W2R
Moderator Emeritus
I don't remember all of the details but Texas has a provision that uses "10 years of events" to calculate rates. That's going to hit pretty hard when it comes through next year.
Katrina got Texas to separate "wind storm" (guess what that is) from normal homeowner's insurance. There was a semi-arbitrary line drawn along the coast to differentiate where separate "wind storm" insurance was required. These were reinsured through multiple world wide insurance groups. State Farm uses Lloyds of London.
This separate policy didn't lower the normal home insurance but it cost as much or more than the other policy. It wasn't unusual to get hit with an extra $1,500 or $2,000 in cost to live along the coast.
Until 2 years ago, DW and I had a house about 100 feet from the magic line. Fortunately, we were on the right side of it. That line may get redrawn soon. I think our old house was flooded based on TV pictures I've seen but I didn't see our exact property.
After Katrina, new "wind and hail" policies were not available in New Orleans and insurance companies did all they could to drop wind and hail coverage from the homeowners' policies (within state regulations). If your policy was less than 3 years old, or if you had made 3 claims in 5 years they could drop it, and a lot of tricks were reported in which they required new policies for minor changes and then used that as a way around state regulations. Frank's policy was dropped since it was less than 3 years old, and now he has to pay more like $2200 or something extra for his wind and hail policy in addition to his homeowners' policy which is almost that much. No insurance company would touch wind and hail, so it's the "Louisiana Fair" state coverage.
I did not get my "wind and hail" removed from my policy, but they imposed a mandatory 5% deductible. That's still pretty good, since I don't have to pay for Louisiana Fair, but 5% probably is not enough to pay even partly for a new roof, for example. My homeowners' including wind and hail went up around $200 (ballpark, I do not have the figures here).
From what I understand, Florida has had similar insurance difficulties since Charlie/Frances/Ivan/Jeanne in 2004.