Original research · Local markets
Inside the Florida roofing market
What we read and counted: every Florida roof and roof-claim statute changed since 2021, and 9,402 roofing contractor records from the state’s own license search.
Written by HyreRoof Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The finding
In Florida, a roof claim turns on the law before it turns on the damage. The Legislature changed roof and roof-claim rules six times between June 2021 and May 2025.
The rule that decides patch or new roof sits in the Building Code, not the insurance code: the 25 percent rule, and the 2022 exception in Fla. Stat. § 553.844.
In the license records, 19.5 percent of Panhandle roofers hold the local-only registered credential, against 2.6 percent in the rest of the state.
Why Florida is not just another roofing market
Elsewhere, a roof job is mostly a construction question. You have damage, you get prices, you check a license, you sign. Florida changed that order. It runs a demanding statewide roofing credential, and its property insurance law now treats the roof as a line item with rules of its own.
The result is a market where the legal questions arrive before the construction ones.
Whether your insurer must pay for a whole roof or a quarter of one is set by a building-code section. Whether the roofer at your door may discuss your policy is set by a licensing statute. Whether you can still file is set by a deadline shortened twice since 2021.
HyreRoof analysis: the costly mistakes this law makes possible are not about price. They are a missed deadline, a contract signed inside a window you did not know you could cancel in, or a 2021 rule assumed to still hold. That is why every date on this page is here.
This page does not re-explain the difference between a certified and a registered Florida contractor, or the rule that forces a general contractor to subcontract roofing.
Both are covered, with the statute quoted, in our study of how roofing is licensed state by state. What this page adds is the measurement: where those two tiers actually sit on the map.
The extract, in four numbers
Counts are ours. The records are the department’s. Nothing on this page is taken from a contractor directory or a secondary summary of the register.
The credential that does not travel, and where it lives
Florida issues two roofing credentials that a homeowner will hear described identically. A certified roofing contractor holds a certificate of competency from the department and may contract anywhere in the state.
A registered roofing contractor may not: the registration is tied to the local jurisdiction that approved the competency. Both appear in the same lookup. Both get called "state licensed" on the side of a truck.
Statewide the distinction looks like a footnote: 95.9 percent of the records carrying a license number are certified. Sorted by county, the picture changes. The registered tier clusters in the Panhandle.
HyreRoof calculation: across the eighteen Panhandle counties, 102 of 523 county-matched records, 19.5 percent, hold the registered credential. Across the rest of Florida the figure is 178 of 6,817, or 2.6 percent. That is a 7.5-fold difference in the likelihood that the roofer quoting your job holds a credential which stops at a jurisdiction line.
HyreRoof analysis: this is not a quality finding and we are not presenting it as one. A registered contractor met a local competency requirement; that is a real credential.
It is a portability finding. Portability matters in a region of small counties, where a short drive can cross two jurisdiction lines. In Lee County, 426 county-matched records are certified and none are registered. In Santa Rosa County, nearly a third are registered.
The Panhandle counties, individually
| County | Certified | Registered | Registered share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Rosa | 58 | 27 | 31.8% |
| Escambia | 73 | 26 | 26.3% |
| Okaloosa | 55 | 15 | 21.4% |
| Bay | 76 | 8 | 9.5% |
| Walton | 18 | 5 | 21.7% |
| Holmes | 10 | 5 | 33.3% |
| Jackson | 10 | 5 | 33.3% |
| Washington | 13 | 3 | 18.8% |
| Leon | 74 | 3 | 3.9% |
Counties with at least three registered records. Records that resolve to a county and carry exactly one credential tier.
Small denominators. Holmes County’s 33 percent is five contractors out of fifteen, and should be read as such. The regional pattern holds; single-county percentages are shaky.
Where Florida’s roofers actually are
Two counties hold a quarter of the roofing industry that we can place. Miami-Dade and Broward account for 1,890 headquarters between them. Add Orange, Hillsborough, Lee, Palm Beach and Duval and you have 4,186, well over half of everything county-matched, in seven counties out of sixty-seven.
Raw counts follow population, so they do not answer the question a homeowner has: is there a deep bench of roofers where I live, or a thin one? For that you need the count against the population, and the ranking changes.
