If you own a home in Texas, four things changed under you this year. None of them made the evening news, all of them show up on a quote or a renewal notice, and contractors are still quoting several of them wrong.
Here is what actually moved, with the dates, and what to do about each one.
1. Your policy now has to contain an appraisal clause
This is the big one, and almost nobody knows about it.
Senate Bill 458 requires that every residential property insurance policy issued or renewed in Texas after January 1, 2026 include an appraisal provision. Some insurers had quietly stripped these clauses out of their policies over the years. The Legislature put them back.
What appraisal does: if you and your insurer disagree about how much a loss is worth, each side picks an appraiser, the two appraisers pick a neutral umpire, and any two of the three agreeing settles the amount. It is binding except in cases of fraud, accident or material mistake.
What it does not do, and this matters: appraisal decides the amount of a loss, not whether the loss is covered. If your insurer says hail did not cause the damage at all, appraisal is not the tool for that fight.
It also does not apply to policies written by the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, or to commercial policies.
What to do: when your renewal arrives, find the appraisal clause and read the deadlines in it. You now have a route to dispute a lowball damage estimate that does not start with hiring a lawyer. Most homeowners will never need it. The ones who do usually find out too late that they had it.
2. The 2 percent deductible is now the default, not the upgrade
Texas wind and hail deductibles are a percentage of your dwelling coverage — not a flat dollar figure, and not a percentage of the damage. That has always been true. What changed is where the market settled.
Two percent is now the dominant standard across most Texas carriers, particularly in North Texas. Some higher-risk areas have moved to three. One percent has largely disappeared from the most hail-active markets.
On a $400,000 dwelling limit, two percent is $8,000 out of pocket before your insurer pays anything. If your limit rose this year because rebuild costs rose — and it almost certainly did — then your deductible rose with it, silently, without anyone calling it an increase.
What to do: find the wind and hail line on your declarations page, not the “all other perils” line. They are different numbers. Then run your own figures through the wind and hail deductible calculator and see what a realistic claim would actually pay you. For a lot of Texas homeowners the honest answer is: less than they assumed, and sometimes nothing.
3. Older roofs are being moved to actual cash value
This is the change that costs the most and gets explained the least.
Many Texas policies now convert roof coverage from replacement cost to actual cash value once the roof passes 15 years, and some carriers apply it as early as ten. Under actual cash value, depreciation for the roof’s age is deducted from the settlement.
The part people get wrong is the order of operations. Depreciation comes off before your deductible does. The two stack. On an eighteen-year roof with a $28,000 replacement cost and a $8,000 deductible, depreciation can wipe out so much of the claim that filing it pays you nothing at all — and you still carry the claim on your record.
What to do: look for a roof surfacing endorsement or a roof payment schedule on your declarations page. If there is a schedule, ask your agent for the actual table in writing, not a description of it. And if your roof is approaching that age, ask whether replacement cost is still available — on some policies it is, for more premium. That is a conversation worth having before the roof turns fifteen, not after a storm. Our roof replacement cost guide walks through the arithmetic.
4. The federal tax credit contractors still quote is gone
The 25C energy efficiency home improvement credit — the one that gave you 30 percent back, capped at $600 a year for windows and up to $2,000 for qualifying heat pumps — terminated for property placed in service after December 31, 2025.
“Placed in service” means installed and working, not paid for. A deposit in 2025 did not preserve it.
A great many HVAC and window companies are still showing “your price after the federal credit” on quotes. If a bid in front of you does that, the real number is higher than the number on the page. What still exists is utility rebates, which in this part of Texas means Oncor and Atmos programs, plus manufacturer promotions and financing offers.
Relevant on the AC replacement and window replacement guides, both of which have the current numbers.
And one more, if you are touching your electrical panel
Texas adopted the 2026 National Electrical Code effective September 1, 2026. The requirement for a readily accessible outdoor service disconnect on one- and two-family dwellings survived the new edition — it simply moved sections, from §230.85 to §230.70(A)(1), with the replacement trigger now at §230.70(E). One caveat: inside city limits, the edition your city has adopted is what gets enforced, and not every city has moved yet — here is how to tell which applies to you.
Practical effect: replacing your panel is not a like-for-like swap. It forces the outdoor disconnect, with compliant red-background labelling. That is real money and it is the single most common omission from a cheap bid. Details in the electrical panel upgrade cost guide.
If you live on the coast rather than inland, note that TWIA’s maximum residential dwelling limit for 2026 is $1,773,000, and TWIA policies are the ones SB 458’s appraisal requirement does not reach.
The five-minute version
- Find your wind and hail deductible — the percentage one, not the flat one — and multiply it by your dwelling limit. That is your real exposure.
- Check whether your roof has been moved to actual cash value, and how old it is.
- Confirm your renewal policy contains an appraisal clause, and read its deadlines.
- Strike any federal tax credit line off an HVAC or window quote dated 2026.
- If a panel upgrade is on your list, make sure the bid includes the outdoor disconnect.
None of this is dramatic on its own. Together it is the difference between a claim that pays and a claim that does not, and most of it is visible on one page of your policy if you know which page to open.
General information about Texas insurance and code, not legal or financial advice. Your policy governs, and only your insurer can tell you what it will pay.
Free: the Texas contractor bid checklist and hail worksheet
One page, fourteen questions. It is what I run every Texas contractor bid against before signing — licence and insurance, line items, change-order terms, the lien waiver — plus a hail-claim worksheet for your own deductible. Free, no catch.
