Increase in Property tax and Home Insurance Rates

[ferco]

I've noticed over the past 5 years our property and home insurance rates have increased by an average of 5-5.5% per year. This is in NC. Since the posters to this site are prodigious record keepers what have been your average annual increases in these 2 areas over the past 5-10 years.

[MasterBlaster]

Well I can say with certainty that my property taxes have gone up exactly 2.0 percent each year. However I live in California and property tax increases are limited by law to 2 % (due to proposition 13).

If someone has lived in their house for many years in California their property taxes can be very low. My mother, for example, only pays $158 per year in property taxes. So California can be a great place to be retired in if you have owned your house for decades.

But they make up in high income taxes what they don't get in property taxes. Other states like Texas have no income tax but really soak someone in their property taxes.

[Moemg]

I'd kill for a 5% increase .My homeowner's insurance has gone from $1,250 to $6,200 in three years .Florida of course !

[brewer12345]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moemg I'd kill for a 5% increase .My homeowner's insurance has gone from $1,250 to $6,200 in three years .Florida of course !

Holy cow! Are you in a hurricane alley zone or east of I95?

I think my HO insurance has gone up maybe 3% annually, but property taxes are up 8% a year.

[Moemg]

I'm on Sarasota bay and as soon as the housing market speeds up a little I'm selling .

[CCdaCE]

I don't have the numbers in front of me for home insurance, it's gone up 5%-ish I suppose. I've maintained the same insured value for the past 3 years.

Prop. tax has gone up 6.0 and 6.5%, based on assessed value increasing 9 and 11%. I've only owned this house for 3 years.

-CC

[Empty Pockets]

Homeowners rates bumped up significantly in 2001-2003 and have stabalized since. Your overall premium will go up each year due to the built in "inflation guard" most policies have. This increases your coverage based on some type of inflation index. If you haven't increased your deductible in the last 5 years you should.

[Bikerdude]

Home owners ins. goes up about 5% to 6% a year. Property taxes went up 18.5% last year. Usually 5 to 7%. This is in CT and is due to the State cutting aid to towns while they continue to spend. I probably will have to relocate at some point due to high taxes in CT.

At the State level they have not funded the pension and health care obligations for State employees that are coming due and are now talking about providing Health care for everyone.

The "For Sale" signs will be going up soon across the State.

[HFWR]

HOI is relatively flat, and PT is up about 10% in seven years.

[paradiseken]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moemg I'm on Sarasota bay and as soon as the housing market speeds up a little I'm selling .

Hey neighbor, I feel your pain. I live in Bradenton and have also seen a significant increase in premiums. Are you bailing from FL.?

[ferco]

Don't these increases wreck havoc on a presumed/assumed 3% inflation rate. the only mitigating factor(s) might be if other budget items stay significantly below this rate to balance out the high ones................does(or can)FireCalc account for these wild increases?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Prop 13 keeps ours throttled down. Heck, if I still lived in my old mcmansion I'd be paying taxes on a basis of around $335-340k and living in a $650k house.

Unfortunately if we moved to an exact duplicate house at market rates, our prop taxes would double.

The good news is, we dont have to look at any of this. Just take your original property tax rates and add 3.1% a year to it. Its very unlikely that you'll experience any increases over and above this level.

My insurance premiums have also risen by approximately 6% a year, but I blunted that in a couple of ways...increased my total liability while raising my deductibles and having my agent get me qualified for an "upper level" policy with the same insurer. Many insurers have higher 'quality' tiers with lower premiums for long term customers that dont file many claims. My old agent never told me about this, but my new agent did. Maybe some of you might want to call another agent from the same insurance company and tell them you're not entirely satisfied with the existing agent...can they think of any ways to save you some money on your existing policies?

So i'm taking on a little more short end risk and lowering my long end risk abd cut my rates by about 20-30% in the process. Sort of a one-time benefit as I've hit the ceilings on deductibles and i'll lose all of that benefit and then some with one good car accident or a tree falling on my roof.

Had I done nothing, I'd have seen roughly a 6-7% increase in my premiums annually. However, I could have ignored that and simply added 3.1% to my original premiums and that would have been sufficient for planning for the next 30 years. What a time saver!

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny My insurance premiums have also risen by approximately 6% a year, but I blunted that in a couple of ways...increased my total liability while raising my deductibles and having my agent get me qualified for an "upper level" policy with the same insurer. Many insurers have higher 'quality' tiers with lower premiums for long term customers that dont file many claims. My old agent never told me about this, but my new agent did. Maybe some of you might want to call another agent from the same insurance company and tell them you're not entirely satisfied with the existing agent...can they think of any ways to save you some money on your existing policies?

