Repair Bond vs Retreat-Only Termite Warranty

A termite treatment contract comes at one of three coverage levels: repair and retreatment, retreatment only, or no warranty at all. Retreatment only means the company comes back and treats again and pays for nothing else, and the upgrade to repair coverage buys a promise whose value depends entirely on whether anyone can date the damage.

Take the time to compare. Florida’s agriculture department tells homeowners that wood-destroying organisms “can cause some anxiety, but never rush a treatment decision. It is always to your advantage to take an extra couple of days or weeks to obtain additional estimates and find contract terms to your liking.”

By the end of this you will know which of the three your own contract is, where in it the clause that decides a repair claim is hiding, and what to ask before paying more for the better-sounding one.

Who decided there are three kinds?

Florida’s legislature, and it wrote them into statute rather than leaving them to the market.

Fla. Stat. § 482.227(2) reads: “Any contract for treatment of wood-destroying organisms must specify on the first page in bold print that it is offered for repair and retreatment or for retreatment only or that no warranty or guarantee is offered.” Three named options, on page one, in bold.

The statute opens by saying why. “The Legislature finds that the terms ‘guarantee’ and ‘warranty’ are common in contracts for the treatment of wood-destroying organisms. The purpose of this section is to assure that contract language describing a ‘guarantee’ or ‘warranty’ is clear and easily identifiable for the protection of consumers and licensees.”

Two further subsections tighten it. Any disclaimers, limitations, conditions or exclusions must also appear “on the first page in bold print”, and the sections describing them “must contain headings in bold print”. Then subsection (4): where such a limitation exists, “the term ‘full’ or ‘unlimited’ may not be used together with the term ‘guarantee’ or ‘warranty.’”

My read of that last subsection is that it is the most informative sentence in the whole statute. A legislature does not ban two specific adjectives unless those adjectives were being printed on contracts that did not deserve them. It is Florida’s rule and Florida’s alone, but the marketing habit it describes is not confined to one state, and it tells you which word on a proposal to distrust everywhere.

What does retreatment only actually get you?

Another treatment, at the company’s cost, and nothing towards the wood.

Florida’s agriculture department puts it in one line: “Retreatment only contracts will obligate the company to return and perform additional treatments to control the infesting organism. There will be no repairs at all.”

That is worth less than a repair promise and more than nothing, because the failure it insures against is real and ordinary. The University of Kentucky’s extension entomology service notes that liquid termiticides “are supposed to control termites for at least five years when applied according to label directions”, and in the same breath that “Even the best treatments performed by knowledgeable pest control firms may fail at times, when termites find their way through untreated gaps in the soil.”

A retreatment obligation is what turns that gap from your invoice into their visit. The same service takes the view that “It is a bit of a gamble to purchase any termite treatment without an ongoing service agreement.”

Where the obligation has teeth, it has dates attached. Florida requires the licensee to inspect “within thirty calendar days of written notification by the property owner”, to retreat “within ninety days of discovery of an infestation subject to the re-treatment provision of a contract”, and, if the contract expires mid-claim, to make “a written offer to perform the re-treatment in accordance with the terms of the contract within ninety days at no additional cost.” The trigger is written notification, which is the practical reason to email rather than telephone. What the underlying agreement is and how it works is in my guide to what a termite bond is.

What does a repair bond add?

An obligation to fix the wood, limited to damage the company accepts as new.

FDACS states the upgrade and its catch together: “Retreatment and repair will obligate the company to return to perform retreatment and to repair any ‘NEW’ damage caused by termites. Be sure to understand how this is determined.” The capital letters and the warning are both the regulator’s.

The contract is also required to price the two things apart. Florida makes the licensee state “The total maximum price to be charged for treatment service, the exact annual renewal fees to be charged under the contract, if any; and the total maximum price to be charged for structural repairs, if any, shown separately.” A maximum on the repair side is a number worth finding, because it is the ceiling on the promise you are paying extra for.

If a bond stands behind the work, two states require the agreement to reproduce it rather than describe it. Florida: the obligations of the bond “shall be set forth specifically: i.e., necessary retreatments, repairs, etc., in wording identical to that in the bond itself.” North Carolina: “the agreement shall set forth those performance guarantees in wording identical to that in the bond itself”. North Carolina also requires the agreement to state “Whether the written agreement or warranty may be transferred to subsequent owners of the property and the terms of any such transfer”, which is the clause that decides whether the upgrade you bought is an asset when you sell.

On relative cost, FDACS says only this, and so will I: “a retreatment and repair warranty is generally more expensive.”

Why does dating the damage matter so much?

