He was good on the phone. He came out fast, the price was fair, and he asked for a deposit to “get the materials ordered.” You wrote the check. That was six weeks ago.
Now the calls go to voicemail. The texts show delivered and nothing else. There is no permit on your address, no material drop in the driveway, and the company Facebook page has gone quiet. Somewhere in the last two weeks you stopped feeling annoyed and started feeling sick.
Almost everything written for Volusia County homeowners about bad roofers is about avoiding this. That advice is worth reading, but it is useless to you now. You are already in the hole. This is the other guide — what Florida actually gives you once the money is gone, in the order you should use it, and what each step realistically gets back.
One honest warning up front: recovery in Florida is slow and it is rarely complete. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But the homeowners who get made whole are almost always the ones who moved early and kept paper. The ones who wait six months hoping he comes back are the ones who get nothing.
First: Is It Abandonment, or Is He Just Slow?
This distinction matters more than it sounds, because it decides which doors are open to you.
Florida Statute 489.129(1)(j) makes abandoning a project a disciplinable offense, and a project is presumed abandoned when the contractor stops work without just cause and without notifying you, or simply fails to perform, for 90 consecutive days.
Ninety days is a long time to sit still. You do not have to wait it out before acting — you should not — but understand that a formal abandonment finding has a clock on it. Meanwhile there is a second provision that often bites sooner. Section 489.129(1)(g) covers financial mismanagement, and one of its specific triggers is a contractor who walks off a job having collected a larger share of the money than the share of work he completed, and does not refund the difference within 30 days.
Read that again, because it is the one that fits most deposit cases. If he took 40 percent and did zero percent of the work, the 30-day refund clock is the number that matters, not 90 days.
The 10 Percent Rule Is Not What You Think
You will see it repeated across Florida roofing blogs, contractor forums, and more than one homeowner Facebook group: “Florida law caps your deposit at 10 percent.”
It does not. Much of what circulates on this point is actually California law, copied and relabeled.
What Florida Statute 489.126 actually does is impose duties on a contractor who collects more than 10 percent of the contract price as an initial payment. Once he takes that money, he must:
- Apply for the necessary permits within 30 days of the date payment is made, and
- Start the work within 90 days after all necessary permits are issued.
A large deposit is legal. A large deposit followed by no permit application in 30 days is a statutory violation. That is a meaningful difference, because it means you may have a violation on your hands in a month rather than a season — and it is checkable from your couch. Look up your address with your city or county building department. If there is no permit on file and 30 days have passed since your check cleared, write that date down. It is the strongest single fact in your file.
The statute also carries criminal weight when the money is not returned. Violations are graded by the total amount received: a first-degree misdemeanor under $1,000, a third-degree felony from $1,000 to $19,999, and a second-degree felony from $20,000 to $199,999. Most residential roof deposits in Volusia County land squarely in felony territory. Say that plainly, in writing, in your demand letter.
Step One: Build the File Before You Make Another Call
Do this today, before anything else, because half of what you need has a habit of disappearing.
Collect the signed contract or proposal, every estimate and revision, the front and back of the cancelled check or the card statement line, every text thread exported or screenshotted with dates visible, every voicemail saved rather than deleted, photos of the roof in its current condition with timestamps, and any material that was delivered and left sitting. Screenshot his website, his Facebook page, and his Google listing while they still exist. Contractors who are going under take their web presence down, and a screenshot of the license number he advertised is worth having.
Then go to myfloridalicense.com and look up the license number on your contract. Print the result. You are checking three things: whether the license is real, whether it was active on the date you signed, and whose name is actually on it. That last one catches a common trick — the salesman’s company is unlicensed and is borrowing a qualifier’s license number. Save that page as a PDF. License records change.
Step Two: The Written Demand
Send one letter, by certified mail with return receipt, to the address on the contract and to the address on the DBPR license record if they differ. Email it too, but the certified letter is the one that counts, because “I never got notice” is the most common defense you will hear later.
