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Why your hail deductible changed, and what it now costs you

For twenty years the Front Range ran on a simple loop: hail hits, you file, the roof gets replaced, repeat after the next storm. That loop is breaking, and the reason is sitting on your declarations page. Most homeowners do not find out until they file.

Last verified 5 August 2026

Why insurers changed it

Colorado sits in the middle of what the industry calls Hail Alley, and the losses have been enormous. State Farm's 2024 figures put Colorado among the most expensive states in the country for hail damage claims, at roughly $521 million, behind only Texas, Illinois and Missouri. The May 2024 Denver-metro storm alone drove insured losses above $2 billion by industry estimates, and the May 2017 Front Range storm remains the costliest catastrophe in state history at around $2.3 billion.

Those losses come back as premium, and they have. Reporting in 2026 indicated Colorado homeowners' premiums rose sharply over the preceding five years, with hail identified as a primary driver. Percentage-based wind and hail deductibles are the other half of the response: they shift a defined share of every storm loss back to the homeowner, which lets carriers keep writing policies in a market they would otherwise leave.

None of that is a moral judgment. It is just the new arithmetic, and you are better off knowing it before a storm than after one.

What it looks like in dollars

Take a home insured for $500,000 of dwelling coverage, not the market value, the rebuild figure on your policy:

Wind/hail deductible	You pay	What that means
Flat $1,000	$1,000	The old world. Almost any hail claim was worth filing.
1%	$5,000	A partial repair may now cost less than your deductible.
2%	$10,000	Approaching the cost of a full replacement on many homes.
5%	$25,000	Effectively catastrophe-only coverage for hail.

Run the same numbers on your own dwelling coverage. It takes thirty seconds and it is the single most useful thing you can do before storm season.

How to find yours

1. Find your declarations page, the summary pages at the front of your policy, not the renewal notice.
2. Look for two deductibles. One all-perils, and a separate one for wind and hail. They are often not the same.
3. If the wind and hail figure is a percentage, multiply it by your Coverage A / dwelling amount. That product is what you would pay.
4. While you are there, check whether you have replacement cost or actual cash value on the roof. ACV means depreciation comes off, and on an older roof that gap can be larger than the deductible.

What this changes about hiring a roofer

Three practical consequences:

• Documentation matters more than it used to. When you are carrying $10,000 of the loss, the difference between a contractor who photographs every slope and files supplements and one who does not is real money.
• Repair-first companies got more valuable. If your deductible exceeds the repair cost, you are paying out of pocket either way, and you want the company whose instinct is the smaller job, not the bigger one.
• “We'll cover your deductible” is now a bigger temptation and still illegal. With deductibles this large, that offer is more appealing than ever. Colorado law prohibits it flat out, and if a contractor promises it your insurer is not obligated to consider their estimate. See your rights under SB 38.

There is also a longer game. With replacement now partly on you, a roof built to survive the next storm is worth more than one built to be replaced after it. That is the case for Class 4 impact-resistant systems, and it is worth pricing even if you decide against it.

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