Roofing in Martin County, FL

What is on the roofs in Martin County

The National Weather Service surveys after Milton's 2024 tornadoes give a street-level picture of the housing. In The Preserve, concrete block homes lost roof tile. In Mariner Sands and Manatee Creek, wood-framed homes lost whole roofs. In Port Salerno's Colonial Heights and New Monrovia, manufactured homes took roof and carport damage. Manufactured housing has deep roots here: the Town of Ocean Breeze on the Indian River began in 1938 as a mobile home park and formed its government in 1960.^7,8

Rules, history and conditions that affect roofs here

• Martin County has five municipalities: the City of Stuart, the towns of Jupiter Island, Ocean Breeze and Sewall's Point, and the Village of Indiantown. Roof permits for the unincorporated areas, including Palm City, Jensen Beach, Hobe Sound and Port Salerno, go through the county Building Department at 900 SE Ruhnke Street in Stuart and its Accela Citizen Access online portal.^1,2,7,9,10
• The county's roofing checklist makes a tile re-roof show how field tile, ridge and hip tile attach to the deck, using the FRSA installation manual. Every roof adhesive needs its own product approval. A Re-roof Windstorm Loss Certification also covers re-nailing the deck and adding a secondary water barrier.¹⁰
• If your house is valued over $300,000 and was built before March 1, 2002, the county checklist also requires a Re-roof Windstorm Loss Mitigation Compliance Affidavit, under section 706.7 of the Florida Existing Building Code.¹⁰
• After a hurricane or tropical storm, you can tarp a roof without a permit. A roof replacement or substantial roof repair still needs one, but the county waives the fee and expedites review for storm damage.¹¹
• Florida's HB 803 (effective July 1, 2026) exempts some non-structural home projects under $7,500 from permits. Martin County lists roofing as structural work, so a roof still needs a permit even when the job costs less than that.¹²
• Nicole came ashore at Vero Beach in November 2022. The strongest sustained wind the Hurricane Center recorded in the landfall area was 54 knots (about 62 mph) at the House of Refuge WeatherStem station on Hutchinson Island in Martin County. The county then trucked 61,422 tons of sand to its eroded beaches.^7,13

Storms that shaped these roofs

• Frances (2004). Frances made landfall as a Category 2 at the southern end of Hutchinson Island on September 5, 2004. Martin County's mitigation plan places it at Bathtub Beach. National Centers for Environmental Information records list about $1 billion in property damage in Martin County.^7,14
• Jeanne (2004). Three weeks later, Jeanne came ashore as a Category 3 with winds near 120 mph at almost the same place, about a mile north of Frances at the House of Refuge, just east of Stuart. The Hurricane Center found hurricane-force winds along the coast from near Cape Canaveral south to near Stuart.^7,15
• Milton (2024). The county's records list five Milton tornadoes in Martin County on October 9, 2024. The worst, an EF-2 with winds up to 120 mph, ran nearly 6 miles from Lost Lake through The Preserve, Mariner Sands, Manatee Creek and Rocky Point. About 30 wood-framed homes in Manatee Creek had major roof loss or wall collapse. An EF-1 tore roofs in Port Salerno's Colonial Heights and New Monrovia.^7,8

What this means for a re-roof in Martin County

How old the houses are. The median home in Martin County was built in 1986; 76.4% of its 83,121 homes predate 2000 and 7.4% were built in 2010 or later. So most houses here went up before Florida’s first statewide building code took effect on March 1, 2002.^6,16,17,18

Pre-2002 wood-deck houses. When the old covering comes off, the deck gets re-nailed to current code and a secondary water barrier goes on; in the wind-borne debris region, insured homes of $300,000+ may also need roof-to-wall connections (capped at 15% of the re-roof cost).^16,17,18

Repair or replace. Replacing 25% or more of a roof section in 12 months generally means redoing the section to current code — unless that roof was built or replaced under the 2007 code or later.^17,18,19,20

Product approval. This area is outside the HVHZ, so roofing products need Florida Product Approval (an FL number you can look up at floridabuilding.org); a Miami-Dade NOA is not required.^{19,21,22,23,24}

Roof age and insurance. An insurer can’t refuse a policy just because the roof is under 15 years old. If it is 15 or older, you can get an inspection first; at least 5 years of remaining life means age alone isn’t grounds to refuse.²⁵