Keep it short and unemotional. State the contract date, the amount paid, the date paid, and the fact that no work has commenced. Cite section 489.126 and note that no permit was applied for within 30 days. Demand either commencement of work by a specific date roughly ten days out, or a full refund by that same date. State that you will file a complaint with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and pursue all civil and criminal remedies if neither happens.
Some of these letters actually work. A contractor who is disorganized rather than dishonest — and there are more of those than people assume — will often refund rather than take a complaint on his license. If it works, you saved yourself a year. If it does not, you have now created the paper trail every later step requires.
Step Three: The Card Chargeback, If You Have One
If any part of that deposit went on a credit card, stop reading and call the issuer now. This is by far the fastest money in this entire guide, and it is the one with a hard deadline you can miss by waiting.
Chargeback windows under the card networks generally run 120 days from the expected delivery date of the goods or services, with an outer limit that varies by issuer. Dispute it as services not rendered. Debit card disputes are weaker and shorter but still worth filing. A check or a cash payment has no equivalent, which is exactly why we tell every homeowner to put at least the deposit on a card.
Step Four: File the DBPR Complaint
File online through the “File a Complaint” section at myfloridalicense.com. The DBPR customer contact center is 850-487-1395.
Be clear about what this does and does not do. A DBPR complaint is a licensing action, not a collection action. It can fine him, restrict him, or take his license. It will not, on its own, write you a check.
File it anyway, and file it early, for three reasons. It creates a formal administrative record. In some cases the board can issue a restitution order, which is one of the qualifying paths into the recovery fund described below. And a licensee with an open complaint has a real incentive to settle with you privately — a resolved dispute looks very different in front of the board than an unresolved one.
Step Five: The Florida Homeowners’ Construction Recovery Fund
This is the part almost nobody knows exists, and it is also the part where most online summaries get the number wrong for roofing specifically.
Florida maintains a recovery fund, financed by licensee fees, that pays homeowners harmed by licensed contractors who abandon jobs, mismanage funds, or commit certain other violations. It is governed by sections 489.140 through 489.143.
The caps depend on what kind of license your contractor holds, and this is where the roofing-specific detail matters. Florida divides contractors into Division I and Division II. A roofing contractor is a Division II licensee. For contracts entered on or after July 1, 2024, the maximum payment is $30,000 for a Division II claim and $100,000 for a Division I claim — Division I being general, building, and residential contractors. Older contracts fall under lower caps set when the statute was last amended.
So if you signed with a roofing contractor on a CCC license, plan around $30,000, not the $100,000 figure you will see quoted on generic Florida legal sites. If your re-roof was contracted through a general contractor on a CGC license, the higher cap may apply. It is worth checking which license number is actually on your contract.
The fund has real conditions, and they are the reason it takes so long:
- You generally need a final judgment from a Florida court, an arbitration award, or a board restitution order first. There is no shortcut around this for most claimants.
- The contractor must have held a valid, current license at the time of the contract. If he was unlicensed, you are ineligible — see the next section.
- You must file the claim within one year of the conclusion of that action or award. Miss it and the money is gone regardless of the merits.
- You must have exhausted other remedies — bonds, insurance, executing on the judgment, and a good-faith search for the debtor’s assets.
- It pays actual damages only. Not attorney fees, not court costs, not postjudgment interest, not punitive damages.
- Claims are paid in the order filed, against a per-licensee aggregate cap. If your contractor left twelve homeowners in this position, position in line is not a formality.
Which is the practical argument for moving now instead of in March. The judgment is the slow part, and the aggregate cap is first-come.
If He Was Unlicensed, It Is a Different Road
The recovery fund will not help you. That is the blunt reality, and it is the single most expensive consequence of not checking a license before signing.
Your remaining paths are the unlicensed-contracting statutes, which make the activity itself a criminal offense with penalties that escalate during a declared state of emergency, a report to the DBPR’s Unlicensed Activity division, a report to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office or your city police department — taking money for work never performed is theft, not just a contract dispute — and a small claims or civil suit. Volusia County small claims handles up to $8,000, which covers a lot of deposits, and you do not need a lawyer to file.
