Do You Need A Newer Roof to Sell Your Florida Home?
I was recently talking with a Homeowner who was considering selling their home. In researching the property for the market analysis, I found that the roof was 17 years old. A permit search on the house backed this up.
If you are not aware, Florida has had insurance issues. One of the ways the Insurance Co has tried to save money is by trying to avoid homes that may need new roofs. So, we have been seeing it be more challenging or more expensive to get insurance if your asphalt shingle roof is over 10-12 years old. It doesn't even matter if you upgraded to architectural shingles.
So if you have been reviewing Florida Property For Sale recently then you may have noticed an uptick of homes listing how old their roofs are. This is to keep potential Buyers from skipping over a showing of your home by the simple fact that a new roof may be needed for insurance or more affordable insurance.
Now a common rule of thumb is a 30 year shingle lasting about 20 years in the Florida weather and a 40 year architectural shingle lasts about 30 years. This whole insurance thing throws those numbers out the window when you are thinking about insurance costs and potential ease of resale.
Anyways, this homeowner has a 17 year old roof and a market value around $1M. I did a search for homes priced $900k - $1.4M and built from 2004-2007. I used a sample size of 36 homes. Of these 36 homes, 29 homes had roofs under 10 yrs (88).
Of the homes that were sold, 23 homes had roofs under 10 yrs (96). And interestingly enough, the average age of the roofs were 2.6 years.
This means most people put on a new roof when they roof was only 14.4 to 17.4 years. So much earlier than expected.
Now this is a small sample size. But our recommendation is to put on a new roof if you want to sell your home until getting insurance gets easier.
