the house, leaving people to poke flat roof dormers out the side.

Flat roofs don’t have to leak. I’m doing an EPDM roof on my garden office at the moment. It’s a single huge sheet of rubber.

As others have pointed out, the lack of eaves is the real killer. My dad was over from NZ in the summer and he was saying that fashion is there too. It’s causing all sorts of water issues for buildings.

There is one style of flat roof which is designed to hold water, with gravel on top to protect the rubber. Apparently very good, but you have to get it 100% right.

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