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Hi all,
Does anyone know the latest on the availability of homeowners insurance for new buyers? I am hearing from my folks that most agents/companies are not writing new policies. They have Allstate and they are not writing. Is this because of Wilma, Jean & Francis or the new law?
Thanks
Jay
The Florida legislature just had an "emergency session" regarding the insurance crisis in Florida. The session has called for a rate freeze and prevented cancellations in certain cases. The session has also called for a greater role for the state in re-insurance.
I'm not sure how this will pan out for new policies right now; some companies are threatening to leave the state. The best way to tell is to wait until after the upcoming hurricane season.
Yeah Dorado, $5k property tax, state income tax, months below freezing. No thank you. Actually, i've visiting the folks for 27 years so I am familiar with those sentiments. haha. Kids even moved down after school was done. No one left up here.
My big thing is, more than 5 months of boating/fishing. Tough making all thos payments during the winter.
Bikini Bottom???
Jay
What and where you are insuring has a lot to do with it. We ended up calling most of the agents in our area and just happened to recieve a card (thanks morgage co for selling our info) about a month before our policy came due for a company who some how or another found a company that would write us a policy for a decent amount of money. Excuse me, by "decent" I mean that it was only double what we had been paying the year before! I did get a couple of quotes at over 3.5 times what we had been paying!!!!
BTW, our house is an 18 year old wood frame "w/o shutters" outside of the wind zone but in fire code 8 (~4 mi from fire station, no hydrants). A neighbor down the street has a new construction poured concrete home w/ hurricane windows and a value of over 3x ours and pays almost half of what we pay.
__________________
*Sometimes I sound like I know more than I do. Other times I don't.
Hi all,
Does anyone know the latest on the availability of homeowners insurance for new buyers? I am hearing from my folks that most agents/companies are not writing new policies. They have Allstate and they are not writing. Is this because of Wilma, Jean & Francis or the new law?
Thanks
Jay
The new law is the ansere to your question. The bone heads in State government thought they could legislate their way out of a supply/demand problem; fat chance. They told the insurers that they could not raise rates (much) and they could not cancel policies. Most insurers have now said that they will not underwrite new policies and that they may not renew existing policies. Some of the big players are pulling out of the state all together.
I bet the politicians next move will be to say, if you pull your homeowners policies, you can't write auto (very profitable) policies. Then we won't be able to get auto insurance when that happens.
It's now easier to get insurance on a new boat than it is a new house.
Most new laws have a down side. I don't think politicians really look at what they vote on. i.e. last Nov the state had a vote on $50M bond issue for affordable housing. This week they had hearings on what they should spend the money on!! Duh, affordable housing!
Unfortunately, my ins co. does not write in FL (never has). I'll keep looking. Funny, right now just looking for a liability policy on vacant lot (thanks to our litigeous society) and can't find that.
Jay
Insurance is getting harder to find. Nearly all insurance companies have left or are going to leave the state. They have taken great exception to our politicians mandating how they manage their business.
A friend just bought a $350,000 home in the middle of the state. With Homestead Exemption his annual taxes are $8125 and insurance $5700. In order to get the $5700 rate he had to lower his windstorm coverage and increase his deductable to $25,000. Without Homestead Exemption taxes would be $9450. This is ridiculous and why retirees are leaving the state in droves.
The state is finally getting tough on people cheating on their residency and claiming Homestead Exemption. They are going after cheaters for fraud and payment of back taxes. One retiree is being sued for 7 years fraud on his exemption and back taxes totaling $38,000.
The state SHOULD be getting tough on people cheating them on the HX.
There is a huge amount of cheating going on with the HXs, and IMHO every one of those people should get nailed for back taxes, interest and penalties.
As for the insurance issue there are two things that BILL NELSON did when he was insurance commissioner (before he left for the Senate) that totally screwed Florida homeowners. They are:
1. Allowed "Pup companies" to be set up that are Florida only.
2. Allowed them to discriminatorily write policies only on lines they wanted, while their other subsidiaries were able to write OTHER lines.
Both need to end. Get rid of pup companies and refuse to license any insurance company that won't write property and casualty on a non-discriminatory basis for any other form of business (e.g. auto, which is tremendously profitable.)
The companies claim they'll leave if we do that. No they won't. They make too much money off the auto policies, and they're not about to walk away on it.
Pup companies are 50% of the problem all on their own. The very definition of insurance requires spreading risk beyond the impact of any particular disaster that causes losses, otherwise you're not buying insurance (a small fee paid to cover you against an UNLIKELY, but expensive loss.) You're buying coverage against a LIKELY loss, and that is NEVER reasonably priced.
BTW, you might also consider voting Nelson out of office - if you vote for him then you're voting for what he's done, and he's why we have the problem in this state.
Bitefish, they will leave the state without auto insurance and laugh all the way to the bank. While auto insurance is profitable, those profits will not make up for hurricane losses. It's a frequency / severity problem. These losses don't happen frequently enough to predict and when they do, they are huge. Imagine the losses if a CAT 4 storm hit Tampa or Miami.
The State of Florida is about to become the only insurer and they don't have reinsurance. They also don't know how to run an insurance company. Their only upside is that they have unlimited capital.....OURS.
They are part of the Farmers Insurance Group. The are rated "A" by A.M. Best. They should be financially stable. I can't give you feedback on claims service.
