The Florida Supreme Court just ruled this past July in the case of Trinidad v. Florida Peninsula Insurance Company, that “... an insurer’s required payment under a replacement cost policy includes overhead and profit, where the insured is reasonably likely to need a general contractor for the repairs, because the insured would be required to pay costs for a general contractor’s overhead and profit for the completion of repairs in the same way the insured would have to pay other replacement costs he or she is reasonably likely to incur in repairing the property...”
I believe this is great news for both the contractor and the insurance company. This clears the discussion table as to what both entities should be charging for their services to the policy holder. The Supreme Court went on to say what exactly it considered to be overhead and profit. It stated: “Specifically, overhead includes fixed costs to run the contractor’s business, such as salaries, rent, utilities, and licenses, and profit is the amount the contractor expects to earn for his services.”