We've seen insurance companies look at clients with low deductibles & histories of frequent small claims and "suggest" that they move to a higher deductible. Sometimes they're encouraged to do so with a higher renewal premium.

We're also starting to run into underwriting restrictions. For example USAA hasn't written new homeowner's policies in a couple years. There are some limited exceptions but they feel they have enough hurricane/earthquake/lava exposure...

[cute fuzzy bunny]

No claims at all here. Never had a car accident and only filed one small home claim and in retrospect, shouldnt have bothered filing that one.

As a low risk client, they felt okay about rerating me into a higher quality policy level. The agent said that it was available but that a lot of agents just stick with the standard policies as they're easier to set up and dont require a lot of extra work.

And some extra work was definitely done. I made some posts a while back regarding "mystery" data that isnt accurate being glommed onto my own aggregate. I got a call from the insurance company wanting to know about an ex girlfriend, her ex husband, her new husband, and some other folks I never heard of. My ex and I owned a home together for a short time, and somehow the insurance company linked her little network of spouses and roommates right in with me. I had to explain in writing whether I had lived with any of these folks and what my current relationship with them was.

Last time I got this sort of examination was when I got my top secret and Q clearances.

[Andre1969]

I've only been in my house long enough to make three property tax payments, but I remember it was something like this...

2004: $2356
2005: $2550
2006: $2800

I'm in Glenn Dale, Maryland, DC suburbs. 90 year old house, assessed at 1106 square feet, with 4.28 acres. They recently downzoned our end of the street, so I don't know if that will have an effect on property taxes. Prior to the downzoning, our community was zoned Rural-Residential, which meant density of up to two houses per acres. Then they came through and spot-zoned us, and I got re-zoned "Residential-Agricultural", or one house per two acres. I don't care about it right now, because I'm not moving anytime soon. But I might be pissed further down the road.

As for homeowner's insurance, I think it actually came down a bit. I can't remember what I paid in late 2004, but in late 2005 I paid $795, and I think it was down a bit to around $750 when the bill came up again this past November.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

If your homeowners policy fees drop, check your coverage to make sure the company hasnt dropped your "guaranteed replacement" clause (or similar) or isnt updating the coverage limits to market costs.

Some insurance providers, either through incompetence or intention "fritter away" the coverage you'd receive in the event of a major loss, maybe to reduce their risk without overtly 'underinsuring' their customers.

People get a smaller or same-size bill, they dont complain and I imagine not many read the pages and pages of fine print.

When I first looked at the policy on my wifes house, it was insured for about half the cost it would be to rebuild it and the guaranteed replacement was excluded. I went back and looked at my policy and saw that the guaranteed replacement portion had also been dropped. Quick call to the agent put it back in place for a higher premium...

[Moemg]

My homeowner's bill of $6,500 was with the highest deductible available .I've never had a claim .I had to contact the Florida Insurance Commision for help .I finally got insurance with Citizens (the insurance of last resort in Florida ) for $2,300 with a $29,000 deductible.So any of you Er's who are looking at Florida look seriously at the insurance crisis.

[Moemg]

Sorry if I sound a little crazy on this subject !!!

[lazygood4nothinbum]

hi moeng. one of my friends used to be on the bay in sarasota, now on bay in bayshore section of bradenton. gorgeous views there. check out today's paper. you might see at least some small relief on your insurance bill soon. it isn't much but it is a step in the right direction.

in florida real estate tax on homesteaded property is regulated by the "save our homes" amendment. assessments upon which millage is based can only be increased by 3% or the inflation rate (whichever is lower i think).

i pay about $1k/year in taxes. were i to sell the new owner would pay between $8 & 10k/year.

can't put my hands on it now but i think i was paying about $750 for windstorm 12 years ago. now i pay about $1500 for windstorm. flood has hardly increased. liablity has maybe doubled as well in those years. while not directly on the water, i am east of 95 and considered high risk. my flood though is lowish because i'm all of 6 ft above sea level.

edit: on that sea level item, my neighbors who are waking me up everyday with the construction on their house recently surveyed and marked the elevation right on the street directly between our houses. fortunately i don't take much in life seriously. it reads "6.66".

[brewer12345]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazygood4nothinbum hi moeng. one of my friends used to be on the bay in sarasota, now on bay in bayshore section of bradenton. gorgeous views there. check out today's paper. you might see at least some small relief on your insurance bill soon. it isn't much but it is a step in the right direction.

I have to disagree with the "step in the right direction." I think the actions taken by the FL legislature are extremely short-sighted and will ultimately hurt the FL insurance marketplace. FL homeowners is heading for the state of MA auto and the way NJ auto used to be - not a happy ending. In some ways it is even worse because the structure of Citizens means that any big catastrophes will still land either on the policyholders or on the taxpayers as a whole.