Insurance professional: Roof scams could prove costly to unwary The Villages homeowners

Residents of The Villages in Central Florida need to beware of unscrupulous roofing company agents who come into the neighborhood looking to take advantage of unwary homeowners, said Kin Insurance’s Sean Harper.

Harper, co-founder of the company, said after a storm anywhere near the neighborhood, residents will see roofing companies going door to door and sending mailings. They try to convince people to let them inspect their home’s roof. Most people don’t look at their roof very often, so it’s no surprise that when these unscrupulous people look at the roof they always find something wrong.

“What happens to that is they’ll make an unnecessary repair, which the customer does have to pay for because they have a deductible on their insurance. It’s not free,” Harper told Insurance Rate Reporter.

The insurance policy typically has a deductible of $1,000 or more, which means the homeowner has to pay that deductible.

The homeowner also has to deal with the house repairs, which Harper called a pain, especially if there are no real damages.

But the pain felt by the homeowner doesn’t end there. Harper said these claims hurt your ability to get insurance in the future and will cause your rates to go up. Some insurance companies just won’t want to work with you.

“This is such a big problem that is driving massive rate increases on everybody’s insurance,” Harper told Insurance Rate Reporter.

As these scams have become more common, they are responsible for insurance rates being 30% to 40% higher than they could be.

“The way to prevent that is most insurance companies – just everyone that I know of – will don an inspection for you, an unbiased inspection,” Harper said. “I would just check it with the insurance company before letting one of those guys up there, because sometimes they’ll even intentionally ruin the roof and create damage up there in order to create work for themselves.”

Sumter County issued 3,530 re-roofing permits through Aug. 31, almost triple the amount issued in all of 2019, and more than five times as many as in 2018, the Daily Sun reported.

There hasn’t been more storms this year. Some hail storms have occurred in Central Florida, something that happens every year, Harper said. Homes shouldn’t be suffering more damage from typical storms, either. They should be in better shape because Florida building codes continue to improve and require better roof stock than even a few years ago.

"The one thing changed is the activity of these unscrupulous contractors," Harper said in the interview. "And I think it's safe to assume that much, if not all of that increase is being driven by them.”