Hiring
Before signing with a Florida roofing contractor, do five things: verify the license on the state DBPR portal, confirm the contractor pulls the permit and schedules inspections, get the scope written layer by layer, know that offering to waive your deductible is illegal, and check the products carry the right approval for your county.
The five checks
Each of these is verifiable by you, in public records or in writing, before any money changes hands.
Tip 01
Florida roofing contractors are licensed by the DBPR Construction Industry Licensing Board. CCC is a Certified Roofing Contractor with statewide scope; RC is a Registered Roofing Contractor limited to specific local jurisdictions. Public license search is free at myfloridalicense.com and returns name, profession, address and status. Get the number in writing and look it up.
Tip 02
The licensed contractor should pull it. Roofing is separately permitted — Miami-Dade requires its own roofing submittal with the Uniform Roofing Permit Application, plans and specifications, and hurricane-mitigation documentation. Being asked to permit the job yourself as an owner-builder moves the legal responsibility onto you.
Tip 03
Six layers, six answers: deck inspection and re-nailing, secondary water barrier, underlayment product, new flashings, covering, ventilation — plus what happens if bad sheathing is found after tear-off. Two quotes that differ by thousands usually differ in these lines, not in the tile.
Tip 04
Florida Statute 489.147 bars a contractor from offering a rebate, gift, cash, coupon or waiver of an insurance deductible in exchange for a roof inspection or an insurance claim, and regulates claim-soliciting advertising. Penalties reach $10,000 per violation. A free roof is not a bargain; it is a red flag.
Tip 05
In Miami-Dade and Broward — the High Velocity Hurricane Zone — products must be approved for HVHZ use, typically evidenced by a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance or a Florida Product Approval with an HVHZ designation. Both are publicly searchable. Ask for the approval numbers for the underlayment and the covering.
And then
Once you have three scopes written to the same level of detail, the price comparison finally means something. Until then, the cheapest number is usually the one that left something out — most often flashings, re-nailing, or the underlayment specification.
Paperwork
A written proposal with the scope by layer. A permit application in the contractor's name. In the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, the Required Owner's Notification — a form the roofing contractor must give you and explain, on which Miami-Dade requires the owner to initial items covering workmanship and aesthetics, re-nailing of wood decks, common roofs on townhouses and condominiums, exposed open-beam ceilings, ponding water, overflow scuppers, ventilation and existing solar systems.
Two of those items are worth reading twice. Miami-Dade's form states that when replacing roofing the existing wood deck may have to be re-nailed to current requirements, and that the deck is usually concealed until the old system is removed — so re-nailing scope is genuinely unknown at quoting time, and a proposal should say how it will be priced. The same form warns that ponding water may indicate structural distress, may require review by a professional structural engineer, and may shorten the life of the new roof.
Note also what the form says about workmanship: the HVHZ workmanship provisions exist to make the roofing system meet wind-resistance and water-intrusion standards, and aesthetics are expressly not a consideration in them. That is a useful expectation to set with yourself before the crew arrives.
After a storm
Because that is when unfamiliar contractors appear, urgency is real, and the ordinary checks feel like a luxury. They are not. The five checks above take an afternoon, and they are the difference between a permitted roof inspected by the county and a roof that becomes someone else's problem to diagnose in five years.
If a storm has just passed, start with the signs of roof storm damage — including the parts you genuinely cannot assess from the ground — before anyone gives you a number. And remember that no contractor can tell you what your insurance policy covers or promise a claim outcome; a written condition report documents the roof, and the coverage conversation belongs with your insurer.
For the full version, with a side-by-side proposal table, deposits, warranties and every statute behind these checks, read how to compare South Florida roofers.
Questions
Search the Florida DBPR licensing portal at myfloridalicense.com by license number, individual name or business name — it is free and public, and it returns the licensee’s name, profession, address and status. Roofing contractors are licensed by the DBPR Construction Industry Licensing Board. A "CCC" prefix is a Certified Roofing Contractor, licensed statewide; an "RC" prefix is a Registered Roofing Contractor, whose scope is limited to specific local jurisdictions. Ask for the number in writing and check it yourself rather than accepting a photo of a card.
No. Florida Statute 489.147 prohibits a contractor from offering a residential property owner "a rebate, gift, gift card, cash, coupon, waiver of any insurance deductible, or any other thing of value" in exchange for a roof inspection or an insurance claim, with penalties of up to $10,000 per violation plus disciplinary proceedings. If someone offers you a free roof or a waived deductible, they are offering something they are legally barred from providing — which tells you what the rest of the relationship will look like.
The licensed contractor doing the work. Roofing is separately permitted — in Miami-Dade, for example, roofing work is not covered under a general building permit and requires its own submittal including the Uniform Roofing Permit Application, roof plans and specifications, and hurricane-mitigation documentation. If a contractor suggests you pull the permit as an owner-builder to save time or money, understand that you are taking on the legal responsibility for the work. Unpermitted roofing tends to surface later, at a sale or an insurance inspection.
A scope written by layer, not a covering and a price. It should name the underlayment or secondary water barrier product, state whether the deck will be inspected and re-nailed, confirm that flashings are new rather than reused, describe ventilation, list the permit and inspections, and state what happens if deteriorated sheathing is found after tear-off — because deck condition is usually concealed until the old roof comes off. Miami-Dade’s own Required Owner’s Notification form warns owners about exactly that, along with ponding water and re-nailing.
In Miami-Dade and Broward, which make up the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, products must be approved for HVHZ use — typically evidenced by a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA), or a Florida Product Approval carrying an HVHZ designation. A Florida Product Approval without HVHZ approval is not sufficient inside those two counties. Both are publicly searchable: the state Florida Product Approval search at floridabuilding.org and the Miami-Dade Product Control search. Ask for the NOA or approval number for the underlayment and the covering, then look it up.
Read them for patterns rather than for scores: how a company responds to a complaint, whether the same issue recurs, and whether reviewers describe the parts of the job that are easy to get wrong — communication, cleanup, permitting and follow-through on punch items. Be sceptical of any contractor site quoting an aggregate rating without linking to where it can be checked. Perkins keeps Miami and Jupiter separate, dates its fallback rating snapshots, and links every live review excerpt back to Google Maps.
Pressure to sign today, a large deposit demanded before a permit exists, no verifiable license number, an offer to cover your deductible, a refusal to put the scope in writing, and door-to-door solicitation immediately after a named storm. None of these are proof of dishonesty on their own, but each is a reason to slow down and check. A legitimate contractor will still be there next week.
Written for Florida, under the Florida Building Code, and for Miami-Dade and Broward under the High Velocity Hurricane Zone requirements that apply there. Licensing, statutory and permitting details are summarised from primary sources — Florida Statutes 489.147 and DBPR licensing guidance, and Miami-Dade County's roofing permit and Owner's Notification materials — and should be confirmed against those sources and your building department before you rely on them. More in our article archive.
Free estimate
Ask for the license number, the permit, the layer-by-layer scope and the product approvals. We will put all four in writing.