Roofers per 100,000 residents
| City | County | Contractors | Population (2024) | Per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarasota | Sarasota | 141 | 57,764 | 244.1 |
| Fort Myers | Lee | 176 | 99,918 | 176.1 |
| Pensacola | Escambia | 93 | 53,898 | 172.5 |
| Fort Lauderdale | Broward | 326 | 190,641 | 171 |
| Miami | Miami-Dade | 781 | 487,014 | 160.4 |
| Bradenton | Manatee | 86 | 58,184 | 147.8 |
| Pompano Beach | Broward | 172 | 118,104 | 145.6 |
| West Palm Beach | Palm Beach | 163 | 127,744 | 127.6 |
| Ocala | Marion | 84 | 70,251 | 119.6 |
| Orlando | Orange | 393 | 334,854 | 117.4 |
| Tampa | Hillsborough | 270 | 414,547 | 65.1 |
| Cape Coral | Lee | 138 | 233,025 | 59.2 |
| Hialeah | Miami-Dade | 108 | 235,388 | 45.9 |
| Tallahassee | Leon | 84 | 205,089 | 41 |
| Jacksonville | Duval | 389 | 1,009,833 | 38.5 |
Cities of 40,000 residents or more. Population is the Census Bureau’s SUB-EST2024 estimate, retrieved August 10, 2026.
A headquarters is not a service area. A Fort Lauderdale firm can work in Palm Beach, and a Jacksonville address covers a whole consolidated city-county. Read this as where the industry is based, never as where it works.
Sarasota has six times the roofer density of Jacksonville
Sarasota carries 244 roofing contractor headquarters per 100,000 residents. Jacksonville carries 38.5. HyreRoof analysis: much of that gap comes from city boundaries rather than the roofing industry. Jacksonville is a consolidated city-county of over a million people; Sarasota is a 58,000-person core inside a much larger metropolitan area whose contractors register a city address.
Density figures on this page are useful for comparing places of similar municipal shape, and misleading otherwise. We publish them with that limit attached rather than ranking sixty-seven counties and pretending the boundaries do not matter.
The renewal calendar sorts the two tiers for you
One small detail in the extract helps when you are reading a license record: the two credential tiers renew in different years.
HyreRoof calculation: the extract lists 9,607 licenses across its records (a record can list more than one). Every one of the 8,824 certified records carries an expiry of August 31 in an even year: 5,864 expire in 2028 and 2,960 still showed 2026 when retrieved.
Every one of the 378 registered-only records carries an expiry in 2027. Not one record crosses that pattern.
What that gives you. If a Florida roofing license you are looking at expires in an odd-numbered year, you are looking at the registered tier: the one that does not travel, before you have read the prefix. If it expires in an even-numbered year, it is certified.
The expiry date does the same job as the CCC or RC prefix, and it may be the field you notice first.
A further 405 license entries carried an expiration field our parser could not resolve to a year. They are excluded from that comparison and counted in the limitations rather than quietly dropped.
What Florida changed, and exactly when
Between June 2021 and May 2025 the Florida Legislature changed the rules governing roof claims six times, across five sessions, two of which were special sessions convened for the purpose.
Guidance written between any two of those dates is now wrong in at least one material respect, which is why every row below carries the chapter law number and the day the Governor signed it.
Read in order, the sequence makes sense. Stop the solicitation, then price the roof separately. Fix the code rule that made whole-roof claims attractive, end assignment and shorten the clock. Two years later, give homeowners a cancellation right for the week after landfall, then narrow it in 2025.
