Tornados, Hurricanes, and Floods, Oh My!

Floods, Hurricanes, and Tornados, Oh My! 

Florida is famous for weather related problems and those weather related problems cause insurance problems. Problems that lead to the cost of insurance is one of the main concerns for buyers when purchasing in Florida. Anyone that works in real estate sales or the mortgage industry has to be capable of addressing legitimate concerns of clients when it comes to the cost of homeowners insurance. To do that you must be familiar with the history of Florida’s insurance issues over the years.

Over the last forty years Florida has been one of the fastest growing states in the US. Florida, also known as The Sunshine State is known for its sandy beaches and beautiful coastline, it is not hard to figure out where people want to live. The most desired location is of course the hardest hit when it comes to hurricanes and floods.

In the aftermath of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew Category 4 devastation that cost insurance companies more than $25 million, smaller companies closed and larger insurance companies were able to petition the state for a massive premium increase to help cover their losses. It took until 2004 for them to catch up, leaving many of the smaller insurance companies hesitant to write policies in Florida. Homeowners were left with rising insurance rates and cuts to the coverage just in time for not one or two or even three, but four major storms in one hurricane season throwing the insurance industry in to complete chaos. The next season brought even more destruction with five major storms including Katrina, the most expensive Atlantic hurricane in history. 

The vast number of claims submitted to insurance companies still in business lead to a large number of policy holders to be dropped while others joined the mass "evacuation" that started in the wake of Andrew.

As for real estate agents, they understood that the only thing worse than expensive insurance was no insurance at all. The banks will not close on a loan without proper proof of insurance. So Citizens Property Insurance Corporation was put into action in 2002, to ensure that Florida home owners, no matter where they lived would have access to property insurance. The more other insurance companies dropped their policy holders the more Citizens evolved from the last resort insurance to the largest insurance provider for the state. Since Citizens is a tax-payer funded insurance company, this created new issues, potentially every homeowner in the state could be on the line for claims. 

With the cost of insurance and its availability becoming an important hot topic during the 2006 Florida elections, Citizens Insurance charged its customers the highest rate approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation to avoid competing with private carriers. Insurance agents were actually prohibited from writing policies through Citizens if there was a private (not surplus lines) carrier who would write the risk. If a qualified insurance company was willing to take a group of policies, Citizens Insurance would transfer them to that company and cancel coverage. Customers had no recourse.

As a result Florida Senate Bill 2498 a.k.a. The Glitch Bill, was signed into law by Governor Christ in June of 2007. This legislation permitted agents to write a Citizens policy for customers if the premium for a comparable policy offered by a private carrier was 15% more expensive. Customers were also allowed to stay with Citizens Insurance if they were notified that their policy was being assigned to a private carrier.

In 2010, eight global insurance carriers entered or re-entered the Florida market. While the cost of reinsurance dropped 10% the cost of insurance to consumers remained the same.

Which brings us to February of this year, Florida Sen. Jeff Brandes filed Florida Senate Bill 724, a comprehensive bill to overhaul Florida property insurance law to avoid new "hurricane taxes" which would be necessary if another catastrophic hurricane ravaged the state. The proposal is unpopular among many Citizens customers because it would mandate more rate increases to what they consider to be already high premiums. A similar bill was defeated in 2012.

I hope this helps you in understanding the many issues that can effect a successful closing of your home purchase and the added demands of homeownership.