If you own a home in Florida, there's a decent chance you've either received a letter about your roof or know a neighbor who has. Carriers ask for its age at quote time, flag it at renewal, and in the worst version, send a non-renewal notice for a roof that isn't leaking, isn't damaged, and by every visible measure is doing its job. The age of your roof has become the single biggest factor in whether your home can be insured affordably in Florida — bigger than claims history for most households, and often bigger than location.
The rules around this are widely misunderstood, and in 2026 the confusion got worse: a wave of articles claimed a new state law took effect on July 1 expanding roof-age protections. It didn't. Here's what the law actually says, what carriers actually do, and what your options are if your roof is aging out.
The short answer
Florida law prohibits an insurer from refusing to write or renew a homeowners policy solely because of roof age if the roof is less than 15 years old. Once a roof reaches 15, the carrier can require documentation of its condition — but if an authorized inspector certifies the roof has at least five years of useful life remaining, the carrier cannot walk away based on age alone. There is no statewide maximum roof age. In practice, each carrier sets its own appetite, and those appetites vary widely — which is exactly why the same roof can be declined by one carrier and written by another.
What Florida law actually says: Statute 627.7011
The protection comes from Florida Statute 627.7011, amended during the May 2022 special legislative session (Senate Bill 2-D) at the height of the property insurance crisis. Before that change, carriers had begun declining roofs at 10 or 12 years regardless of condition, forcing homeowners into replacements their roofs didn't need.
The statute draws two lines:
Under 15 years, roof age by itself is off the table. A carrier can still decline a home for documented condition problems — visible damage, deterioration, prior unrepaired losses — but not for the number of years on the roof.
At 15 years and older, the carrier may ask for proof of condition, and you have the right to provide it. An inspection by an authorized inspector showing at least five years of remaining useful life means the carrier cannot refuse to issue or renew solely because of the roof's age.
The word doing the heavy lifting in both provisions is "solely." The law restrains age-only decisions. It does not force a carrier to accept a roof in poor condition, and it does not stop a carrier from pricing an older roof higher, adjusting how it pays roof claims, or applying a separate roof deductible. Those levers are where most of the real-world pain now lives, and we cover them below.
The "new July 2026 roof law" you may have read about didn't pass
During the 2026 legislative session, House Bill 815 and its identical Senate companion SB 808 proposed expanding the 15-year protection beyond standard homeowners policies to all residential property policies — including condo and landlord policies — along with new rules distinguishing steep-slope from low-slope roofs and a broader definition of who counts as an authorized inspector. The bills carried a July 1, 2026 effective date in their text.
Both bills died in committee on March 13, 2026 and never became law. Because the drafted effective date was widely reported before the bills stalled, a significant amount of published content — including articles posted after July 1 — states that these protections are now in effect. They are not. The operative law remains Statute 627.7011 as amended by the 2022–2023 reforms, and its protections apply to homeowners policies. If you hold a condo policy or a landlord policy and were told a new law protects your roof from age-based non-renewal, that advice was built on a bill that never passed.
What carriers actually do in practice
The statute sets the floor. Underwriting sets the reality, and it varies more than most homeowners expect.
Most Florida carriers begin scrutinizing a roof around the 15-year mark, and many won't accept new business on asphalt shingle roofs past 15 to 20 years even with a passing inspection — they'll simply decline for stated condition or eligibility reasons rather than age alone. Some draw the line earlier for three-tab shingles, which age fastest under Florida sun and wind. Metal and tile roofs get meaningfully longer runways, though some carriers still apply shingle-style age triggers across all materials and let the inspection sort it out.
Citizens Property Insurance, the state-created insurer of last resort, requires roof inspections at 15 years and applies its own eligibility standards — and because Citizens actively moves policies back to private carriers through its depopulation program, a homeowner with an aging roof can find themselves transferred to a carrier with stricter requirements than the one they left.
This variation is the practical takeaway. Roof age rules are not one rule — they're thirty-plus rules, one per carrier, and they change as carriers tighten or loosen appetite. A declination from one carrier tells you almost nothing about what the next one will say. As an independent agency writing Florida homeowners insurance across multiple carriers, a meaningful share of our work on older-roof homes is simply knowing which carrier's appetite fits which roof.
The fine print that costs people money
Even when coverage stays in force, roof age changes what the policy pays. Three mechanisms matter, and most homeowners discover them at claim time rather than at renewal.
Replacement cost vs. actual cash value. Many carriers convert roof coverage from replacement cost value (RCV) to actual cash value (ACV) as the roof ages — commonly around the 15-year mark. RCV pays to install a new roof of like kind. ACV subtracts depreciation first. The difference is not academic: a 15-year-old shingle roof with a 20-year expected life has roughly a quarter of its life remaining, so on a $24,000 replacement, an ACV settlement lands in the neighborhood of $6,000 before the deductible. The homeowner covers the rest.
Roof payment schedules. Some policies now include a hybrid schedule: the roof is covered at RCV in its early years and steps down toward ACV on a published scale as it ages. The schedule is in the policy documents, but it rarely gets read until a claim gets paid short.
