Four systems, one form, and an underwriting decision
A four-point inspection records the age and condition of four systems — roof, electrical, plumbing and heating and cooling — on a form the insurance carrier supplies, and sends it to an underwriter. It is not a home inspection performed on a shorter list. It is a different product, with a different client, a different governing document and a different deliverable, and it substitutes for a home inspection in no sense whatever.
It exists for one reason: a carrier will not write or renew the policy without it. Nobody commissions a four-point out of curiosity about their house. The inspection is an underwriting condition, so the question being asked is not whether the house is sound or whether you should buy it, but whether the carrier's exposure on four systems is acceptable at the premium it intends to charge.
That drives everything else on this page. A home inspection is governed by a standard of practice that defines what the inspector must examine and may not conclude. A four-point is governed by the fields on a form. When the form stops asking, the inspection stops.
It answers the insurer's question, not yours
You pay for the four-point and in most cases you arrange it. But you are not the audience. The document is written for an underwriter who will never see the property, who wants four facts about four systems, and who will decide in minutes. It carries no summary of concerns written in your interest, no severity language, no recommendation, and no account of the rest of the house.
The common mistake follows from the price. A four-point is short and form-driven, so it costs less than a full inspection, and a buyer under time pressure decides it is the cheap version of the same thing. It is not. A property can clear a four-point with a sound roof, a modern panel, copper supply lines and a recent condenser while the structure, the drainage, the windows, the attic, the crawlspace, the grading and every appliance go entirely unexamined. The business consequence is that you close owning a set of problems nobody was engaged to look for.
If you are buying, order both. The four-point gets you the policy; the buyer's inspection gets you the information. They are separate engagements and, often enough, separate people.
What the four points actually are
The four are named on the form itself. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, Florida's residual-market carrier and the source of the most widely copied version of the form, lists them as “Roof,” with the instruction that photos of each roof slope let this section take the place of a separate roof inspection form; “Electrical System”; “HVAC System”; and “Plumbing System.”
Within each, the questions are about age, material and observed condition: how old the covering is, what the branch wiring is made of, what the service size is, what the supply piping is, when the air handler was installed. The roof section also asks for the age of each slope in years and its remaining useful life in years.
Who may sign matters as much as what is asked. Citizens' form permits a general, residential or building contractor, a building code inspector, or a home inspector to complete it, with trade-licensed professionals permitted to sign only the section matching their license — broader than most people assume, and narrower than anyone with a ladder. No statute anywhere requires a four-point; carriers impose it, which is why the roster of acceptable signers is the carrier's to set and can differ between two companies writing in the same ZIP code.
The age trigger, and what the form does not declare unacceptable
The trigger is the property's age, and the clearest published one belongs to Citizens, whose inspections page states that a four-point inspection is required for all property owner, dwelling and mobile home applications for properties more than twenty years old. That is how the page read on October 6, 2026; Citizens revises it in place without changing the address, so treat any age you read anywhere — including here — as a figure to confirm against the live page.
Thirty years is the number most often repeated in circulation. It reflects an older Citizens manual and is no longer what the carrier publishes, so an agent working from thirty may tell you that you do not need a four-point when the application will in fact come back for one. Two limits apply even to the current figure: it is one residual-market carrier's underwriting condition rather than a law or a national standard, and every other carrier sets its own, some applying it at renewal rather than only at new business. The form itself states no trigger, because the form and the eligibility rule are separate documents and only one of them is public.
That separation matters more than it sounds. The form asks the inspector to report conditions — the type of branch wiring, the service amperage, the panel, the supply piping material — and reporting a condition is not the same as the condition being disqualifying. The form declares none of them unacceptable. Lists circulating online name knob-and-tube wiring, aluminum branch circuits and services under 100 amps as automatic disqualifiers, usually citing Citizens; the current publicly posted form does not say that. The eligibility rules that act on what the inspector reports sit behind an agent login and are not publicly citable, so nobody writing from public documents — this page included — can tell you where a given carrier's line falls. Ask your carrier to put the disqualifying conditions in writing.
One material condition does have a published position: Citizens treats polybutylene plumbing as unacceptable at a twenty-year threshold, under its eligibility bulletin of April 28, 2022. A specific, dated, attributable rule is exactly what the circulating lists lack.
The roof usually decides it
Of the four systems, the roof most often turns a four-point into a declination, and it is the one with published thresholds. Citizens sets roof documentation thresholds by covering type: shingle and built-up tar and gravel coverings more than twenty-five years old, and tile, slate, clay, concrete or metal coverings more than fifty years old. Those are the ages at which the roof stops being a line on a form and becomes the subject of the file.
The field that decides the outcome, though, is remaining useful life. The form asks the inspector to write a number of years, slope by slope. Note what that asks of the person signing: estimating the remaining life of a component is something a residential standard of practice expressly does not require an inspector to do, and most inspection reports decline to do it for good reason. On this form it is a required box.
What minimum remaining life a carrier will accept is not stated in any publicly posted Citizens document reviewed for this page. It lives in the same login-gated underwriting guidance as the eligibility rules. If someone quotes you a threshold in years, ask which document it comes from; for most carriers the honest answer is that it is not published, and you should get it from your own carrier in writing rather than from a search result.
Carrier forms, regulator forms, and why the difference shows
Most four-point forms are written by the carrier. A few inspection forms in this corner of the market are written by the regulator instead, and the comparison shows what you lose when a private company owns the document.
