Wind Mitigation Inspection: Lower Your Florida Insurance

By David Gordon, Owner · Codes · Updated June 2026

What a Wind Mitigation Inspection Is

A wind mitigation inspection is a short, focused inspection of the features on your home that help it resist hurricane-force wind. In Florida it is documented on a standard state form, the OIR-B1-1802, which every licensed inspector and every insurance carrier in the state recognizes. The whole point of the inspection is to show your insurer, in a uniform way, exactly how storm-resistant your roof and openings actually are.

This matters because Florida insurers price a lot of your premium on wind risk, and they cannot see inside your roof from an aerial photo. The wind mitigation form fills that gap. An inspector climbs into the attic and onto the roof, documents a specific set of construction features, photographs them, and reports the findings on the 1802 form. The stronger your features, the bigger the discounts you qualify for.

It is important to understand that the inspection does not change your house. It documents what is already there. If your roof was built or reroofed to modern HVHZ standards, a wind mitigation inspection is often the single cheapest thing you can do to lower your homeowners premium, because it proves you deserve credits you may not currently be getting. If your roof is older and weak, the inspection tells you exactly which upgrades would move the needle. Our roof inspection team can walk you through both scenarios.

The Florida Insurance Crisis Context

You cannot talk about wind mitigation in Florida without talking about the insurance crisis, because the two are tightly connected. Over the last several years, Florida's homeowners insurance market has been in turmoil. Carriers have gone insolvent, pulled out of the state, or stopped writing new policies. Premiums have climbed to among the highest in the country. And roofs are at the center of it.

Insurers have grown especially wary of older roofs. Many carriers now refuse to write or renew a policy on a roof past a certain age, commonly around 15 to 25 years for shingle, unless it passes an inspection proving it has significant remaining life. Others require a wind mitigation inspection before they will quote at all. In this environment, the 1802 form is not just a discount tool. It is often the document that decides whether you can get insured, and at what price.

That is the practical reality driving so many South Florida homeowners to get wind mitigation inspections and, when the roof is old, to replace it proactively. A newer roof built to current HVHZ code with strong wind-mitigation features is easier to insure and cheaper to insure. If your carrier just non-renewed you or spiked your rate, understanding your wind mitigation profile is step one, and our Florida roof insurance guide covers how claims and coverage interact with roof condition.

The Features an Inspector Documents

The 1802 form covers a specific list of features, and each one maps to a potential premium credit. Knowing them helps you understand what actually earns discounts.

The credits stack. A home with an NOA-approved covering, a well-nailed deck, double hurricane straps, a hip roof, a sealed deck, and full impact protection can earn dramatically lower wind premiums than an identical-looking home with toe nails and no secondary barrier. The rest of this guide walks through the features that move the needle most.

Deck Attachment and Roof-to-Wall Straps

Two of the biggest credits come from features you cannot see from the ground: how the roof deck is nailed and how the roof is tied to the walls. On roof deck attachment, the inspector documents the size of the nails and how closely they are spaced. Older homes were often built with smaller, widely spaced, smooth-shank nails that pull out under uplift. Modern HVHZ decks use larger ring-shank nails at tight spacing, which resist far more wind, and that stronger nailing earns a real credit on the form.

The roof-to-wall attachment is often the single most valuable feature on the whole inspection. The form distinguishes between toe nails (the weakest, just nails driven at an angle), clips (metal connectors), and single or double hurricane straps (the strongest, metal straps wrapping the connection). The jump from toe nails to double straps can be the difference between a large premium credit and none, because this connection is what keeps the roof structure attached to the house when uplift tries to peel it off.

Here is the good news for South Florida homeowners: if you reroof to current HVHZ code, these features get upgraded as part of the job. Renailing the deck and adding or verifying roof-to-wall connectors are standard parts of a proper Miami reroof, which means a new roof does not just protect the house better, it can also pay you back in lower insurance every year. Our HVHZ code guide explains how these features are built and inspected.

Roof Shape and Secondary Water Resistance

Two more features carry significant weight: the shape of your roof and whether it has a secondary water barrier. On roof geometry, a hip roof (one that slopes down on all four sides) earns the biggest credit, because it is aerodynamically stronger than a gable roof, which presents a large flat wall to the wind at each end. You are not going to reframe your roof for the discount, but if you already have a hip roof, make sure your inspector documents it, because it is money on the table.

Secondary water resistance, or SWR, is the sealed-deck peel-and-stick barrier we described in the HVHZ requirements. On the wind mitigation form, having a proper SWR barrier earns its own credit, on top of protecting your home if the covering blows off. This is one of the features you gain automatically when you reroof to current HVHZ code, because the sealed deck is required, so a modern Miami reroof tends to check this box by default.

The pattern across all of these features is consistent: the same construction that makes your roof survive a hurricane also makes it cheaper to insure. Hip shape, a sealed deck, strong nailing, and hurricane straps are storm protection first and insurance savings second, but you get both. That is why, in the current market, a wind mitigation inspection on a well-built roof so often pays for itself many times over in the first year alone.

Opening Protection and Impact Windows

The last major category on the 1802 form is opening protection: your windows, doors, skylights, and any other openings in the building envelope. The logic is that a hurricane does its worst damage once it breaches the envelope. If a window blows in, the wind pressurizes the inside of the house and pushes up on the roof from below at the same time it is pulling from above, which is a recipe for a roof coming off. Protecting the openings keeps the envelope intact.

The form credits impact-rated protection, meaning windows and doors tested to survive flying debris, or approved shutters that cover the openings. To earn the full opening-protection credit, generally all the openings need to be protected, not just some, because the weakest unprotected opening is the one that fails. Impact windows are a significant investment, but in South Florida they pay back through insurance credits, storm safety, noise reduction, and resale value.

Even though opening protection is about windows and doors rather than the roof itself, it belongs in the same conversation, because it directly affects whether your roof survives. A roofer focused only on the covering while ignoring a house full of unprotected windows is giving you half the picture. When you plan storm hardening, think of the roof and the openings as one system working together against the same wind.

Cost, Validity, and Getting Yours Done

The best part of a wind mitigation inspection is how cheap it is relative to what it can save. A typical Florida wind mitigation inspection runs roughly $75 to $150, and the report is generally valid for five years. Against premium credits that can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year on a well-built home, that is one of the highest-return moves in South Florida homeownership. Many homeowners find the inspection pays for itself several times over in the first policy period.

The catch is that the inspection only rewards features you actually have. If your roof is old, under-nailed, toe-nailed to the walls, and has no secondary barrier, the form will show it, and the credits will be thin. That is where a reroof to current HVHZ code changes the math: it upgrades the exact features the 1802 form measures, so the new roof lowers your premium at the same time it protects your home. If your roof is aging or you were just non-renewed, it is worth looking at both together.

Citrus County Roofing has built and inspected wind-resistant roofs across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach since 2013, and we are Florida-licensed (CCC) and insured. If you are not sure how your roof would score, or whether a reroof would earn back its cost in insurance savings, book a roof inspection, read up on the HVHZ code, or call us at (954) 353-9770. You can verify our license anytime at myfloridalicense.com.