Because the repair promise covers new damage, and nobody can reliably say when termite damage started.

The University of Kentucky’s extension entomology service is direct about it. Companies offering repair coverage “will repair damage occurring after their treatment, although dating onset of termite damage is a hard thing to determine.”

Set that beside two other facts and the shape of a claim appears. North Carolina’s regulator observes that “Most homes in North Carolina in excess of 10-15 years old will have some evidence of wood-destroying insects and could well have been damaged by such insects.” FDACS notes that annual inspections “may not discover the initial stages of termite infestations”, and that termites “may cause damage for several years before you discover them when they swarm in the spring or fall or when remodeling.”

My read is that the repair upgrade is worth most on a house where the starting condition is documented and worth least where it is not. Say, hypothetically, that a hollow joist turns up three years into a contract on a forty-year-old house with no earlier inspection on file. The company’s position that the damage predates its treatment is not obviously wrong, and there is no test that settles it. On a newly built house with a pretreatment record, the same argument is much harder to make.

Nobody neutral is in the room by default either. North Carolina says “Ordinarily, a PCO is neither prepared nor qualified to evaluate the extent of damage to a structure”, so the person who assesses the damage and the person who would pay for it are not the same trade. That is an argument for getting your own inspection record documented at the start.

When can a company refuse a claim?

Under either level, and the grounds are usually written into the contract before you sign it.

Florida limits how far that goes. A licensee “may not use a limitation, exclusion, or condition clause of a contract to deny treatment of a termite infestation or repair of termite damage” unless the damage “was primarily caused by the subject of the limitation, exclusion, or condition clause”, and where the company knew about the condition, it must have given written notice “within sixty days of discovery” and an opportunity to correct it. Fail to correct within sixty days of that notice and the clause becomes usable.

North Carolina’s new-construction rule lists the standard exclusions, and they read as a checklist of things a homeowner does without thinking. A warranty there does not extend to “Additions not treated by the licensee or his representative”, to infestations arising from “remodeling, landscaping or other alteration which occurs after pretreatment is complete and which entails considerable disturbance of the treated soil area”, or to infestations arising from “building defects, including but not limited to water leaks, excessive moisture or structural defects, of which the property has been notified and given the opportunity to correct.”

Building an extension, regrading a border and ignoring a slow leak are three ordinary decisions, and each appears on that list. Whether the disturbed ground gets retreated is the difference between a maintained liquid barrier and a decorative one.

Species can be excluded too. Florida requires that where Formosan termites or other invasive species are left out of coverage, “the species must be named as excluded”, a rule that only helps if you look. My page on Formosan subterranean termites covers why that exclusion is not academic on the Gulf Coast.

Here’s what I’d actually do

I would decide this on the age and the paperwork of the house rather than on the price difference.

On an older house with no documented treatment history, I would take the retreatment-only contract and put the difference towards getting the condition of the structure recorded now, by somebody who does not sell termite work. The repair promise is the one I would expect to have to argue for, and I would rather have evidence than a clause.

On a newer house, or one where a pretreatment and its reinspection reports are on file, I would pay for repair coverage and read the bold-print list of disclaimers, limitations, conditions and exclusions before signing. If a limitation names a condition my house has, that is the clause a claim will die on, and the sixty-day notice rule makes fixing it my job as much as theirs.

Either way I would ask two questions in writing. What is the maximum you will pay for structural repairs under this contract, and how do you determine that damage is new. The first has a number as its answer and Florida requires it to be stated. The second usually does not, and the quality of that answer tells you most of what you need to know.

I have not seen your contract or your house, and the rules quoted here belong to Florida and North Carolina rather than to the whole country. Read yours against your own regulator’s requirements before you rely on any of it.

Sources

• Fla. Stat. § 482.227, Guarantees and warranties — The Florida Legislature, last amended 2020. Accessed 2026-08-06.
• Conducive Conditions and Contracts for Wood Destroying Organisms (FDACS-P-02044) — Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, revised June 2020. Accessed 2026-08-06.
• Chapter 5E-14, Entomology – Pest Control Regulations, rule 5E-14.105 — Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, effective July 2018. Accessed 2026-08-06.
• Rules of the North Carolina Structural Pest Control Committee, 02 NCAC 34 .0605 — North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings, rule effective 2018-11-22. Accessed 2026-08-06.
• Termite Control: Answers for Homeowners (ENTFACT-604) — University of Kentucky Department of Entomology, revised March 2026. Accessed 2026-08-06.
• A Home Buyer’s Guide for Wood Destroying Insect Information Report (WDIR) — North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, Structural Pest Control Division, undated. Accessed 2026-08-06.