The dated reform record
| Signed | Bill | Chapter law | Effective | What it did to roofs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 11, 2021 | CS/CS/CS/SB 76 (2021) | ch. 2021-77 | July 1, 2021 | Roof solicitation becomes a licensing offense. Created Fla. Stat. § 489.147, the prohibited property insurance practices section. It bars "prohibited advertisements", anything of value offered for a roof inspection or a claim, and interpreting policies or adjusting claims without a public adjuster license. |
| May 26, 2022 | CS/SB 2-D (2022 Special Session D) | ch. 2022-268 | May 26, 2022 | The roof deductible, and the roof-age underwriting rules. Amended § 627.701 to permit a separate roof deductible, and § 627.7011 to limit when an insurer may refuse a policy over roof age. It also amended § 489.147 and § 627.7152. |
| May 26, 2022 | SB 4-D (2022 Special Session D) | ch. 2022-269 | May 26, 2022 | The 25 percent rule gets its exception. Amended Fla. Stat. § 553.844 so that a roof built, repaired or replaced to the 2007 Florida Building Code or later no longer drags the whole roof up to current code when a quarter or more of it is worked on. |
| December 16, 2022 | SB 2-A (2022 Special Session A) | ch. 2022-271 | December 16, 2022 | Assignment of benefits ends, and the claim clock halves. Added § 627.7152(13), barring a policyholder from assigning post-loss benefits under any residential or commercial property policy issued on or after January 1, 2023. It also amended § 627.70132, cutting the notice-of-claim deadline again. |
| May 2, 2024 | CS/CS/HB 939 (2024) | ch. 2024-139 | July 1, 2024 | A cancellation right written for the week after a hurricane. Added § 489.147(6): a homeowner may cancel a roof contract within 10 days, or by the official start date if sooner, where it was signed over events under a Governor’s state of emergency. The notice had to be in 18-point bold. |
| May 19, 2025 | CS/CS/HB 715 (2025) | ch. 2025-40 | May 19, 2025 | The emergency right narrowed, and a notice added to every roof contract. Narrowed § 489.147(6) to contracts signed within 180 days of the emergency and to property in the declared area, and cut the notice to 14-point bold. Added § 489.147(7), a 14-point insurance notice on every residential roof contract, and widened the § 489.105(3)(e) roofing contractor definition. |
Bill numbers, chapter law numbers and signing dates from the Florida Senate’s own bill pages; statutory text from the Legislature’s statute publishing system. Retrieved September 3, 2026.
Two of these were signed on the same day, May 26, 2022, in the same special session, and they do different things. SB 2-D is the insurance bill. SB 4-D is the building-code bill. They are easy to confuse.
The 25 percent rule, and the hole cut in it in 2022
The rule that decides the size of a Florida roof job is not in the insurance code. It is the Florida Building Code, Existing Building, section 706.1.1. The current code is the 8th Edition (2023), effective December 31, 2023.
The Florida Building Commission’s own staff analysis quotes the section in full.
"Not more than 25 percent of the total roof area or roof section of any existing building or structure shall be repaired, replaced, or recovered in any 12-month period unless the entire existing roofing system or roof section is replaced to conform to requirements of this code."
A citation discrepancy worth flagging. The Florida House staff analysis for the 2022 bill cites the rule as "Ch. 6, s. 611.1.1". The Building Commission’s own staff analysis and its 8th Edition change analysis both call it section 706.1.1 of the Existing Building volume.
Fla. Stat. § 489.105(3)(e) itself cross-references "Section 706 of the Florida Building Code-Existing Building". We use 706.1.1 because the Commission that administers the code uses it, and we record the House number rather than quietly reconciling the two.
Read plainly, the rule meant a roof with more than a quarter of its area damaged could not simply be patched: the whole roofing system had to be brought to the current code. On an older Florida house, bringing a roof to current code is close to a full replacement.
A rule written to prevent a patchwork of non-compliant roof sections had become a way to turn partial damage into total replacement. The House staff analysis for the 2022 bill says so. It describes contractors going door to door, advising homeowners that their insurance may replace the entire roof if they file a claim.
What changed, and on what date. SB 4-D of the May 2022 special session, chapter 2022-269, Laws of Florida, approved by the Governor and effective May 26, 2022: amended Fla. Stat. § 553.844 to add the exception.
The statute now provides that if an existing roofing system or roof section "was built, repaired, or replaced in compliance with the requirements of the 2007 Florida Building Code, or any subsequent editions of the Florida Building Code,"
"… and 25 percent or more of such roofing system or roof section is being repaired, replaced, or recovered, only the repaired, replaced, or recovered portion is required to be constructed in accordance with the Florida Building Code in effect."
HyreRoof analysis: the pivot is the 2007 code, not the damage. Two identical houses with identical storm damage can get different answers, depending on when each roof was last built to code.
If the existing roof already meets the 2007 Florida Building Code or later, only the damaged portion has to come up to current code. If it does not, the old rule still applies.
