Florida Home Health Report

Your home’s health at a glance

Your answers, translated. The item you told us worries you most comes first — the rest follows in the order a good annual checkup would cover them.

The 4-point readiness check

When a Florida home is older — or changes hands or policies — insurers commonly ask for a 4-point inspection: a focused look at the four systems that cause most claims. It isn’t a full home inspection; it’s a health check on exactly these four. Here’s what “good health” looks like for each, and where your home stands where we know it.

Your pre-renewal self-check

Four to six weeks before your homeowner’s policy renews, walk this list. It takes about 20 minutes and puts you in front of the questions your insurer is going to ask anyway:

• Roof age on paper: Can you prove your roof’s age and material — permit, invoice, or inspection? If not, that’s item one.
• Water heater label: Photograph its data plate. Note the year — insurers look at it, and age plus rust is a replacement conversation.
• Under every sink: Look and feel for moisture, corrosion, and slow drips. Small leaks found early are cheap leaks.
• AC drain & filter: Fresh filter in, drain line clear, and your last service invoice where you can find it.
• Panel door: Open it. Breakers labeled? Anything warm, buzzing, or scorched gets an electrician — promptly.
• Documents pulled: Policy declarations page, any wind-mitigation or 4-point reports, and roof paperwork — together in one folder before renewal hits.

Your money checkup

A healthy home isn’t just systems — it’s paperwork that saves you money every year. Two Florida items are worth real dollars, and both are easy to let slip.

The Save Our Homes cap, in one line: once homestead is in place, your assessed value can rise no more than 3% per year (or the inflation rate, if lower) — no matter how fast market values climb around you.

Your annual insurance documents review

Once a year — renewal season is the natural moment — pull these out and actually read them:

• Declarations page: Is the dwelling coverage still in line with today’s rebuild cost? Is your roof’s age and material listed correctly? Errors here flow straight into your premium.
• Wind mitigation credits: Do you have a wind mitigation inspection on file, and are the credits it earned showing on your policy? These inspections are typically honored for about five years — if yours is older, or you’ve never had one, a re-inspection after roof or opening-protection work can pay for itself.
• 4-point on file: For older homes, having a recent, clean 4-point report ready (see Section 2) keeps renewal — and shopping for a better policy — from turning into a scramble.
• Flood is separate: Standard homeowner’s policies don’t cover rising-water flooding. If you’re anywhere near water — and in Pinellas and coastal Pasco, that’s most of us — confirm what you do and don’t have in writing.

This is general educational information, not insurance advice — your agent or insurer can tell you exactly what your policy says. Chad’s role in the annual checkup is simpler: making sure the home facts behind those documents — roof age, system condition, exemptions — are accurate and current.

Your Florida maintenance calendar

Timed to Florida’s seasons — not a generic national list. The rhythm is simple: service the AC before the heat, prepare before storm season, repair after it, and use our mild winter for documents and details.

A plain-text file with your at-a-glance readout, the pre-renewal self-check, and your season-by-season calendar — easy to save, share, or hand to a contractor.

Your equity snapshot — the honest method

Plenty of websites will happily show you a number for your home. This report won’t — because a number invented without seeing your home, your street, and your roof would be exactly that: invented. Here’s how your home would honestly be valued, and what goes into it:

• Comparable sales first: recent, nearby, genuinely similar sold homes — same neighborhood fabric, similar size, age, and lot — adjusted up or down for the differences. Not county averages, not an algorithm’s guess.
• Condition adjustments: the very things this checkup tracks. A documented newer roof, serviced systems, and permits on file support value — especially in Florida, where a buyer’s insurer will have opinions about your roof the week they write the offer.
• What the automated estimates miss: they can’t see your updates, your maintenance history, your homestead and Save Our Homes position, or the difference between your street and the one two blocks over. They’re a starting rumor, not a valuation.

The honest offer: if you’d like a real number — the comparable sales, the adjustments, and the reasoning laid out plainly — that’s part of the free annual checkup below. No automated guesswork, and straight talk if the number is lower than you hoped: Chad won’t inflate a price to win your business, and he won’t lowball one to win a quick sale either.

I spent years in construction and renovation — including work as a superintendent on the major post-hurricane renovation and recovery at The Vinoy in St. Petersburg — before and between my years in real estate. It’s why I read a home the way an inspector would, and value it the way the market actually will. — Chad