Separate roof deductibles. Following the 2022 reforms, some Florida policies carry a roof-specific deductible — on some policies as high as 2% of dwelling coverage — that applies to roof claims in place of the standard deductible. Paired with an ACV settlement, it can reduce a roof claim payment to a fraction of the replacement cost.
None of this is hidden, but it's distributed across endorsements and schedules where it's easy to miss. When we review a policy for a home with a roof past 10 years, how the roof pays at claim time gets checked before the premium does. A cheaper policy that pays ACV on the roof is frequently the more expensive policy.
If your roof is 15 or older: the inspection route
The statute's five-year useful-life provision is your primary tool, and it works best when you run it proactively rather than after a non-renewal notice arrives.
A roof condition certification — an inspection report from an authorized inspector documenting the roof's material, installation date, current condition, and estimated remaining useful life — does two things. It satisfies the statutory requirement that blocks age-only refusal when it shows five or more years remaining. And it gives every other carrier we shop something concrete to underwrite against, instead of a bare age number that triggers automatic declines.
Durable materials benefit most. A 20-year-old standing-seam metal roof or concrete tile roof will typically clear a useful-life inspection easily; a 20-year-old three-tab shingle roof in Florida conditions usually won't. If your roof is well-maintained and built from long-lived material, the inspection converts that fact into underwriting currency.
The upside of a new roof
If replacement is genuinely on the horizon, it's worth knowing what a new roof does on the insurance side, because the effect is larger in Florida than almost anywhere else.
A new roof restores eligibility with carriers that wouldn't quote the old one, which alone can move the premium substantially — the most competitive carriers for your home are often the ones the old roof locked you out of. It typically restores replacement cost coverage where the old roof had been converted to ACV. And it resets the clock on wind mitigation: a re-roof done to current code, documented with a fresh wind mitigation inspection, generates credits against the wind portion of the premium — roof deck attachment, roof-to-wall connections, secondary water resistance, and roof covering are all inspectable, credit-bearing features. We cover how those credits work on our wind and hurricane coverage page, and for most Florida homes the inspection pays for itself at the first renewal.
The wrong reason to replace a roof is an age-only non-renewal you haven't tested. Between the statute's inspection right and the variation in carrier appetite, a functional roof frequently has more insurable life than the first carrier's letter suggests. Shop it before you finance a replacement you may not need.
Why this is hitting St. Johns County right now
There's a local dimension to the timing. A large share of the housing stock in Julington Creek, Fruit Cove, and the World Golf Village corridor was built in the 1990s and 2000s, which puts an entire generation of homes — and in many cases their original or first-replacement shingle roofs — inside the 15-to-25-year window where carrier scrutiny is heaviest. That's why roof-age non-renewals arrive in waves through neighborhoods here: the homes went up together, so the roofs age out together.
For St. Johns County homeowners, the practical reading is that a roof-age letter is a neighborhood-wide event, not a judgment about your home — and the households that fare best are the ones that get the condition documented and the coverage shopped before renewal, not after the notice.
Got a non-renewal notice citing roof age? Do this
- Check the roof's legal age. Age runs from the date the full roof surface was last replaced, documented by the permit. Partial repairs don't reset it — but homeowners are sometimes working from a wrong date, and permit records settle it.
- Get a roof condition certification. If the roof is 15 or older, an authorized inspection showing five-plus years of useful life invokes the statutory protection and arms every subsequent quote.
- Shop the market before committing to a replacement. Carrier appetite varies enough that a decline from one carrier is the beginning of the process, not the end of it.
- Review how any new policy pays roof claims. RCV vs. ACV, payment schedules, and roof deductibles matter as much as the premium — often more.
- If replacement really is due, sequence it. Quote the insurance alongside the roofing bids so the carrier eligibility and wind mitigation credits the new roof unlocks are part of the decision, not an afterthought.
Roof age and insurance: quick answers
Can my insurer drop me just because my roof turned 15?
Not solely because of age — but at 15, the carrier can require proof of condition. An authorized inspection showing at least five years of remaining useful life blocks an age-only refusal under Statute 627.7011. A roof that fails inspection is a different matter: condition-based decisions remain legal.
How does the insurance company know how old my roof is?
Permit records, prior inspection reports, aerial imagery, and the application itself. Assume the carrier knows. Misstating roof age on an application creates a far bigger problem than an old roof does.
Will a new roof lower my premium?
In Florida, usually meaningfully — through restored carrier eligibility, restored replacement cost coverage, and wind mitigation credits documented on a post-replacement inspection. The exact effect depends on the carrier and the mitigation features, which is why we re-shop after a re-roof.
What's the difference between replacement cost and actual cash value on a roof?
Replacement cost pays to install a new roof of like kind and quality. Actual cash value deducts depreciation based on the roof's age and expected life, which on an older roof can reduce the payment to a fraction of the replacement bill. Many Florida policies convert roofs from RCV to ACV as they age — check yours before a storm does.
Is there a new 2026 Florida roof law?
No. The 2026 bills that would have expanded roof-age protections (HB 815 and SB 808) died in committee in March 2026. The governing law is still Statute 627.7011 from the 2022–2023 reforms. Content claiming new protections took effect July 1, 2026 is describing a bill that never passed.