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Yes. Florida law makes it unlawful to repair or replace part of a building, a roof included, without first getting a permit from the local building department.
Check the roofing contractor's license on the Department of Business and Professional Regulation's site, myfloridalicense.com, by name or license number. If the roof was built to the 2007 Florida Building Code or a later edition, only the part being repaired, replaced or recovered has to meet the current code, not the whole roof.
No state office publishes how long a roof lasts, but Florida law ties roof age to insurance. An insurer may not refuse to write or renew a home policy solely because the roof is less than 15 years old. For a roof 15 years or older, you may pay for an inspection, and if it shows 5 years or more of useful life left, the insurer may not refuse for the roof's age.
A homeowner may cancel a roofing contract within 10 days without penalty when it was signed within 180 days of a declared state of emergency, and since May 19, 2025, roofers may also strengthen a home's roof-to-wall connections.
01Hurricane wind is the main cost in a Florida home policy, and the price is set by the address, the age and shape of the roof and how the house is built, so it can differ a great deal between two homes on the same street.
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02Both are reports an insurer reads before it prices or accepts a home.
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03The state's emergency managers say to protect the places where wind can get in: the roof, the roof-to-wall straps, the windows, the doors and the garage door.
Read the answer →The state's emergency managers say to protect the places where wind can get in: the roof, the roof-to-wall straps, the windows, the doors and the garage door.
Have it sized by a load calculation, not by the size of the house.
Florida's sales tax is 6 percent, and most counties add a discretionary sales surtax, which applies only to the first $5,000 of any one item.
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