The homestead exemption is what is causing the property tax crisis in the first place. I am actually paying less taxes on my 15 yr. residence this year than I did last year! My taxes on my $280,000 home are right at $1000 per year and I live 10 mins. from downtown Orlando. The neighbors that bought in the past year are paying 4 times what I am. They are subsidizing my homestead. No complaints here. Now, on to the house we bought on the water in Madeira Beach last year. That house is valued at over $550,000 and we are paying $8400.00 per yr. Not eligible for homestead. The neighbor next door is paying $2800.00 because of homestead.
The real question is: Where is all of this windfall tax money going? The towns and cities were able to run fine before our housing boom brought in all of this new revenue. What the heck is the money being spent on now???!!
Anyway, I love living in Florida and would never move back to New England!! Plus gasoline is only $1.23 per gallon.
Just kidding on that part.
__________________ USCG 100 TON MASTER
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1984 Mckee Craft 14'
Sunset on the ICW
Madeira Beach, Fl
Honeymoon Harbor
Bimini
"Many times life gives you the test, before you learn the lesson!"
What signmansez is talking about is the Save our Homes law, which limits the increase in assessed value to 3% on homestead property. The original idea was to protect the little old lady who has been in the same house for 40 years, lives on social security and whose little bungalow is now worth $400K. Her taxes would be more than her income. It wasn't that big of a deal until prices went crazy. I live near signmansez. We bought our house 10 years ago and the value has more than tripled, yet our taxes are under $2,000.
We looked at moving last year and realized taxes would at least triple.
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Hopefully, they (the Florida legislature) will intoduce some kind of portability into property tax so that when you sell, you will carry your relative savings with you. The current jump in property taxes mentioned by Boatless is preventing a lot of people from buying up.
BTW, the insurance industry is going to court to try to reverse the laws enacted by Charlie Crist. ..We'll see what happens.
If Allstate drops me from homeowner's, I will complete the Trifecta by relieving them of their responsibility with two other policies I currently have with them.I would encourage other Florida homeowners to do the same with their insurers.
Well I am coming a little late to this discussion but I think I can shed a some light on the subject. You can get Homeowners. It will be higher than what you are used too, especially if you move to a place on the water. If you can live some distance from the water the rate may be lower. Recently our "brightest minds" (notice the quotation marks, they're there to point out a sarcastic tone.) Were force to address a woeful situation that was created by the legislature and the Governor some years back when they failed to understand that insurance companies are under no obligation to insure anything regardless of how attractive the premiums may be.
Today, you will now be able to buy insurance from Citizens Insurance (the state insurer of last resort, created by the legislature many years ****** without facing double rate increases going forward. It is not the best coverage and quite frankly we have the worst coverages to premium ratio in the nation IMHO.
But you can get insured and if you are able to understand the premiums are based on many different factors that lead to the high cost then you'll be fine.
Just to add to what you've heard here already, since you have been visiting so much I suppose you know that in Florida, there are three separate "homeowner's" policies which you may need.
1) "Regular" homeowner's, which is the fire/other casualty/liability policy, such as you have now. In all coastal Florida areas, all companies' policies will EXCLUDE windstorm and flood coverage.
2) Windstorm. Now available for new policies only through Citizens insurance, a state-run outfit. Big rate increases, HUGE this year, which may (or may not) be lowered by the new law just passed. (There is a process through which other companies can "takeout" policies from Citizens, but at the start, Citizens is who you deal with.)
3) Flood. Depending on your elevation and distance from the water, this may be required by your mortgage company and rates will vary with those two factors. In coastal Florida, as far as I know, this coverage is ONLY available through the federal flood insurance program, sold by local agents.
Bear in mind that these are totally separate. EAch policy has its own deductibles, limits, fine print, etc., etc. Homeowners will usually be quite a bit cheaper than what you are used to elsewhere (though I know nothing about RI), due to the two biggest risks being eliminated from it.
Flood is not cheap, but risk is spread through the federal program to all flood-prone areas in the U.S., so there is a much bigger base, than with....
Wind, which is the real killer. There is no way out for the Gulf coast and Carolinas homeowner here, as there is no bigger base to spread the risk over (OK, maybe some little bit up the east coast above the Carolinas) As noted by many here, it has currently at least tripled over what it was two or three years ago, with nobody really sure what our new law will do to help. Really, and this is my personal opinion, nothing can be done to help. No insurance buyers or taxpayers elsewhere in the country are going to be willing to (and they shouldn't have to) front money to let us live where the wind blows. Sure, the legislature can help out, but where does it get the money? Just from the taxpayers, and you have seen in this thread what people here are saying about their house taxes. Maybe a state income tax? We'll see.
Good summation but I would add to your last paragraph that in the case of a federal program the one biggest hurdle will not be the sharing of the risk. It will be the states trying to uniform the building codes through the whole program. If you live in Florida why would you help insure homes in other states not built to your strict codes in Florida? And why would anyone tolerate a state that didn't formalize the building codes statewide to meet the new threats?
Thanks a lot for all the information. We have not looked at prices yet; but right now [for reference] we are paying ~$1000/yr for homeowners in RI. Of course we are 10 miles inland and don't require flood insurance. In FL, we are looking about 1 mile in from the ICW. So, I guess that will put us right in the worst area to try to get insurance. We'll have check a little more to see what flood zone we are in. I think that FEMA has this graded for each area. One other question, does the year built have a lot to do with the rates. i.e. whick code the house was built to? There was a big change after Andrew; I think there were other code upgrades after that, right?
Again, thanks to all who helped out.
Jay
FL homeowners insurance?? 
