How to choose a roofer in Clermont without getting burned

Every roofing contractor in Florida holds a license from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and every license is searchable at myfloridalicense.com. The bid, the business card or the yard sign should carry the number. If it does not, that is the first answer.

1. Search by license number, not by company name; names are easy to borrow. For Pro Specialty Services the roofing license is CCC1335465.
2. Read the class. A roofing job needs a Certified Roofing Contractor (CCC), a Registered Roofing Contractor (RC), or a Certified General, Building or Residential Contractor (CGC, CBC, CRC), whose scope includes roofing on the structures they may build. A handyman registration, a painting or specialty license, or a license from another state does not cover roofing in Florida.
3. Certified versus registered. A certified license is issued by the state and works everywhere in Florida. A registered license is limited to the local jurisdictions that registered the contractor. Clermont matters here because the service area is split between the City of Clermont and unincorporated Lake County; a registered contractor needs to be registered with the right one.
4. Check the status and the name. The status should read current and active. The licensee on the record should be the person or company on your contract, not a friend whose number is being borrowed.
5. Read the complaint history. The record shows disciplinary actions. A long history with no discipline tells you more than a glossy website.

Pro Specialty Services holds four state certifications: CCC1335465 and CCC1332012 (Certified Roofing Contractor), CGC1538852 (Certified General Contractor) and CRC1332909 (Certified Residential Contractor). The general and residential licenses matter when a leak has rotted fascia, soffit or wall sheathing and the same company needs to rebuild the wood under its own license.

Two certificates, both issued by the insurer, not typed by the roofer.

• General liability. Ask for a certificate of insurance with your name and address as the certificate holder. The carrier sends it; a roofer who emails a PDF with no certificate holder is sending you someone else's paperwork or an expired one. Pro Specialty Services sends the certificate with the estimate rather than on request.
• Workers' compensation. Roofing is construction under Chapter 440 of the Florida Statutes, and a construction business with employees must carry it. A sole owner or up to three corporate officers may hold an exemption instead, and exemptions are public at the Florida Department of Financial Services' Division of Workers' Compensation. Ask which it is. If a worker falls off your roof and the roofer has neither coverage nor a valid exemption, the claim can land on the homeowner.

Check the dates on both. A certificate from last year is a certificate of nothing.

After every named storm, South Lake fills with roofing offers that are illegal on their face, and knowing the law is the fastest filter there is. Florida Statute 489.147 says a contractor may not:

• offer a residential property owner anything of value, a gift, a gift card, a rebate, a coupon, a waived fee, as an inducement to let the roofer inspect the roof or to file an insurance claim;
• pay, waive or rebate any part of an insurance deductible;
• offer to interpret your policy or adjust your claim on your behalf, which is public adjusting and requires a separate license under Florida Statute 626.854;
• advertise or solicit insurance roof work without the required written consumer notice.

The notice itself reads, in part: The consumer is responsible for payment of any insurance deductible. It is insurance fraud punishable as a felony of the third degree for a contractor to knowingly or willfully, and with intent to injure, defraud, or deceive, pay, waive, or rebate all or part of an insurance deductible applicable to payment to the contractor for repairs to a property covered by a property insurance policy. Our storm damage roof repair in Clermont page carries the full notice because that page discusses claims.

Two more rules worth knowing. Since the December 2022 insurance reforms, Florida Statute 627.7152 bars assignment-of-benefits agreements on residential property policies issued on or after January 1, 2023, so a roofer asking you to "sign over the claim" is asking for something the law no longer allows on a current policy. And "free roof" is not a thing: a roofer who promises your insurance will pay before an adjuster has been on the roof is promising someone else's decision. What a roofer can lawfully do is inspect, photograph, measure, write a scope and meet the adjuster. That is what we do, and where we stop.

You will hear the 25 percent rule from every roofer who bids a storm repair in Clermont, and it is the single most misquoted rule in Florida roofing. Here is what it actually says and how to tell who is being straight.

Florida's existing-building code (section 706.1.1) says that when more than 25 percent of a roof section is repaired, replaced or recovered within 12 months, the whole section must be brought to current code, which means replacing that section. Florida Statute 553.844(5), added in 2022, exempts roofs built or replaced to the 2007 Florida Building Code or later, which took effect March 1, 2009.

Three things follow, and a roofer who knows the rule will say all three:

1. It follows the roof's permit date, not the house's build year. A 2004 Legends house re-roofed in 2016 is exempt. A roofer who quotes the rule without asking for or looking up the permit date is guessing.
2. It is per section, not per roof. A hip roof on a Kings Ridge villa has four or more sections. Hail damage confined to one rear slope is often well under a quarter of that slope even on a 1998 roof. A roofer who says "any damage over 25 percent means a new roof" is skipping the word that saves most older roofs.
3. It cuts both ways. On a pre-2009 roof, a repair that crosses the line is a repair the inspector will not pass, and it has to come back off. A roofer who patches past the limit to win the job is leaving you with an unpermitted roof.

Ask the roofer to measure the damaged area against the section, put the arithmetic in the written summary, and name the permit date it relied on. Our roof repair in Clermont page shows the subdivision-by-subdivision table of which side of the line each community's original roofs sit on.

