Your insurer has aerial photos of your home. Here is what they look for

The roof dominates, because it is the surface the imagery sees best and the component carriers care about most: staining and moss, lifted or curling shingles, patched sections that read as prior damage, and tarps — a tarp is close to an automatic flag. Beyond the roof, the algorithms and reviewers look for overhanging tree limbs, accumulated yard debris, visible disrepair on outbuildings, and features the policy does not know about, above all an undeclared swimming pool or trampoline.

The pool and trampoline cases are worth taking seriously: those are liability exposures the carrier believes it was never told about, which reads as a disclosure problem rather than a maintenance one. If either has been added since the policy was written, telling your agent before the imagery does is meaningfully better.

The outcomes run a spectrum. Mildest is a letter making renewal conditional on a repair or an inspection — trim the limbs, replace the flagged section, show us the roof. Next is repricing: the property's condition score feeds the premium, and a roof the model reads as late-life gets priced like one. At the far end sits non-renewal, and roof condition is now one of the most common stated reasons on those letters.

The letters rarely mention imagery explicitly. If a condition-based demand arrives that does not match anything a human has inspected, an aerial review is the likely source — which matters, because it tells you the evidence is a photograph, and photographs can be argued with.

Imagery libraries are refreshed on multi-year cycles in some areas, and analysis mistakes are real: discoloration reads as damage, a shadow reads as a patch, last year's tarp is still in this year's file even though the new roof went on in March. You are entitled to push back. Ask your agent what specifically was flagged; then answer photography with photography — dated ground-level photos, a roofer's inspection report, the invoice for the work the image predates.

Carriers reverse these findings routinely when the documentation is good, because the finding was never a judgment — it was a data point, and better data replaces it.

The property-specific shift cuts both ways. The same channels that punish a worn roof reward a documented new one, cleared canopy, and a tidy site — and carriers differ in both their imagery vintage and their appetite, which means the insurer that flags your roof this month may be using older or harsher data than a competitor quoting fresh. A condition-based increase is one of the better reasons to re-shop: you are not arguing with the market, just with one carrier's photograph.