From Roofing to Real Estate: Fred Abascal's Construction Career

Fred Abascal

Fred Abascal started on roofs as a teenager and became one of the region's most accomplished developers. The path wasn't accidental.

There's a pattern in construction. Most people who climb the ladder specialize immediately. You start as a roofer, you become a roofing contractor. The specialization makes sense. It's safer, more focused, easier to manage. Fred Abascal's career went in the opposite direction. As a teenager, he learned roofing. Then masonry. Then siding. Then framing. He wasn't specializing. He was collecting competencies. That matters because houses aren't made of one trade. They're made of all of them, and if you only know one, you're always dependent on someone else for the rest.

By his twenties, Abascal was flipping houses. That's where the multi-trade background pays dividends. When you flip a house, you need to know which systems are failing, which ones you can repair cost-effectively, and which ones you need to replace. You need to understand roofing problems because a bad roof kills a deal. You need to understand foundation issues. You need to understand siding because it affects the perceived quality of the finished product. House flipping also teaches you margins. When you're buying properties at auction, renovating them, and selling them, every dollar of expense matters.

Then came National Window Coverings. Abascal founded and scaled the company to $9 million, which sounds like it's moving away from construction. It's not. Running a window coverings business means you're constantly inside residential properties, installing products, understanding what homeowners care about. It's market research embedded in the business model. It taught Abascal about finishing quality, about customer expectations, about the details that separate a quality property from a basic one.

All of that compressed into decades of construction and real estate knowledge created something unusual: a developer who could actually build. Most real estate developers are financiers first, construction managers second, and craftspeople never. Abascal's path was reversed. He's a craftsperson who learned to finance and manage construction, because he started by actually doing it. That background changed what he would build. When you've framed a house, you understand why frame quality matters. When you've installed roofing, you know how quickly a cheap roof becomes expensive. When you've laid brick, you understand finish quality. Those aren't just technical skills. They become standards that guide your development decisions.

The 288 homes Abascal built across New Jersey and Pennsylvania reflect those standards. Most construction paths are vertical. You specialize, you move up, you become a manager of specialists. Abascal's path was horizontal first—learning multiple trades—and then vertical. That horizontal foundation changed everything he built afterward. That's why the career arc matters.