TWIA coverage for homes built before 1988, and where the date stops helping

Section 2210.251 of the Texas Insurance Code draws a line at January 1, 1988. Work on a structure on or after that date has to comply with the association's plan of operation to be insurable through it. Work before that date is treated differently, and for an older house that difference can decide whether an application needs a certificate at all.

The line the statute draws

Subsection (a) makes compliance with the plan of operation the condition of eligibility for a structure constructed, altered, remodeled, enlarged, or repaired, or to which additions are made, on or after January 1, 1988. The list of verbs is the point. The date that matters is the date of the work, and a structure can have more than one.

A house in an area that had a recognized code

Subsection (d) takes pre-1988 work in an area that was governed at the time by a building code the association recognizes, and says the structure is eligible without compliance with the inspection or approval requirements of the section or the plan of operation. No inspection, no approval, no certificate, because the code in force when it was built is doing the work.

The statute does not list which places had a recognized code on which dates. That is a fact about a particular jurisdiction at a particular time, and it has to be established for the address rather than assumed from the county.

A house in an area with no recognized code

Subsection (e) is the harder case and the more useful one to read closely. Pre-1988 work in an area with no recognized code is still eligible without inspection, but only if the structure was previously insured by an insurer authorized to do business in Texas, is in essentially the same condition as when it was insured apart from normal wear and tear, and has no structural change other than a change made according to code.

The prior coverage has to be for windstorm and hail, and it has to fall within the twelve months immediately before the application to the association. The subsection names what the evidence includes:

• a copy of a previous insurance policy
• copies of canceled checks or agent's records showing payments for previous policies
• a copy of the title to the structure, or mortgage company records, showing previous policies

A lapse is expensive here. A house that went more than twelve months without windstorm and hail coverage has lost the evidence the subsection asks for, however unchanged the building is.

Why a later repair does not inherit the house's date

The pre-1988 treatment belongs to the pre-1988 work. A roof replaced last year on a house built in 1975 is work done on or after January 1, 1988, and subsection (a) reaches it. Inside the catastrophe area, section 2210.258 goes further for work begun after its 2009 legislation took effect: the association may not insure the structure until a certificate of compliance has issued for that work, subject to that section's own exceptions, which are set out on the TWIA eligibility requirements page.

Hurricane Harvey came ashore near Rockport in 2017. Where a house built before 1988 was repaired after that storm, the age of the house is not the question an application turns on. The question is what was done to them, when, and whether a certificate exists for it, which is checkable through the certificate history of the building.

Settling it before an application goes in

• When the structure was built, and when each later alteration, repair, or addition was made.
• Whether the area was governed by a building code the association recognizes at the time of the original work.
• If it was not, whether windstorm and hail coverage was in force within the twelve months before the application, and which of the named documents shows it.
• Whether any structural change since was made according to code.
• For any work on or after 1988 inside the catastrophe area, whether a certificate of compliance has issued.