Also call the State Attorney’s Office for the Seventh Judicial Circuit. If several homeowners have filed on the same person, a pattern turns a civil headache into a criminal case, and criminal restitution moves faster than a civil judgment.
Two Situations With Their Own Rules
You signed after a storm, during a declared state of emergency. Florida Statute 489.147 requires residential roofing contracts of that kind to contain a bold, conspicuous notice telling you that you may cancel the contract without penalty within 10 days after execution or by the official start date, whichever comes first. If your contract lacks that notice, that is a violation on its face and it belongs in your DBPR complaint. The same statute makes it a third-degree felony for a contractor to knowingly pay, waive, or rebate your insurance deductible — so if he offered to “eat your deductible,” that offer is evidence.
Suppliers are now sending you notices. If he ordered materials on credit and never paid for them, the supplier can come after your house, even though you already paid him. If a Notice to Owner has landed in your mailbox, read our guide to Notices to Owner and construction liens in Florida immediately and do not ignore it. Demanding lien releases before releasing further funds is the defense, and it is why we never recommend paying a roofer in full before the supplier is paid.
Do Not Forget the Permit
If he did pull a permit before disappearing, there is now an open permit on your property in his name. It will expire without inspections, and it becomes your problem the day you try to sell or refinance — a lender will not fund a house showing active construction.
The replacement contractor generally cannot simply inherit it. In most Volusia County jurisdictions the abandoned permit has to be closed or voided and a new one pulled under the new contractor’s license, which sometimes means an inspector looking at partially completed work. Our guide to open and expired roof permits in Volusia County walks through the lookup and the fix city by city.
Hiring the Next One
The hardest part of this, for most people we talk to, is not the paperwork. It is picking up the phone and trusting another roofer.
What we would tell you if you were family: verify the license number yourself at myfloridalicense.com before the estimate, not after. Confirm the license was active on the day you sign, and that the name on the license matches the name on the contract. Ask for the certificate of insurance to be sent directly from the agent rather than handed to you as a PDF. Structure payment so a deposit is small or unnecessary, progress payments track completed work, and the final payment lands after the county’s final inspection passes. Put whatever you can on a credit card. Get every promise in the written contract, because a promise that is not in the contract does not exist. And ask, in writing, when the permit will be applied for — you now know that is a 30-day statutory duty and not a favor.
Our guides on choosing a roofing contractor in Volusia County and comparing roofing estimates go deeper on each of those.
Where We Fit
We take over abandoned roofing jobs in Volusia County, and we will tell you honestly that they are more complicated than a clean re-roof. The prior contractor’s work carries no warranty from us, the permit situation usually has to be untangled first, and occasionally the correct answer is that partially completed work has to come off and start over. We would rather say that out loud during the estimate than discover it in week two.
What we can do at no cost is come out, look at what was actually done versus what you paid for, and put that in writing. That document has value beyond the quote — a written assessment of completed work against contract value is close to the exact evidence a small claims judge, a DBPR investigator, and a recovery fund claim all want to see. Several homeowners have used ours for precisely that.
Affordable Roofing & Construction has been working in Volusia County for more than twenty years, licensed under CCC 1327602 and CGC 1509441 — both a roofing and a general contractor license, which is worth noting given what you just read about Division I and Division II. Estimates are free, and we include a wind mitigation inspection with every roof we install, along with a five-year labor warranty.
Call 386-392-8952 if you are in Daytona Beach, Port Orange, New Smyrna Beach, Ormond Beach, DeLand, Deltona, or anywhere in Volusia County. Bring your file. We have read a lot of them.
This article is general information for Volusia County homeowners, not legal advice. Statutes and dollar caps change, and the facts of your situation matter. For a claim of any real size, talk to a Florida construction attorney — many offer free consultations, and the recovery fund’s one-year filing deadline is not one to guess at.