So the first question about a Florida roof is not "how much is damaged". It is "when was this roof last permitted".
The four insurance rules that decide a Florida roof claim
You have one year, not three
Fla. Stat. § 627.70132(2) now bars a claim or reopened claim "unless notice of the claim was given to the insurer in accordance with the terms of the policy within 1 year after the date of loss", with supplemental claims barred after 18 months.
That deadline was three years before 2021, two years after SB 76, and one year after SB 2-A (ch. 2022-271, effective December 16, 2022).
Subsection (3) sets when the clock starts for weather damage. For hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, severe rain "or other weather-related events, the date of loss is the date that the hurricane made landfall or the tornado, windstorm, severe rain, or other weather-related event is verified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
Your deadline is pinned to a federal weather record, not to the day you noticed the ceiling stain.
Your roof may carry its own deductible
Fla. Stat. § 627.701(10), added by SB 2-D (ch. 2022-268, effective May 26, 2022), lets an insurer apply a separate roof deductible of up to the lesser of 2 percent of the Coverage A limit or 50 percent of the cost to replace the roof, in exchange for an actuarially sound credit or discount.
It does not apply to a roof loss resulting from a hurricane, to a total loss under the valued policy law, to damage from a tree or other hazard puncturing the roof deck, or where the roof repair requires less than half the roof.
HyreRoof analysis: on a $400,000 Coverage A limit, a 2 percent roof deductible is $8,000 before the insurer pays anything, and it is the sum a contractor is barred from offering to absorb.
Roof age can cost you the policy, within limits
Fla. Stat. § 627.7011(5)(b), added by SB 2-D (ch. 2022-268, effective May 26, 2022), provides that an insurer "may not refuse to issue or refuse to renew a homeowner’s policy insuring a residential structure with a roof that is less than 15 years old solely because of the age of the roof."
By its own terms the subsection applies to policies issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2022, five weeks after the act took effect.
For a roof at least 15 years old, the insurer "must allow a homeowner to have a roof inspection performed by an authorized inspector at the homeowner’s expense before requiring the replacement of the roof" as a condition of issuing or renewing.
It may not refuse solely because of roof age if that inspection shows five years or more of useful life remaining. So an inspection is not a formality. It is the statutory route to keeping cover on an older roof.
The statute also says how roof age is measured. Under § 627.7011(5)(d) it runs from "the last date on which 100 percent of the roof’s surface area was built or replaced" to the code in effect at that time, or from the first of a series of partial replacements that together covered the whole surface.
A patchwork of partial re-roofs does not reset the clock to the most recent one.
You can no longer sign your benefits over
Fla. Stat. § 627.7152(13), added by SB 2-A (ch. 2022-271, effective December 16, 2022), provides that "a policyholder may not assign, in whole or in part, any post-loss insurance benefit under any residential property insurance policy or under any commercial property insurance policy … issued on or after January 1, 2023."
The date is the policy’s, not the loss’s. A policy issued before January 1, 2023 is outside the prohibition; one issued on or after it is inside.
For a homeowner in 2026 the effect is simple. A contractor who asks you to sign an assignment of benefits is asking for something the statute no longer permits on a current policy.
What a Florida roofer may not say to you
Fla. Stat. § 489.147, created by SB 76 in 2021 and amended three times since, is the section that governs the knock on the door. It is specific about conduct rather than intent, so it is worth reading closely.
A contractor may not solicit a homeowner with a "prohibited advertisement". That is any written or electronic communication encouraging a consumer to contact a contractor or public adjuster to make a roof damage claim, unless it carries a warning.
The warning must state, in at least 12-point font and at least half the size of the largest font used, that the consumer is responsible for the deductible, and that it is insurance fraud punishable as a third-degree felony for a contractor to knowingly pay, waive or rebate a deductible.
The statute names the formats: "door hangers, business cards, magnets, flyers, pamphlets, and e-mails."
A contractor may not offer "a rebate, gift, gift card, cash, coupon, waiver of any insurance deductible, or any other thing of value" in exchange for being allowed to inspect a roof or for the homeowner making a claim. A contractor may not pay or accept a referral fee for services payable from insurance proceeds.