Every re-roof in Clermont is permitted, by the City of Clermont for parcels inside the city limits and by Lake County in Tavares for Four Corners and the other unincorporated parcels. The permit is pulled under a license, and whose license it is tells you who is legally responsible for the roof.

• The roofer's license is the normal case and the only acceptable one when you are paying a contractor. The roofer is the contractor of record, the inspections are called in by the roofer, and the warranty and the code compliance sit with the roofer.
• An owner-builder permit, under Florida Statute 489.103(7), lets a homeowner pull a permit on their own primary residence and act as their own contractor. It also makes the homeowner responsible for the work, the workers and the code, and bars hiring unlicensed people to do it. A contractor who asks you to pull an owner-builder permit for a roof they are installing is asking you to take their liability and usually has a licensing problem.
• No permit is the worst case. An unpermitted re-roof has no record for the 25 percent rule, no inspection, nothing for a buyer's inspector or an insurer to rely on, and code enforcement can require an after-the-fact permit and the uncovering of finished work.

Ask three questions: Which office is the permit coming from? Whose license will be on it? Will you file the Notice of Commencement? (Any job over $5,000 needs one recorded before the first inspection.) Then check: the City of Clermont's eTRAKiT portal and Lake County's permit portal both show permit history by address and by contractor. A roofer who claims twenty years in South Lake and has no permits in either system has explained something without meaning to. The Clermont roof permits guide covers both offices in detail. One more date: under the Florida Building Code a permit application expires if the permit is not issued within 180 days, and an issued permit expires if work does not start, or stops, for 180 days. A roofer who pulls the permit and disappears has left you with a problem that has a clock on it.

Two warranties come with a roof, and bids blur them on purpose.

The manufacturer's warranty covers defects in the shingle, tile, metal or underlayment. It is long, it is prorated after an initial period, and it does not cover installation mistakes. It may require registration by a certified installer to reach its higher tiers; a roofer who claims a manufacturer's enhanced warranty should be able to name the certification that allows it. Pro Specialty Services is a GAF Certified™ Contractor and can register GAF's System Plus warranty; we do not claim the higher GAF tiers that require certifications we do not hold.

The workmanship warranty covers the installation, nailing, flashing, sealing, underlayment laps and ventilation, which is where leaks in the first decade actually come from. This is the one to read. Ask:

• How many years, and does the length depend on the tier? Ours is 2, 5 or 10 years on a shingle replacement by tier (Pro, Pro Plus, Pro Max), 10 on metal and tile, 1 year on a repair, 2 on insurance-funded work. Ten is the longest we offer on anything; a workmanship warranty of 25 years from a company founded five years ago is a promise about a company that has not existed that long.
• What is excluded? Storm damage, other contractors' work and owner alterations are reasonable. "Acts of God" written broadly enough to exclude every Florida leak is not.
• Does it transfer to a buyer, and at what cost? Ours transfers once at no charge.
• What is the response commitment? Our Leak-Free Promise puts us on the roof within 48 hours at no charge if our work leaks, no claim form, no trip fee.
• Is the price fixed? Our Price-Is-the-Price term: the only common change order is rotten decking, priced per sheet in the contract before tear-off, and anything else needs your written approval first.

Get all of it in the contract, not in a brochure.

• A knock on the door the day after the storm from a company you did not call, especially with out-of-county plates. Legitimate local roofers are busy with their own customers that week.
• Anything free for letting them inspect. See Step 3; it is illegal.
• A promise that insurance will cover it before an adjuster has been on the roof, or an offer to "handle the deductible."
• Pressure to sign today, a contract with a blank price, or a contract that assigns your insurance benefits.
• A large deposit up front with no permit pulled and no materials delivered. A reasonable deposit is normal; most of the money changes hands when the roof is on.
• A quote from the driveway or from a satellite photo with no one on the roof or at the ladder. Clermont's hills hide half-story garages and rear slopes over pool cages from above.
• No product approval numbers on the estimate. The City of Clermont requires Florida Product Approval numbers for every component on the permit application; an estimate without them is a scope that will not pass the affidavit review.
• Reviews quoted on a flyer with no way to open them. Reviews should be readable on the platform that hosts them, under the reviewer's own name.
• A company that cannot say which permit office your parcel belongs to. In Clermont that question has two answers and a roofer who works here knows to ask.

There is no list of the best roofers in Clermont that is not an advertisement, including the directory pages that rank for the phrase. What there is: a license record, a permit history in two public portals, a corporate record at Sunbiz, insurance certificates from the carrier, a workers' compensation record, verbatim reviews under real names, and a contract whose warranty terms you have actually read. Twenty minutes with those answers the question better than any ranking.

Run them on us. Pro Specialty Services: license CCC1335465 at myfloridalicense.com; permits under that license in the City of Clermont's eTRAKiT and Lake County's portal; the corporation at sunbiz.org; the certificate of insurance sent with every estimate; every Google review of the company shown verbatim on the reviews page; and the two named guarantees and warranty terms on the about Pro Specialty Services page. Then book the free roof inspection in Clermont and compare what we write down against what the next roofer writes down.