Wind Mitigation Inspection in Texas

Homeowners insurance protects your home and property from a variety of weather-related perils. In Texas, these include damage from windstorms like hurricanes, tropical storms, or even tornadoes.

While your homeowners insurance policy acts as a reactive measure if your house is damaged by wind, it shouldn’t be your only protection.

On the coast of Texas, if you’re proactive by effectively wind mitigating your house, not only will your home be safer and more secure in a storm, but your insurance company will reward you by discounting your premium.

What Is a Wind Mitigation Inspection?

Wind mitigation is the implementation of building techniques or the addition of certain features to a house to help it sustain strong winds and resist damage. To see if your house was built with wind mitigation or to find out how you can wind-mitigate your home, you’d need a wind mitigation inspection.

A wind mitigation inspection can be done by a licensed contractor, architect, engineer, or other building inspectors. This person will come to your house to determine how well it can withstand strong winds based on the way it was built and what features it has.

The inspector can also recommend what steps could be taken in the future to improve your home’s resistance to strong winds.

Wind Mitigation Requirements

A wind mitigation inspection is usually good for five years, meaning as long as your inspection occurred five or fewer years ago, you’re eligible for home insurance discounts.

One of the main reasons these inspections are important is because the state determined that homes not up to the building code are dangerous.

At the time, these were considered some of the strictest regulations in the country. As a result, many construction techniques and methods have changed over the years, like the way of attaching roofs to walls and the standards of windows and shutters used.

Obviously, if you have an older house, you can’t change how it was built. It’s not your fault if it’s no longer up to code.

If this is the case, it will cost more money to retrofit your house with possible upgrades, like changing the roof-to-wall attachments or installing new impact-resistant windows, but it could save you money long-term — and protect your home from devastating hurricane damage.