And under § 489.147(2)(d) a contractor may not engage in "interpreting policy provisions or advising an insured regarding coverages or duties under the insured’s property insurance policy or adjusting a property insurance claim on behalf of the insured, unless the contractor holds a license as a public adjuster."
The penalty is $10,000 per violation, and § 489.147(4) extends it: the acts of anyone working on the contractor’s behalf, including a non-employee compensated for soliciting, are the contractor’s acts, and an unlicensed person doing the same things commits unlicensed contracting and may also be fined up to $10,000 per violation.
HyreRoof analysis: subsection (2)(d) is the one a homeowner meets at the kitchen table. Reading the policy, explaining what is covered and negotiating scope with the adjuster is public adjusting. In Florida it needs a public adjuster license under part VI of chapter 626.
A roofer who offers to "handle the whole claim for you" is describing a licensed activity.
Two contract notices Florida now requires
Under Fla. Stat. § 489.147(6)(a) a Florida homeowner may cancel a contract to replace or repair a roof "without penalty or obligation within 10 days after the execution of the contract or by the official start date, whichever comes first,"
That applies "if the contract was entered into within 180 days of events that are the subject of a declaration of a state of emergency by the Governor and the residential property is located within the geographic area for which the declaration of the state of emergency applies."
The contractor must set that right out in the contract in bold type of not less than 14 points, immediately before the signature line, and the statute prints the exact wording. Cancellation must go by certified mail or another method giving proof.
Older summaries get this part wrong. From July 1, 2024, when chapter 2024-139 created subsection (6), the notice was 18 points and the right had no time or geographic limit.
On May 19, 2025, chapter 2025-40 (CS/CS/HB 715) cut the type to 14 points and added the 180-day window and the declared-area rule. Guidance written in those ten months describes a broader right than the one that exists now.
The same 2025 act added a second notice that applies to every residential roof contract in Florida, emergency or not.
Under § 489.147(7) the contractor must put a notice on the signature page, in bold type of not less than 14 points.
It advises the owner that if the work relates to an insurance claim they "should contact your insurance company to verify coverage for the proposed roofing work, including any claims, deductibles, and policy terms, before signing this contract."
The catch in the cancellation right is the definition of "official start date".
The statute defines it as the date on which installation of materials forming part of the final roof commences, a permit is issued, or "a temporary repair to the roof covering or roof has been made in compliance with the Florida Building Code".
A contractor who tarps your roof on day two has started the job and closed the window.
Separately, § 489.147(5) requires every roof contract to carry notice that the contractor may not do the things listed in subsection (2)(b). "If the contractor fails to include such notice, the residential property owner may void the contract within 10 days after executing it." That right does not depend on any emergency declaration.
How to check a Florida roofer, in the order that works
The department’s own licensee search is the record. Match the legal entity, not the name on the truck: a firm can trade under a name other than the one on its license.
CCC is certified and works statewide. RC is registered and does not. If you only glance at the expiry date, an odd year means registered and an even year means certified. That pattern held for every record in our extract whose expiry year we could read.
A registered credential is real, and it is local. In the Panhandle, where a fifth of contractors hold it, that question is not pedantry.
Whether your roof falls inside the § 553.844 exception turns on whether it was built to the 2007 Florida Building Code or later. That one fact can decide patch or replacement before the extent of the damage does.
Post-loss benefits cannot be assigned under a residential or commercial property policy issued on or after January 1, 2023. If a contractor produces an assignment agreement, the issue date on your policy is the answer.
And for weather damage, the date of loss is the date NOAA verifies the event or the hurricane made landfall, not the day you noticed. Supplemental claims get 18 months.
And look for the 14-point bold cancellation notice above your signature line. If it is missing, that tells you something about the contract you are being asked to sign.
Conduct Florida law specifically prohibits
§ 489.147(2)(b) bars offering a waiver of any insurance deductible, or a rebate, gift, gift card, cash or coupon, in exchange for a roof inspection or for making a claim. The advertisement rules in § 489.147(1)(a) require any solicitation to state that doing so is insurance fraud punishable as a third-degree felony.
§ 489.147(2)(d) bars a contractor from interpreting policy provisions, advising you on your coverages or duties, or adjusting the claim on your behalf, unless they hold a public adjuster license under part VI of chapter 626.
