Supplementing a Roof Claim Without Crossing the Line | Hommy
Supplementing a Roof Claim Without Crossing the Line
You can price your own work all day. The moment you interpret coverage or negotiate the claim, you are adjusting without a license, and in Texas a power of attorney does not save you.
Hommy
July 16, 2026 · 13 min read
Describing and pricing the work you will perform is your job. Interpreting the policy, advising the homeowner on their coverage, or negotiating the settlement is public adjusting, and doing it without a license is illegal in both Texas and Florida. In Texas, holding a power of attorney from the homeowner does not fix it, and neither does holding a public adjuster licence.
That is the line. Everything below is about staying on the right side of it while still getting paid the correct amount.
General information, not legal advice
This is general information for contractors, not legal advice, and statutes change. Read the current statute or talk to an attorney before relying on any of it for your own business.
Where the line actually sits
Texas is unusually blunt about this. The Insurance Code says a contractor may not act as a public adjuster or advertise to adjust claims for any property for which the contractor is providing or may provide contracting services, regardless of whether the contractor holds a licence under that chapter or is authorised to act under a power of attorney or other agreement.
Read that twice, because it closes the two workarounds people reach for. The power of attorney does not create a path. Neither does getting licensed, if you are also doing the work.
And the scissors have a second blade: Texas separately bars a licensed public adjuster from participating directly or indirectly in the repair, or having a financial interest in the firm doing the repair. So you cannot legally be both the adjuster and the roofer on the same claim from either direction.
Florida draws the same line in more explicit language. Absent a public adjuster licence, a contractor may not interpret policy provisions, advise an insured regarding coverages, or adjust a claim. Florida also affirmatively requires you to provide a good faith itemized estimate of services and materials before repairs are authorised under a claim.
So what can you actually do?
Worth being honest about the sourcing here: we could not find an official Texas or Florida guidance document that draws a bright line with examples. The authority is the statutory language itself, plus enforcement action against contractors who advertised themselves as claims negotiators and negotiated settlements on behalf of homeowners.
The workable formulation the statutes support:
Safe: documenting damage, photographing it, measuring, producing your estimate for the scope you will perform, meeting the adjuster on site, explaining why a line item is necessary, and submitting supporting documentation.
Not safe: interpreting policy provisions, advising the homeowner whether something is covered, negotiating or settling the claim, and advertising that you do any of those things.
Florida wording is the cleanest test to hold yourself to in either state: are you speaking about your work, or are you speaking about their insurance contract? The first is estimating. The second is adjusting.
“Are you talking about your work, or about their insurance contract? The first is estimating. The second needs a licence you cannot legally hold while roofing the same house.”
The Hommy Team
When the homeowner needs a public adjuster instead
Sometimes the right answer is that the claim needs a real public adjuster, and you are not it. Fee caps are worth knowing so you can tell a homeowner what to expect.
Florida caps public adjuster compensation at 20 percent of claim payments normally, 10 percent for claims arising from an event that is the subject of a Governor declared state of emergency during the year following the declaration, and 1 percent where the insurer pays or commits in writing to policy limits within a short window after the loss.
Texas caps public adjuster commission at 10 percent of the settlement.
Referring a homeowner to a licensed public adjuster is fine. Taking a fee for that referral where insurance proceeds are payable is specifically prohibited in Florida, so do not.
Ordinance and law, the coverage that decides code items
Here is the thing most supplement arguments actually turn on, and it is not adjuster bad faith.
A standard property policy restores the property to its pre-loss condition. Absent ordinance and law coverage, the carrier is generally not obligated to fund upgrades that current code requires but the old roof did not have. That is why code items get denied, and knowing it changes how you argue.
Florida: you probably have it even if nobody mentioned it
Florida requires insurers to offer law and ordinance coverage at 25 or 50 percent of the dwelling limit before issuing a homeowner policy. And absent the policyholder written refusal, the policy is deemed to include it at 25 percent.
For a Florida roofer that is a strong, checkable argument. Most Florida homeowners carry at least 25 percent law and ordinance coverage whether they know it or not. Check the declarations page before you accept a code-item denial.
