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Increasing hurricane risk yes, but also a dysfunctional insurance market. There's a business model where roofing companies will approach homeowners telling them they have hurricane damage and are eligible to receive a free roof. The hurricane might passed through years before, but any damage that was overlooked is still the responsibility of the insurance company. The homeowners are surprised to learn that their roof has damage, since they haven't noticed anything wrong (and there is in fact no damage), but free is free, so they sign the contract. The roofing company files a claim, the insurance company denies it, the roofing company sues, and since a lawsuit costs more than a roof, the insurance company backs down. Then after this has happened repeatedly, the insurance company raises their rates or leaves the state.


We did this. Hail damage. There wasn't no damage. We'd had a hail storm. But... we've had them before. The root was 17 years old at that point, and... the last storm sort of tipped things over to the "needs repair" side of things. We may have been able to leave it a while longer, but do we wait until it's leaking, causing more damage? Insurance company sent an inspector, took pics, etc. Interestingly, they denied the claims of many of our neighbors, but ours was 'bad enough' to justify replacement. This still cost us several thousand of of pocket - it wasn't like it was 'free roof!' time.




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