§ 489.147(2)(c) bars offering, delivering, receiving or accepting any compensation, inducement or reward for referring services for which insurance proceeds are payable. Paying the contractor for roofing work done is not a referral fee.
§ 489.147(2)(e) bars providing an agreement authorizing repairs without a good faith estimate itemizing the cost of services and materials. The statute allows the final cost to differ from the estimate as the insurer adjusts the claim, it does not allow the estimate to be skipped.
§ 489.147(5) requires the contract to include notice that the contractor may not do the things listed in subsection (2)(b). If it is missing, the homeowner "may void the contract within 10 days after executing it."
A contractor may still meet the adjuster on site, describe the damage they observe, provide an estimate and discuss the scope of repairs. The line the statute draws is between describing the roof and interpreting the policy.
Two questions that are not the same question
Is this contractor allowed to work on my roof?
That is a chapter 489 question. It is answered by a DBPR lookup and by reading the prefix.
If a general contractor proposes to do the roof itself, Fla. Stat. § 489.113 applies. It bars a general, building or residential contractor certified after 1973 from acting as or advertising as a roofing contractor without being certified or registered as one.
It is a yes-or-no question with a public answer.
Will my insurer pay for this roof?
That is a chapter 627 and Building Code question, and none of it is answered by the contractor’s license. It turns on when your policy was issued, when your roof was last permitted, whether a roof deductible was elected, how old the roof is, and how long ago NOAA verified the weather event.
HyreRoof analysis: conflating these is the characteristic Florida mistake. A properly certified contractor can still put you outside a deadline, and a perfect claim does not make an unlicensed roofer lawful.
Florida is a wind market, not a hail market
Florida is not a hail state, whatever national roofing advice implies. In NOAA Storm Prediction Center severe hail reports for 2021 through 2025, Florida recorded 474 out of 43,386 nationally, 1.1 percent, of which 78 involved hail of 1.75 inches or more.
Texas recorded 6,848 reports and Oklahoma 2,938 over the same five years.
HyreRoof analysis: the Florida roof problem is wind, water intrusion and code compliance, not hail. The statutes here are built around hurricanes, states of emergency, secondary water barriers and roof-deck attachment, not hail-claim mechanics.
Advice that treats "storm damage" as one category can give you the wrong answer in Florida. The § 627.701(10) roof deductible, which does not apply to a roof loss resulting from a hurricane, writes that difference into the law.
The counterpart study, on what the law does about contractors who follow storms across state lines, is in our study on storm-chasing roofing contractors.
Method
Law. Every statute cited on this page was retrieved on September 3, 2026 from the Florida Legislature’s own publishing systems: flsenate.gov for the statutes and the bill histories, laws.flrules.org for the session law text.
Bill numbers, chapter law numbers, signing dates and effective dates come from the Senate’s bill pages and from the chapter law itself, not from a summary.
Where the statute’s own History note names an amending chapter, we looked that chapter up separately to confirm which bill it was and when it took effect. The Florida Building Code section and its text are quoted as they appear in the Florida Building Commission’s staff analysis, DS 2021-007.
License records. The 9,402 Florida records were retrieved from the DBPR Licensee Search between August 16 and 29, 2026, and each carries the source URL and retrieval date on the record. We did not scrape a directory and we did not buy a list.
Counts are simple frequencies. A record was counted as certified where its classification field names a certified roofing contractor credential and as registered where it names a registered one; 28 records name both and are excluded from the tier comparison rather than assigned to one side.
Geography. County is not a field on the license record. It was derived by matching the headquarters city on the record to our own city master, which carries county and the Census Bureau’s SUB-EST2024 population estimate. 7,529 of the 9,402 records matched.
Unmatched records are unmatched, not zero, and they are reported in the limitations. The Panhandle grouping is ours: Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Holmes, Washington, Bay, Jackson, Calhoun, Gulf, Gadsden, Liberty, Franklin, Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson, Madison and Taylor.
Weather. Severe hail counts are ours, calculated from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center’s annual severe hail report files for 2021 through 2025, filtered by state and by reported hail diameter. SPC reports are reports, not events, and a single storm generates many.
