Sell a House With a Bad Roof — Without Replacing It

Why roof age decides whether a Pinellas house can be insured

Most of Pinellas County was built between the 1950s and the 1970s. Concrete block, low pitch, a shingle roof that has been replaced once or twice. A lot of those roofs are now 20 to 30 years old, and in Florida roof age is the first thing an underwriter looks at.

The rule is in Fla. Stat. § 627.7011(5). For homeowners policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2022, an insurer may not refuse to write or renew solely because of roof age if the roof is less than 15 years old. If the roof is 15 years or older, the insurer has to let you get a roof inspection, at your expense, from an authorized inspector. If that inspection shows at least five years of useful life remaining, the insurer cannot decline solely because of age.

Two details matter for an older house:

• Roof age is measured from the date 100 percent of the roof surface was built or replaced under the building code then in effect. Patches and partial repairs do not reset the clock, and a reroof with no permit on file is hard to prove.
• The statute only stops a refusal based solely on age. Section 627.7011(6)(c) leaves insurers free to decline for other underwriting reasons, and a roof with active leaks, curling shingles, exposed felt or soft decking is exactly that.

Citizens, the state-backed insurer, adds its own rules. It requires a 4-point inspection on properties more than 20 years old. A shingle roof older than 25 years (50 years for tile, metal and other hard roofs) must show at least five years of remaining useful life. If it does not, Citizens wants proof of a full replacement before it will write the policy.

What a 4-point inspection is, and why roofs fail it

A 4-point inspection is a short report an insurer asks for on an older house. A licensed inspector looks at four systems: roof, electrical, HVAC and plumbing. It is not a full home inspection. It exists to tell the underwriter whether the house is a risk they want.

The roof section of the Citizens form asks for the covering material, the roof age, the remaining useful life in years, the date of the last roofing permit, and an overall rating of satisfactory or unsatisfactory. The inspector has to report visible damage: cracking, cupping or curling, granule loss, exposed asphalt or felt, missing or loose tabs or tiles, soft decking. Then they check the attic and the ceilings for leaks, and since the March 2025 form update they have to describe any leak they find.

An unsatisfactory roof or an active leak is usually the end of the application. That is the moment a Pinellas house goes from "older roof" to "uninsurable", and it is where most of the roof calls we get begin. If the panel or the plumbing is also a problem, our page on selling an uninsurable house covers the rest of the form.

No insurance means no mortgage, which means no retail buyer

Here is the chain that makes a bad roof so hard to sell around. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide requires a property insurance policy on the house securing any first mortgage, and lenders follow it. The buyer's lender will not fund without a bound policy. The buyer's carrier will not bind on a roof that fails the 4-point. So the buyer cannot close.

Most buyers in Pinellas use a mortgage. Once the roof is disclosed, financed buyers either skip the house or write an offer that depends on a new roof before closing. Then the roofer's schedule becomes your closing date, you are paying for a roof on a house you are leaving, and the deal can still die at the appraisal, because an appraiser who sees damage that affects the soundness of the structure has to make the appraisal subject to repairs.

What is left is cash buyers. A smaller pool, and the one we are in.

What a replacement involves, and why we do not ask you to pay for it

We will not quote a number for a new roof here, because any honest number depends on your roof: square footage and pitch, how much decking has rotted under the leaks, shingle versus tile versus metal, and what the permit triggers. The right figure comes from a licensed roofer's written bid, not a website.

Two things to know before you get bids:

• Florida's 25 percent rule changed in 2022. Under Fla. Stat. § 553.844(5), if the existing roof was built or replaced under the 2007 Florida Building Code or later and you repair 25 percent or more of it, only the repaired portion has to meet today's code. Older roofs still face a full replacement once the repair crosses that line.
• The My Safe Florida Home program (Fla. Stat. § 215.5586) can put up to $10,000 of state money toward roof work, but it is for owner-occupied homestead properties and depends on yearly funding. It is not built for someone who needs to sell this quarter.

Our approach is simpler. We get the roof bid, we put it in the math, and we pay for the roof after we own the house. You do not front it, finance it or wait for it.

Tarps and blue roofs from Helene and Milton

Helene came through on September 26, 2024 and pushed a record 6.31 feet of water above normal high tide at the St. Petersburg gauge. Milton followed on October 9, 2024, with an 88-knot gust (about 101 mph) recorded at Albert Whitted Airport, dozens of tornadoes across Florida that day, and more than 20 inches of rain near St. Petersburg. A lot of Pinellas roofs lost shingles, ridge caps and decking in one evening.

The Army Corps of Engineers ran Operation Blue Roof in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco afterward. The sheeting was free, but temporary by design, meant to hold until permanent repairs, and sign-ups closed on November 14, 2024. Two years on, there are still houses in Lealman, Shore Acres and the beach communities with a faded tarp or a blue roof and water coming in every time it rains. A tarp on that long usually means wet insulation, stained drywall and the start of a mold problem underneath.

On the insurance side, Fla. Stat. § 627.70132 gives you one year from the date of loss to give notice of a claim and 18 months for a supplemental claim. For Helene and Milton losses, both windows have closed. If a claim is still open or disputed, we can still buy the house, but talk to a Florida attorney about the claim first. And if the damage was heavy, read our guide to the FEMA 50 percent rule before you spend money on repairs.

How our offer accounts for the roof

We are 131 Cash Home Buyers, a St. Petersburg company that has bought more than 140 houses, mostly in Pinellas and Hillsborough, since 2018. We buy roofs in every condition: original, leaking, tarped, sagging, unpermitted.

1. One walkthrough, 15 to 30 minutes. A neighbor, a relative or a lockbox is fine if you are not local. We look at the roof from the ground and from the attic.
2. A written offer, typically within 24 hours. It is the renovated value of the house, minus the repairs (the roof bid is usually the biggest line), minus holding and resale costs, minus our margin. We show you every line.
3. If listing it with a roof credit would net you more, we tell you so. Our compare page walks through both paths.
4. Closing in as little as 7 to 14 days when title is clean, or on your schedule. No fees, no commissions, and we pay the normal closing costs. A mortgage or liens are paid from the price at the title company.

After closing we pull the roofing permit, replace the roof and deal with whatever is under it. You do not fix anything, clean anything out or meet a roofer.

Related: Uninsurable house · Hurricane or flood-damaged house · Mold · all situations we buy

We are a cash home buyer, not a law firm. This page is general information about Florida law and local process, not legal advice. For advice on your situation, talk to a Florida attorney — we work with several and are glad to make an introduction.