Florida's Uniform Mitigation Verification Inspection Form, OIR-B1-1802, is adopted by Rule 69O-170.0155 of the Florida Administrative Code. Because a rule adopts it, its contents are public and uniform: seven numbered verification sections, a named list of professionals qualified to sign, and a stated shelf life of up to five years provided no material changes have been made to the structure. Every carrier in the state reads the same form the same way, and you can read the rule yourself.
A carrier-written four-point has none of that. Scope, acceptable signers and recency are the carrier's to set and to change, and a form completed for one company is not guaranteed to satisfy another. That is the practical reason to find out which form and which revision your carrier wants before the inspector drives out, rather than paying twice.
When it comes back badly
A four-point that reports poorly produces one of four outcomes: the application is declined; coverage is offered conditioned on specific repairs within a stated window, usually with a re-inspection; coverage is offered on different terms; or, at renewal, the carrier moves to nonrenew. None of these are secret proceedings — the carrier is acting on a document you commissioned and can read.
What protects you at that point is state insurance law, not the inspection, and the protections are local. The clearest recent example is the Connecticut Insurance Department's March 2024 notice on underwriting action based on roof condition and aerial imagery. It requires at least sixty days' advance notice of nonrenewal with a statement specifying the reason, rejects reasons as vague as “claims experience,” “underwriting judgment” or “increase in hazard,” and sets the expectation that filed underwriting guidelines include a physical inspection to validate what an aerial image purports to show — or a report from a licensed home improvement contractor or roofer addressing the roof's condition.
Read that before relying on it: it is a department expectation in a notice rather than a binding rule, it applies in one state, and a contractor's report satisfies it just as an inspection does. The general lesson holds anyway. When a carrier moves against a property from a photograph, the remedy is to put a qualified person physically on the roof and generate a document the carrier has to answer. And because you commissioned the four-point, it is yours: repair what it reported, document the work, submit again. A bad four-point is a dated snapshot, not a permanent mark.
What to do next
Get the requirement in writing first. Ask the carrier or agent which form, which revision, how recent it must be, and what conditions will stop the file. Carrier recency rules are not published the way the state wind mitigation form publishes its five-year validity, so the only reliable source is the company that will read it.
Do not let it stand in for an inspection. If you are buying, the four-point and the buyer's inspection are both worth having and neither covers the other's ground. If the property is a rental, the investor inspection page sets out which additions earn their place.
If you already own the house, time it. An annual maintenance inspection before you shop coverage tells you what the four-point will say while you still have the option of fixing it quietly. Finding out from an underwriter is the expensive order of operations.
On cost: a four-point is short and form-driven, so it is priced well below a full inspection, and it is frequently performed on the same visit as a wind mitigation inspection where both apply. What drives the figure is travel, roof access and whether photographs of every slope are required — not the size of the house, because most of the house is not in scope.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a four-point inspection the same as a home inspection?
No. A four-point examines four systems — roof, electrical, plumbing and HVAC — on a form written by an insurance carrier, for an underwriter deciding whether to write a policy. A home inspection is a general visual examination of the house performed under a standard of practice, reported to you. Neither covers the other's ground, and a four-point should never be accepted in place of an inspection when you are buying.
At what age does a house need a four-point inspection?
It depends on the carrier, because no law requires a four-point at any age. The clearest published trigger is Citizens Property Insurance Corporation's, whose inspections page required a four-point for all property owner, dwelling and mobile home applications on properties more than twenty years old as that page read on October 6, 2026. The thirty-year figure still widely repeated comes from an older Citizens manual. Confirm your own carrier's trigger with your agent.
Who is allowed to perform a four-point inspection?
On Citizens' four-point inspection form, a general, residential or building contractor, a building code inspector, or a home inspector may complete the whole form, and a trade-licensed professional may sign only the section matching their license. Because the form is a carrier's document rather than a regulator's, another company may accept a different roster. Ask before you hire.
Will a four-point tell me how many years my roof has left?
It will contain a number, because the form asks for remaining useful life in years for each roof slope. Treat it as an underwriting estimate, not a warranty or a prediction you can plan around. Estimating remaining life is specifically something a residential inspection standard of practice does not require an inspector to do, which is why the same person will often decline to put a life expectancy in an ordinary home inspection report.
How recent does a four-point have to be?
That is set by the carrier, and it is generally not published. Older secondary sources state a twelve-month rule for Citizens; the publicly posted current form does not state one, so it cannot be verified from a primary document and is not repeated here. The contrast is instructive: Florida's regulator-adopted wind mitigation form, OIR-B1-1802, states its own validity of up to five years absent material changes to the structure, because a rule rather than a company controls it.
What happens if the four-point comes back badly?
The carrier declines, offers coverage conditioned on specific repairs and a re-inspection, offers different terms, or nonrenews at the anniversary. The document is yours, so the remedy is to repair what was reported, document the work, and resubmit. If the action is a nonrenewal, your protection is state insurance law — notice periods and the specificity required in the stated reason — which varies by state.
Does a four-point inspection cover wind mitigation?
No. They are separate forms with separate purposes: a four-point reports the condition of four systems for eligibility, while a wind mitigation inspection verifies specific construction features that qualify a property for premium credits. Where both apply they are commonly performed in the same visit by the same inspector, but each has its own form and its own result.