What Is a Wind Mitigation Inspection in Florida?

While your homeowners insurance policy acts as a reactive measure if your house is damaged by wind, it shouldn’t be your only protection. 

In Florida, if you’re proactive by effectively wind mitigating your house, not only will your home be safer and more secure in a storm, but your insurance company will reward you by discounting your premium.

Wind mitigation is implementing building techniques or adding certain features to a house to help it sustain strong winds and resist damage. To see if your house was built with wind mitigation or to find out how you can wind-mitigate your home, you’d need a wind mitigation inspection.

A licensed contractor, architect, engineer, or other building inspector can do a wind mitigation inspection. This person will come to your house to determine how well it can withstand strong winds based on its construction and features. The inspector can also recommend what steps you could take in the future to improve your home’s resistance to strong winds. 

Florida wind mitigation requires activities involving water barriers, structure anchorings, window openings, and more. One of the main reasons these inspections are important is because the state determined that homes not up to building codes are vulnerable to wind damage from hurricanes.

In 2001, Florida changed building standards to eliminate inferior construction techniques that compromised homes during hurricanes. At the time, these were considered some of the strictest regulations in the country. As a result, many construction techniques and methods have changed over the years, like how roofs are attached to walls and the standards of windows and shutters.

Obviously, if you have an older house, you can’t change how it was built. It’s not your fault if it’s no longer up to code. If this is the case, it will cost more money to retrofit your house with possible upgrades, like changing the roof-to-wall attachments or installing new impact-resistant windows, but it could save you money long-term — and protect your home from devastating hurricane damage.

During a wind mitigation inspection, the inspector will take pictures of many aspects of your home, such as the roof, roof nails, gable ends, and other roof-to-wall attachments. Your inspector will submit the mitigation inspection pictures with their report.

Wind mitigation in Florida saved policyholders about 46% on their annual premiums, which came to about $3,271 statewide. But, exactly how much your wind mitigation premium discounts in Florida amount to depends on your home’s value, insurance provider, and location – you could cut your premiums by tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

Insurance companies use your home’s replacement cost, which is the amount to rebuild based on materials and labor costs, to determine the value of your house. The more your home is worth, the more you can save with wind mitigation.

Since many newer homes have some extent of wind mitigation built in, the effect of savings is mainly seen on homes built before 2001, when Florida changed building codes to cope with hurricanes.

According to numbers from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, rates statewide between homes with and without wind mitigation built before 2001 can differ by thousands of dollars. Look at the table below that shows rates from nine popular companies on $150,000 homes with and without wind mitigation.

Again, these numbers are averages across the state. Rates differ with and without wind mitigation by city and county. You’d likely find greater savings than average in coastal areas of the state where hurricane damage is more likely.

But, it’s clear that rates are lower across the board with wind mitigation in Florida. Let’s take a look at yearly premiums for a home valued at $300,000 in Florida:

Average rates will always increase as the home value rises. But, that means the Florida wind mitigation insurance discounts you can experience also increase as well. Wind mitigation reduced premiums by over $3,000 annually on older homes worth $300,000 in Florida.

The final table depicts premiums for higher-end homes with replacement costs of $450,000.

The premiums displayed in this article were obtained by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. They represent the most recent rate filings from the state’s largest insurers and can be utilized as an average of what Floridians can expect to pay for homeowners insurance each year. 

The example premiums are based on a policy for a Florida masonry home with a $500 non-hurricane deductible, a 2% hurricane deductible and no claims in the past three years.

By law, there’s a standard wind mitigation form that must be available on the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation website. The form is separated into seven major numbered sections. These are areas that the inspector will look at when performing a wind mitigation inspection in Florida.

While wind mitigation forms may vary slightly by state, they all generally contain the same provisions regarding roof integrity and opening protection.

The first section of the Florida wind mitigation is about the building code. It asks whether your home was built before or after 2001. In South Florida, it may be sufficient if your home was built after 1994 in compliance with the stricter local building codes in Miami-Dade and Broward counties that went into effect then.

The second through fifth sections are about your roof. An inspector will look at the shape of your roof, the material used, how it was constructed, and how it was attached to the walls. Generally, asphalt shingles are frowned upon, while metal or ceramic roofs are much more wind-resistant. If your roof was attached to your walls by toe-nailing, rather than with wraps or clips, this is also a problem.

Also, some roof shapes are better for withstanding strong winds than others. For example, a hip roof or flat roof is preferred over a gable roof. 

A gable roof is probably the most common in the United States. It has two sloping surfaces on each side of the house that meet at the top. It’s the type of roof you probably draw when drawing a simple house, or it looks like two cards leaned against each other upright when you begin building a house of cards.

Due to their simple design, gable roofs are less sturdy and wind-resistant than hip roofs. A hip roof has slopes on all four sides and is also very popular. While hip roofs are a little more expensive to build, they stand up to high winds better, which is why they’re preferred in a Florida wind mitigation inspection.

There are a few types of hip roofs, and to receive a discount for having one during a windstorm mitigation inspection, the roof must be at least 90% hip. This is calculated by measuring the length of the roof that’s hip-shaped as a proportion of the total perimeter of the roof. In other words, your full length of non-hip features must be no more than 10% of the roof.

The sixth section looks to see if your roof deck is water-resistant, and the seventh section deals with opening protections. This includes your windows, doors and shutters to see how well they could sustain an impact from windborne debris.

There’s no Florida law requiring you to get a wind mitigation inspection, but there is a Florida law that requires insurers to discount homeowners insurance premiums if the policyholder has proven that their home has effective wind mitigation measures. Your rate can’t go up if you fail an inspection, so there’s really no downside in getting one.

Florida law stipulates that insurance companies have to discount “properties on which fixtures or construction techniques demonstrated to reduce the amount of loss in a windstorm can be or have been installed or implemented.” 

Homeowners in many coastal states, like Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and parts of Rhode Island are eligible for wind mitigation discounts, too.

A wind mitigation inspection is usually good for five years, meaning as long as your inspection occurred five or fewer years ago, you’re eligible for home insurance discounts. 

When you get quotes, many providers will ask for proof of your wind mitigation inspection. As long as you haven’t made any changes within five years of the inspection, you should qualify for reduced rates.

A wind mitigation inspection should take 30 minutes to an hour. An inspector surveys the exterior of your home, the roof, and shutters if you have them. They’ll also likely need to enter your attic to see how your roof is attached to your home.

Inspectors typically need to walk around your home and take pictures, so you may want to clear debris or obstructions ahead of time. Inspectors need photos of features and product labels to verify their compliance with Florida wind mitigation code ratings.

The inspector will also need to enter your attic to examine your roof-to-wall connection and other inspection areas. You want them entering your attic, as your savings depend on their wind mitigation report in Florida. Remember that the inspector isn’t deciding the outcome. Rather, they’re collecting the information to compare to state standards.