Texas: read the declarations page
Texas ordinance and law coverage is carrier and form dependent, commonly a percentage of Coverage A or a separate endorsement. We could not verify a Texas statutory offer mandate one way or the other, so do not assume either direction. Pull the declarations page and look.
The Florida code argument that stopped working
If you are still pitching the old version of the Florida 25 percent rule, stop, because it will get your supplement denied.
Since the 2022 change, if the existing roof system was built, repaired or replaced in compliance with the 2007 Florida Building Code or later, and 25 percent or more is being repaired or replaced, only the repaired portion must comply with current code. The old "25 percent means full replacement" argument no longer works on roofs that met the 2007 code.
This section is trade practice rather than law, so treat it as a checklist rather than an entitlement. The recurring omissions on roof estimates:
Steep pitch and second-story or high access labor factors, which base pricing does not capture.
Ice and water shield and drip edge where current code requires them.
Starter strip and manufactured ridge cap, rather than cut field shingles.
Ridge vent and ventilation components needed to meet code net free area.
Valley reinforcement and the specific valley method.
New pipe boots rather than reused.
Detach and reset of solar arrays, satellite dishes, and similar.
Permit fees and debris haul-off.
Waste factor on cut-up roofs with multiple hips, valleys and dormers.
Overhead and profit on claims genuinely requiring multiple trades.
Why they get missed is usually mundane rather than sinister: not visible from a ladder or a single drone pass, treated as an upgrade rather than a code requirement, labor factors absent from the base line item, or an estimate written quickly from a template.
Pricing differences, argued credibly
Carrier price lists are regional and vintaged. Your cost is your cost. The productive framing is not that their list is wrong, it is that the correct price is what a purchaser and provider actually agree to, and that lists vary by market, by list version, and by job conditions.
What makes a price difference credible:
Dated photographs tied to specific conditions.
Measurements, ideally from an aerial report you can attach.
The code citation by section for anything you are calling code-required.
Material invoices or current supplier quotes.
A line-item explanation connecting each item to an observed condition.
That package is documentation of your own scope, which is squarely on the legal side of the line. It also happens to be what actually moves an adjuster.
When it stalls: appraisal
Appraisal resolves disputes about the amount of loss, not about whether something is covered. If the carrier says it is not covered at all, appraisal is the wrong tool.
Texas created a new Insurance Code chapter requiring an appraisal provision in covered policies. Two things worth knowing about its scope: it applies to personal auto and residential property policies, and it expressly does not apply to Texas Windstorm Insurance Association policies or commercial policies. It does cover eligible surplus lines insurers and the FAIR Plan, which people often assume are carved out.
In Florida, the elimination of one-way attorney fees and the effective end of assignment of benefits pushed disputes toward appraisal and the presuit notice process. Florida requires presuit notice, and on a non-denial dispute the insurer must respond with a settlement offer or by requiring appraisal or other alternative dispute resolution.
The Florida date to put on your wall
Florida gives one year from the date of loss for an initial or reopened claim, and 18 months for a supplemental claim.
Eighteen months is the single most actionable number in this article for a Florida roofer. If you are going to supplement, the clock is running from the loss, not from when you got involved.
Inflating scope or quantities. This is fraud, and it is the fastest way to lose a licence you may not even have.
Telling homeowners you will handle everything with their insurance. That phrasing alone edges into the advertising conduct that gets enforced against, and Florida regulates prohibited advertisements specifically.
Contingency agreements that assign claim rights or grant you power of attorney to negotiate. Texas nullifies the power of attorney theory outright, and Florida assignment of benefits route is closed for current policies.
Waiving, rebating or crediting the deductible. In Texas that sits in the Business and Commerce Code and is a Class B misdemeanour. In Florida it is framed as felony insurance fraud. There is no clever structure that makes it legal, including the advertising-agreement dodge.
In Florida, pitching the pre-2022 version of the 25 percent rule.
The uncomfortable summary: the contractors who get the most out of supplements are usually not the ones pushing hardest on the claim. They are the ones documenting their own scope so thoroughly that the adjuster has nothing to push back on.
