Which Monroe houses actually justify copper
Monroe splits almost exactly in half and the two halves want different conversations. Around 37% of the housing went up between 1990 and 2009 in the subdivisions that spread out from the town, and those houses are on original gutter that is now due a downspout review rather than a replacement. Against that, 25.7% predates 1970 and sits in the historic core and the older rental stock, where the gutter has usually been repaired several times by several people and the fascia board underneath carries the accumulated evidence of all of it.
Copper earns its place on some of that and not on the rest, and we would rather say which before quoting four to five times the aluminium rate. It belongs on genuine period property, where an aluminium K-style run across original eaves detailing is a visible compromise on a building that deserves better, and on architect-specified work where the metal is a deliberate part of the elevation. On modern subdivision housing it performs no better in any way that matters, because an under-drained copper gutter overflows exactly like an under-drained aluminium one. If the appeal is the look, painted aluminium half-round at $16 to $26 a foot gets most of the way there for roughly a third of the money.
Where copper is right, the specification decides everything. Copper is a noble metal and aluminium is not, so a copper gutter on aluminium hangers makes the hanger the actively corroding half of a galvanic cell, wet, every time it rains, for years. The gutter stays immaculate and the bracket wastes away, and in fifteen years the run comes off a house whose owner was expecting a lifetime. Copper or bronze hangers, copper or stainless fasteners, copper downspouts and straps, and soldered joints rather than sealant.
One check specific to the property rather than the town: copper runoff corrodes bare aluminium and galvanised steel below it, so anything downstream on the elevation (flashings, a porch roof, an existing downspout) gets looked at before we hang a foot of it.

What Monroe itself changes
What drops on these roofs
The older core has the mature street planting you would expect of housing that age, with large hardwoods directly over the roofs on several of the streets nearest the centre. The subdivision half is more open and its trees are still well below roof height on many lots. Union County generally is more agricultural and less densely wooded than Mecklenburg, so the debris load across Monroe as a whole is lighter than the metro average, but it is concentrated very unevenly.
Getting to the gutters
The subdivisions are straightforward two-storey work with easy ground and good drive access. The older core is where it gets interesting: tighter lots, houses closer to the street, and a fair number of properties with porches wrapping two elevations, which puts the gutter you actually need to reach above a roof rather than above ground. That is a genuine access question rather than a surcharge, and we would rather establish it on the phone than discover it on the day.