New to Real Estate · DMV · Member since 2022 · 53 posts · 45 votes
I just moved into my home and thought everything was going smoothly… then boom... my insurance company sent me a letter saying I needed a new roof.
Now, I made sure to get a roof inspection before I purchased the home. But they said that wasn't enough; their inspector had "suggested" a full replacement.
I was convinced they had the wrong house. Why would you insure the property in the first place if the roof supposedly needed replacing? To me, the insurance piece should be sorted before you sit down to sign, not sprung on you after you've moved in. So there I was, shopping for new coverage because I just knew they were trying to get one over on me.
Well… turns out most insurance companies share the same underwriter, so I wasn't getting covered anywhere until this was "fixed."
But I wasn't giving up.
I tracked down the company that had done the original roof inspection, hoping they'd actually worked on it. I had to keep following up because they'd recently gone digital and couldn't locate the document, and I was cutting it dangerously close to my deadline. Finally, they came through with the paperwork: the roof had been fully replaced in 2018. I bought the home in 2023.
I was honestly appalled. The insurance company was ready to have me spend thousands on a roof that's still in great shape.
THE NERVE.
Lesson learned: keep every document, and don't take "you need a new roof" at face value, dig for the paper trail.
Has anyone else had an insurance company try to pull something like this? How did you fight back?
I've never ever had an insurance company actually inspect a property. Asked for picures once. Good for you Candice. Don't call insurance companies. Call a broker.
Specialist · Strongsville, OH · Member since 2016 · 303 posts · 217 votes
1mo
I'm sorry your vendors gave you bad advice.
Insurance companies do not have a common underwriter - they each have their own proprietary methods and standards of what they will or will not accept.
When the agent who quotes your property inputs data to do the quote - age of roof, hvac, plumbing type, etc are all part of that input. My software has a link to historical aerial roof photos going back 10 years or more sometimes and we can go through those and depending on the quality of the images and nearby tree cover we can nail down very closely when a roof was last replaced even if the seller does not know. (which is very common especially on investment properties that have changed hands multiple times)
Whomever told you companies all have the same underwriter may have meant inspection company - that is also not true but it's closer to the truth than saying all companies have the same underwriter.
Many companies use a 3rd party inspector to physically go on site and document the property on all 4 sides plus whatever is in the back yard. As with all things involving humans sometimes the inspector is... having a bad day (if we are being generous) and sometimes the person is a complete moron. And yes - we have seen them inspect the wrong house too.
As far as thinking the insurance company tried to pull a fast one - the insurance company is not the roofing company and has nothing to gain by you putting on a new roof other than the house having significantly less chance of a loss.
There are two things going on in the insurance world many people are not aware of if you are not in the industry. The cost of any repair to a home (or auto) has literally exploded over the last few years and continues to go up.
Example: As an investor I can get a tear off roof done for around $200 to $250 per 10x10 foot area of roof known as a "square" by roofers. I saw a claim recently where my company had approved $650 per "square" and there was a huge dispute with the contractor who was trying to charge $1100 per "square".
The contractor had my insured all tuned up thinking we were trying to rip him off. I called the contractor and laid out what my cost of doing a roof is and asked if they wanted to take a second look at the quote and within minutes they were happy to accept what the insuance company had offered. Roofers are literally rap*ing insurance companies right now and it's causing companies to push back on the condition of the roof on new business and push back on claims like I have never seen in almost 20 years in the business.
On top of the exploding cost of claims we are coming off 3+ plus years of insurance companies losing billions per year. There were virtually no profitable insurance carriers for home or auto insurance in the last several years. Insurance companies have been taking rate increases as fast as the states department of insurance will allow them to and in states where companies could not get the rate increases approved fast enough carriers were either ceasing to sell new policies or they up and pulled out of the state. California and Florida got all the headlines for this but it happened in a lot of other states too.
As it stands now most carriers will give you replacement cost coverage on a roof up to about 15 years of it being installed then they convert over to Actual Cash Value Coverage. If things keep going the way they are on roofs I would not be suprised to see Replacement Cost Coverage for roof go away completely in the next 5 to 10 years.
