Hail season is a market, and Texas wrote its rules for the crew that stays

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information counts 190 separate billion-dollar disaster events touching Texas between 1980 and 2024, 126 of them severe storms, at a combined $300 billion to $440 billion. The long-run average is 4.2 of those a year. Across 2020 to 2024 it ran at 13.6.

That is not weather. That is a repair market with a season.

One carrier prices the retail end of it. State Farm paid out more than $5.6 billion in hail claims nationally in 2025, and $1.4 billion of that was Texas, ahead of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. One insurer, one year, one state.

You already know what shows up with the storm: out-of-state plates, a door knock 36 hours after the sky clears, a yard sign on a lawn that has not been measured, and an offer to take care of the homeowner's deductible. What gets less attention is that Texas legislated this market on purpose, in four places, and the rules land on the contractor with a local address and a phone number that still answers next April. Each one is a sentence you can say at a door, in front of the other bid.

Here is the calendar, the sentences and the arithmetic.

The adjuster's clock is your production schedule

The homeowner's claim runs on statutory dates. You are not a party to it and you can still set your calendar by it, because those dates decide when money reaches the person paying you.

Read the second and fourth rows together and you get the date that matters to you. Fifteen business days after the adjuster has everything, plus five business days, is when the first check exists: at the outside four working weeks from a complete file, plus fifteen days on a catastrophe.

The completeness of that file is the one variable you control. Photographs the day you climb it, a measured takeoff and an itemized estimate handed over on the first visit pull the start of the 15-business-day count forward. On a street with forty damaged roofs, the crew whose customers have complete files is tearing off while the rest wait on a re-inspection.

The one sentence at the door that ends the cheaper bid

Texas made the deductible non-negotiable and then made helping a homeowner dodge it a crime.

Under Tex. Ins. Code s.707.002 a person insured under a property insurance policy shall pay any deductible applicable to a first-party claim. Under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code s.27.02(c) a seller of goods or services commits an offense by advertising or promising to pay, waive, absorb, decline to charge, rebate, credit, or in any other manner assist the insured in avoiding payment of that deductible without the insurer's consent, and equally by doing it. That is a Class B misdemeanor, which Tex. Penal Code s.12.22 prices at a fine up to $2,000, up to 180 days in jail, or both.

It also writes part of your contract for you. Section 27.02(b) requires any contract reasonably expected to be paid wholly or partly from a property insurance claim, at a price of $1,000 or more, to carry this in at least 12-point boldfaced type:

"Texas law requires a person insured under a property insurance policy to pay any deductible applicable to a claim made under the policy. It is a violation of Texas law for a seller of goods or services who reasonably expects to be paid wholly or partly from the proceeds of a property insurance claim to knowingly allow the insured person to fail to pay, or assist the insured person's failure to pay, the applicable insurance deductible."

Put that paragraph in the proposal template once and it does two jobs. It keeps you clean, and it is printed evidence in the homeowner's hand that the offer they got yesterday was illegal.

The sentence to say is short. I cannot take your deductible, and Texas law says the crew that offered to cannot either. What I can do is show you where that money comes back.

Then show them, because it does. Under s.707.004 an insurer writing replacement cost coverage may refuse to pay withheld recoverable depreciation until it has reasonable proof the policyholder paid the deductible: a canceled check, a money order receipt, a credit card statement, or an executed installment plan that requires full payment over time. TDI's own home insurance guide uses a ten-year-old roof as its example, $10,000 to replace and $7,000 on an actual cash value basis. On a replacement cost policy that $3,000 is the recoverable depreciation, and a waived deductible is what strands it.

Texas policies frequently carry a separate wind and hail deductible, so read the declarations page. Where it is written as a percentage of the dwelling limit the arithmetic is quick: 1 percent of a $400,000 Coverage A is $4,000, 2 percent is $8,000. And the state already says your line for you. TDI's own page for roofers, Roofing and insurance: Know the law, states flatly that offering to waive, rebate or absorb a policyholder's deductible is illegal. You are echoing the regulator, not accusing anyone.

What you sell is the roof, and the settlement is somebody else's license

The second line Texas drew is between contracting and adjusting, and it is the pitch a lot of storm crews are built on.

Under Tex. Ins. Code s.4102.051 a person may not act as a public insurance adjuster, or hold themselves out as one, without a license from the commissioner. Section 4102.163 closes the workaround: a contractor may not act as a public adjuster or advertise to adjust claims for any property for which the contractor is providing or may provide contracting services, whether or not the contractor holds a license, and whether or not the insured signed a power of attorney. A violation of the chapter is a Class B misdemeanor under s.4102.206.