What we would not do. No company is named anywhere on this page. License records are public, and this page is about a market’s pressure points; putting a firm’s name beside that discussion converts a public record into an implication, and we will not do it.
Limitations
It is 9,402 records retrieved over two weeks in August 2026. DBPR issues and lapses licenses continuously, so treat every count as a dated snapshot rather than a census. The register itself is the authority; this is our reading of it on a particular set of days.
They are counted in the 9,402 and excluded from every geographic figure. A further set of city names did not resolve to our city master. In total 7,529 of 9,402 records resolve to a county, and the county analysis is explicitly a statement about those.
They are reported rather than dropped, and they are excluded from the certified-versus-registered percentages, which are calculated on the 9,202 that do carry one.
Their expiration value did not resolve to a four-digit year. The renewal-calendar finding is stated on the 9,202 license entries that parsed, and those 405 are neither counted for nor against it.
Every geographic figure on this page describes where a firm’s address of record sits. Certified Florida contractors may work anywhere in the state, and many do. Nothing here measures where work is performed.
Consolidated city-counties like Jacksonville and small incorporated cores inside large metros like Sarasota are not comparable on a per-100,000 basis. We publish the figures with the caveat rather than ranking on a measure we know to be boundary-driven.
The DBPR construction industry records page blocked automated retrieval (HTTP 403) on September 3, 2026, so we could not re-confirm which bulk files the department publishes.
The licensee search our records came from is cited and dated. The Office of Insurance Regulation’s report server refused connection that day, so no OIR litigation figure is quoted here.
Six changes between June 2021 and May 2025 is the recent record, and the 2026 session is not reflected here beyond what the statutes published as at September 3, 2026 contain. Confirm the current position at the statute itself before relying on it.
Nothing on this page is legal advice, insurance advice or a substitute for reading your own policy. If a claim or a contract is in dispute, that is a matter for a Florida attorney or a licensed public adjuster.
Questions
How many licensed roofing contractors does Florida have?
What is the difference between a CCC and an RC license number in Florida?
Where in Florida are registered rather than certified roofers most common?
What is the Florida 25 percent roof rule?
Was the 25 percent rule repealed?
How long do I have to file a roof claim in Florida?
Can a Florida roofer offer to cover my deductible?
Can a roofing contractor negotiate my insurance claim for me in Florida?
Is assignment of benefits still legal in Florida?
What is a Florida roof deductible and how big can it be?
Can my insurer drop me because my roof is old?
Can I cancel a roofing contract signed after a hurricane in Florida?
Is the Florida emergency roof cancellation notice 18 points or 14?
What is the new notice required on every Florida roof contract?
What is the "official start date" that closes the 10-day window?
Can my general contractor do my roof in Florida?
Does Florida get much hail?
Why do so many Florida roofing licenses expire on August 31?
Written and audited by
HyreRoof Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the licensing board’s own pages, the code section or the federal dataset ourselves, and every figure we publish carries the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
On our first study that rule removed a Minnesota exam statistic and left two states blank. Those gaps are on the page, not in a file somewhere.
- 155
- primary sources read and cited
- 53
- government domains among them
- 181
- citations carrying a retrieval date
- 11
- research studies published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, licensing rules from the board that issues the license, datasets from the agency that collected them. Never a directory, an aggregator or another guide.
- Three states, not two. A requirement is recorded as verified present, verified absent, or not verified. Folding the third into the second would turn an unchecked cell into a factual claim.
- Retrieval dates on everything. Regulation changes. A citation without the date it was read is not a citation.
- Failures are published. When a source blocks automated retrieval we record the failure and leave the row empty, rather than filling it from a secondary summary.
- Authorship is organizational. Research is attributed to this desk, never to an invented expert. Outside commentary, where used, is attributed to named and verifiable people.
Data as of September 3, 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Working out what your roof actually needs?
Florida’s legal position decides who may do the work and who pays for it. If you are still deciding what the work is, these two are good starting points, and neither asks for your details.
This page is general information and is not legal, insurance or professional advice. HyreRoof does not perform roofing work, does not adjust insurance claims, and has no commercial relationship with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, any insurer, or any contractor.
No company is named on this page, by design. If a figure or statutory citation here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and note the correction.