About

Florida Retrofits was started at the end of 2011 by James Cody Thomas. I was heavily involved with the wind mitigation industry and managed over 200 inspectors during the My Safe Florida Home program that was funded by the state of Florida. While managing those inspectors, my company completed more than 150,000 wind inspections and I performed more than 8,000 inspections myself. I learned a tremendous amount of information about inspections, but I still learn more every day.

I graduated from Brookhaven Community College in Farmers Branch TX with my Associates degree in applied Science. I went to Brookhaven for a program called ASSET through Ford Motor Co. I achieved my Master Certification with Ford and was a team leader for automatic transmissions at a dealership. After seven years with Ford I wanted a change and moved to Malabar FL. I got a job as a project manager for a general contractor and was in charge of 40+ workers. We had to completely renovate 25 condos on the space coast that were damaged from the hurricanes in 2004-2005. After this project, I ventured to the inspection business as stated above.

In 2007, I was provided with guidelines for training hundreds of inspectors to perform wind mitigation inspections correctly (at that time). When the guidelines changed, I trained all the inspectors based on the new guidelines that were provided to me. I saw a change that made it harder for homeowners to get the credit on the wind mitigation, which in turn made the premiums increase. In this economy, the last thing we need is higher insurance costs (especially in Florida with no hurricanes).

In October of 2010 a previous client called me to schedule another wind inspection because the insurance was requiring it to be on the new form. First, I felt bad charging the homeowner a second time when the form says it is good for 5 years and her inspection was completed less than 2 years ago. Second, she stated that she was on a fixed income and I had to wait 2 weeks to get paid. Third, she stated that she had all the openings protected and maybe she will save more money on her insurance.

I arrived for the scheduled inspection a was given an invoice of approx. $9,000 for the hurricane shutters she had installed. I inspected all the windows and doors and she will now get credit for opening protection. Then I crawled into the attic to find hurricane straps that wrapped over the truss but only had 1 nail in the face and 1 nail in the back. This homeowner was already getting credit hurricane straps. I explained to her that the guidelines changed and she is going to loose her roof to wall connection (single wraps) discount. She said "yeah, but at least I have shutters now".

Weeks later I receive a phone call from the same homeowner and she is in tears. Her premium increased $215 per month. This is $2580 per year!!! She was very upset and I felt her pain. The discount for Single Wraps was much more than the discount for hurricane shutters. This is one of many examples for the reason I started this company. We help homeowners get these credits back at an affordable cost.