Your roof is over fifteen. Here are your real options.
Roof age is the number one reason South Florida homeowners get non-renewed. It is also the most fixable, and there is a route that does not begin with replacing the roof.
What Florida law provides
Florida law has moved to stop insurers from refusing coverage solely because a roof is older than 15 years, where an inspection shows the roof has at least five years of useful life remaining. In practice that means an inspection is the lever, and the carrier still gets to decide what the inspection says about your roof.
The order to do this in
Get the roof inspected before renewal
A report showing remaining useful life is what keeps carriers at the table. Ordering it after the non-renewal letter arrives is much harder.
Get the wind mitigation form done at the same visit
Same trip, two documents, and the second one is where the discount lives.
Let us shop it with the reports in hand
Carriers vary enormously on roof age. With documentation there are usually options. Without it there frequently are not.
Consider the roof settlement clause
Some policies offer a lower premium in exchange for actual cash value on the roof. On an older roof that trade is usually a bad one, and you should be told what you are agreeing to.
What to expect
An inspection is a few hundred dollars. A replacement is a different order of magnitude, and it is sometimes still the right answer, particularly when the wind mitigation credits on a new code-compliant roof are counted against its cost.
If a non-renewal already arrived
You have more time than the letter makes it feel like, and you have options including Citizens where eligibility allows. Call the moment it arrives rather than in the last week.
What this touches
Questions people actually ask
Will a roof over 20 years get written at all?
Sometimes, with documentation and a carrier that will look at it. Be prepared for the answer to be a replacement.
Work it out before anybody sells you anything
Four calculators that run in your browser, a page for every situation Florida puts people in, and the claims data for your own county. All of it free, and none of it behind a form. The form is for the other half of the job: when you have read enough and want a person on the phone.
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