That rule was tested at the top and survived. In Texas Department of Insurance v. Stonewater Roofing, decided June 7, 2024, the Supreme Court of Texas reversed the court of appeals and upheld both the licensing requirement in s.4102.051(a) and the dual-capacity prohibition in s.4102.163(a) against First and Fourteenth Amendment challenges, holding the statutes regulate representative capacity rather than speech. A roofer took that argument to the highest court in the state and lost.

TDI treats a website as an advertisement under 28 TAC s.21.102(1), so "we handle your claim" on a homepage is the advertisement the statute names. Here is the split, worth pinning above the estimator's desk.

This is better than it looks. The left column is a complete sales process: you inspect free, you produce a document the rest of the street has not produced, and you hand it to the homeowner as theirs. If a claim genuinely needs someone to argue the settlement, that is a separate licensed hire: s.4102.164 stops that adjuster taking a fee for steering the insured to a contractor, and s.4102.158 stops one who adjusted the claim doing the repair work. The trades stay separate, which means the roofing money stays with the roofer.

Say the three business days out loud and the pressure crew loses the door

Storm contracts get signed on a driveway or at a kitchen table, and Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Chapter 601 governs exactly that: a consumer transaction over $25 where the solicitation and the signature both happen somewhere other than your place of business.

Under s.601.051 the consumer may cancel until midnight of the third business day after signing. Under s.601.052 you hand over a copy of the contract at signing carrying a 10-point boldfaced cancellation statement immediately beside the signature line. Under s.601.053 you attach an easily detachable notice of cancellation form, in duplicate, in the same language as the sale, with your name, your business address, the transaction date and the cancellation date already filled in on both copies. And under s.601.152 you tell the consumer about the right to cancel out loud, at the time they sign.

Now the part that decides who holds an enforceable contract. Under s.601.201 a contract entered into in violation of s.601.053(b) is void. Not voidable. Void. Leave those four blanks empty and there is nothing to enforce, and under s.601.101 a merchant gets no compensation for services performed under a canceled transaction. The out-of-town crew running a pre-printed pad with no detachable duplicate has been signing void paper all week. Yours holds.

Saying it aloud wins jobs on its own. A homeowner door-knocked six times since Tuesday hears you have three business days to cancel this, here is the form, my address is on it, call me and understands immediately that you are not the one working the pressure. It costs nothing: a homeowner who cancels in three days was going to cancel in three weeks and cost you a crew day.

Ask for the deposit the out-of-town crew is not allowed to ask for

Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Chapter 58 covers disaster remediation: removal, cleaning, sanitizing, demolition, reconstruction or other treatment of improvements to real property because of damage from a natural disaster, meaning fire, flood, earthquake, wind, storm or wave action that produced a disaster declaration by the governor or a local declaration by a county judge under Chapter 418 of the Government Code.

A contractor inside Chapter 58 carries four requirements under s.58.003. The contract has to be in writing. They may not require any payment before beginning work. They may not require a partial payment exceeding an amount reasonably proportionate to work performed and materials delivered. And they print this in conspicuous boldfaced type of at least 10 points:

"This contract is subject to Chapter 58, Business & Commerce Code. A contractor may not require a full or partial payment before the contractor begins work and may not require partial payments in an amount that exceeds an amount reasonably proportionate to the work performed, including any materials delivered."

Breaking it is a false, misleading or deceptive act under DTPA s.17.46(b) by s.58.004, and s.58.005 makes the chapter unwaivable.

Then read s.58.002(b), the sentence the legislature wrote for you. The chapter does not apply where the contractor has maintained, for at least one year before the date of the contract, a physical business address in the county the property sits in or in an adjacent county.

Same storm, same street, two contractors, two rule sets. You can take a deposit against material. The crew that got here Tuesday cannot ask for a dollar before work starts, and if they do they have handed the homeowner a DTPA claim. A shop address you have held for a year is not overhead in this market. It is a financing advantage on every job you sell.

Read their scope against your estimate before anybody climbs

The insurer's scope document is a line-item estimate written by the field adjuster, and it is the price the job will pay. Learning to read it against your own takeoff is the highest-paid hour in storm work.

Put numbers on it. A 28-square architectural reroof scoped at $18,500 RCV, with $4,100 of depreciation and an $8,000 wind and hail deductible, produces a first check of $6,400. A homeowner expecting $18,500 and a contractor expecting a deposit are about to have an argument neither of them caused. Draw the five lines in front of them on the first visit. It takes four minutes and it is where the job is usually won.

The other half of that hour is your own pricing, because knowing your unit rates beats reverse-engineering them from the adjuster's page. Pricing construction jobs in Texas is the rate work behind it, and the markup and margin calculator settles the number before you compare anything.

