My Safe Florida Home in Orlando: the free inspection, the $10,000 grant and hiring the roofer

The program is run by the Florida Department of Financial Services, not the City or OUC. Everything below is from its FAQ, read 23 October 2026, unless marked otherwise.

Who qualifies

Orlando's single-family value figure in our data is $377,000, under the $700,000 cap; the cap is on insured value, so check your declarations page. Look up the year built on the Orange County Property Appraiser record before you apply, because that is the date the program uses.

What the money pays for

Only items the initial inspection recommends and the final inspection sees count:

The grant amounts:

Both are "subject to legislative appropriation". The matching grant is a reimbursement by mailed check after the final inspection and a paid-in-full invoice, so you or your financing carry the full cost first.

Two of those items overlap with what a Florida re-roof must include anyway. Florida Statutes 553.844(3)(a) (2026) says a roof replacement on a site-built single-family home must include the secondary water barrier and roof-decking attachment techniques. So the grant does not buy extras on a re-roof so much as share the cost of work the code already requires; roof-to-wall clips and opening protection are where it adds something new. The statute's 25% repair rule is covered in roof repair vs replacement.

Hiring the contractor

• You choose. The program "no longer maintains an authorized contractor list" and stays out of disputes between you and the contractor.
• License. General, building, residential, specialty or roofing contractor, certified or registered with DBPR. Check the number on Verify a Licensee in two minutes; 97.7% of Orlando roofing firms in our file matched an active license.
• Inspector. Program-contracted only. You cannot use your own inspector for either inspection.
• Order of events. Inspection, grant approval, then contract and permit. Starting construction before official approval disqualifies you.
• Deadline. 18 months from approval to finish and request the final inspection, or the application is treated as abandoned. You get one final-inspection request.
• Permit. Before you request the final, every contractor permit must be approved and closed.

Write the program items into the contract line by line (underlayment type, deck nailing, clips), so the final inspector can find each one and the invoice matches the initial report.

What Orlando's roofing permits show

The usual permit is filed at $11,015, but the FAQ lists only the four items above as eligible, so the grant applies to those lines, not automatically to the whole invoice; ask the roofer to price them separately. The permit closes fast here, 27 days at the middle, which matters because the final inspection cannot be requested until it does. Filing peaks in March and dips in September. The busiest firm over the last 12 months was Skymark Roofing LLC with 387 permits.

Compare Orlando roofers by permit record →

Permit steps and inspection codes: Orlando roofing permit. Checklist: hiring a roofer in Orlando. Prices by firm: Orlando roofing cost. Counts by year: Orlando permit statistics. Impact windows from the same grant need a licensed contractor too; see check a contractor license in Florida.

What this does not tell you

Our data is City of Orlando permits; homes with an Orlando mailing address in unincorporated Orange County are not in it. Filed values are the contractor's estimate on the permit, and we cannot tell which permits were grant-funded or which included clips or impact windows. Program funding and application windows change with each legislative session, so check MySafeFLHome.com before you sign anything.