How a Florida roof insurance claim works

The deadlines, and where they start

Florida sets statutory limits on how long you have to tell your insurer that something happened. Under section 627.70132 of the Florida Statutes, a claim or reopened claim under a property insurance policy is barred unless notice was given to the insurer within one year after the date of loss. A supplemental claim — further loss or damage from the same peril, on a claim already adjusted or already open — is barred unless notice was given within eighteen months after the date of loss.

The phrase doing the work there is date of loss. It is not the day you noticed the stain on the ceiling, and it is not the day a contractor told you the roof was damaged. For losses caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, severe rain or other weather events, the date of loss is the date the hurricane made landfall or the date the event is verified by NOAA.

What a policy generally covers, and what it does not

Property policies respond to sudden, accidental physical damage. They are not maintenance contracts. That distinction is the single most common reason a roof claim is denied, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which side of it your roof sits on before you start.

• Usually within scope: wind damage from an identifiable event, impact from falling debris, and the interior damage that follows water entering through it.
• Usually outside scope: wear, age, deterioration, granule loss from years of sun, algae staining, and failures attributable to poor original installation or lack of maintenance.

Age is not a peril. A worn-out roof is a homeowner expense, which is a hard thing to hear and a better thing to know early than after an adjuster has said it.

The sequence that works

1. Make it safe and stop the water. Reasonable emergency mitigation — tarping, containing water indoors — is normally treated as part of the claim rather than money wasted. Keep the invoice.
2. Document before you change anything. Photograph the exterior, the interior and the attic; wide shots first, then close. Keep damaged material rather than disposing of it.
3. Notify your insurer promptly. The deadline is the outer limit, not the target.
4. Get an independent inspection. A written report with photographs from a roofing professional is a stronger document than a verbal opinion, and it is yours.
5. Meet the adjuster on site if you can. Being present when the roof is inspected means the things you know about get looked at.
6. Compare scopes, not just totals. If an insurer's estimate and a contractor's estimate differ, the useful question is which line items differ and why — not which number is bigger.

Deductibles

Florida policies commonly carry a separate deductible for hurricane damage, worked out differently from the ordinary all-perils deductible. Read your declarations page rather than assuming, because the difference decides whether a claim is worth making at all. A repair that costs less than the applicable deductible is a repair you pay for either way, and a claim history you did not need.

Roof age, non-renewal, and what the law allows

Separate from claims, roof age is the other way insurance drives roofing decisions in this state. Under section 627.7011, an insurer may not refuse to issue or renew a homeowner's policy solely because of roof age where the roof is less than 15 years old. For a roof of 15 years or more, you are entitled to have an authorised inspector assess it at your own expense before replacement can be required — and if that inspection shows 5 years or more of useful life remaining, roof age alone is not a ground for refusal.

In practice, that makes a proper inspection the document that keeps a sound older roof insured. Details are in the inspection page.

There is a detail in the same statute that catches people out, and it runs the opposite way to intuition. A roof's age is calculated from the last date on which 100 percent of the surface area was built or replaced — or, where a series of partial replacements eventually covered the whole roof, from the first of them. So patching a roof in stages does not reset the clock to the most recent piece of work. If you are relying on roof age for a renewal, work out that date before the conversation rather than during it.

Be careful what you sign

After a storm, you will be asked to sign things. Read them. A document presented as "authorisation to inspect" is sometimes a contract, and agreements that hand over your rights under a claim are a different thing again — heavily restricted in Florida and the source of a great deal of trouble. Contractors documenting damage and providing estimates is entirely normal. Contractors taking over your claim is not the same activity, and you should not agree to it on a doorstep.

Records that hold up

Claims are decided on evidence, and the evidence is almost always something you either collected at the time or did not. A folder worth keeping contains:

• Dated photographs of every elevation and the attic, taken before the damage as well as after — which means photographing a sound roof once a year is genuinely useful.
• Any prior inspection reports, in date order.
• Permit records for previous roofing work.
• Invoices for emergency mitigation, and photographs of the mitigation in place.
• A written note of every conversation: who, when, what was said.
• The policy itself, including the declarations page showing your deductibles.

None of that is difficult. All of it is much harder to assemble after an event than before one, and the gap between a well-documented claim and a poorly documented one is usually larger than any argument about the roof itself.