Supplements get approved on documents, not on arguments

A supplement is a revised scope for work the original estimate missed, and the ones that get paid look identical: a photograph with something in it for scale, the measurement that contradicts the original, the code section driving a code item, and the supplier invoice.

The clocks help. Section 542.055(b) lets the insurer make additional requests during the investigation, and s.542.056(a) starts its 15-business-day accept-or-reject count from the date it has everything it asked for. Complete beats early. A supplement submitted with the documents attached is decided inside a fixed window; one submitted in pieces restarts.

The division of labor keeps you clear of s.4102.163. The insured submits, because it is their claim. You supply the estimate, the photographs and the invoices for work you will perform, because that is your trade. The paper trail pays again later: under s.542A.004 an insurer receiving a pre-suit notice may ask to re-inspect the property within 30 days, and the file you built in April is what still exists in October.

That is what a job file is for. AEC Stack keeps the storm photographs, the adjuster's scope, your estimate, the supplements and the invoices attached to one job instead of scattered across a phone, an email thread and a truck glovebox, because the job that gets questioned is the one you finished four months ago. There is no monthly subscription. The platform fee is 2.5 percent of each invoice processed through the platform, taken on the payment due date.

On the coast the certificate is a barrier, and the barrier is yours

Inside the designated catastrophe area, fourteen first-tier coastal counties plus part of Harris, new structures, alterations, additions and repairs, re-roofs included, have to be built and inspected to the building specifications TDI adopts to qualify for wind and hail coverage through the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.

The certificate is the WPI-8, issued by TDI. The application, form WPI-1, goes in before construction begins, and TDI inspectors aim to inspect within 48 hours of the date you request, weekends and holidays aside. Work already finished takes the other route: a WPI-2-E application and a sealed post-construction report from an appointed Texas licensed professional engineer, which TDI issues as a WPI-8-E.

Which turns a compliance step into a closing line. A hail-damaged Rockport or Port Arthur roof re-covered without a certificate leaves the homeowner's windstorm coverage in question on a roof they just paid for, and the crew that will be in Oklahoma by June is not going to be there when that surfaces at a refinance. Write "WPI-8 Certificate of Compliance included" above the price and the cheaper quote has to answer for itself. The county list and the two ASTM shingle designations that belong on the purchase order are in roofing in Texas without a license.

After a declared disaster the labor line leaves the tax bill

This one pays on commercial storm work, and the bid across the table usually has the tax buried in it.

Nonresidential repair and remodel labor is normally taxable in Texas at up to 8.25 percent, the 6.25 percent state rate plus local rates capped at 2 percent. Under Tex. Tax Code s.151.350, labor to restore real property damaged inside a disaster area by the condition that caused the area to be declared one is exempt, provided the labor charge is separately itemized. A disaster area means one declared by the governor under Chapter 418 of the Government Code or by the president under 42 U.S.C. s.5141.

The Comptroller's publication 94-182, Disasters and Texas Taxes, gives the mechanics. On nonresidential work you use a separated contract, itemize the labor, and take an exemption certificate from the customer for that labor. The certificate carries your name and address, the customer's name and address, a list of what is being repaired, and the reason, written the way the Comptroller writes it: "Repair due to Hurricane Harvey in Galveston County." Materials stay taxable either way.

Run the number at that top rate. A $250,000 hail repair on a strip center, $150,000 labor and $100,000 materials, carries $8,250 of tax with the labor itemized and exempted, against $20,625 on a single lump-sum price. That is $12,375 of difference on your proposal, created by how the contract was written. Residential work is simpler because the labor is already untaxed, and the contract type only decides the materials. The full grid is in sales tax for Texas contractors.

Set this up before the next cell line forms

Five moves, four of them done at a desk this week rather than on a roof in May.

1. Put the s.27.02(b) deductible notice and the Chapter 58 statement into the proposal template, in the type sizes the statutes name.
2. Print the s.601.053 cancellation form in duplicate, detachable, with your name, address and dates ready to fill.
3. Strip adjuster language out of the website, the truck and the flyers, and replace it with what you do: inspect, measure, estimate, document.
4. Check your business address against the s.58.002(b) one-year test in the counties you work, because it decides what you may ask for at signing.
5. Size the certificate of insurance for storm volume before the season. What it has to say to clear a property manager or a GC's risk desk is in certificates of insurance for Texas contractors.

Then stop waiting for weather. National Weather Service climatology puts the peak for very large hail in April through June, May the heaviest month in West Central Texas, which leaves seven months a year a storm calendar does not cover. Where work is starting in Texas fills the rest, and find work is the live feed of Texas projects with a name, a date and somebody to call.