And you thought your home ins was expensive...

[farmerEd]

Teri Johnston, president of the group, said owners of 1,500-square-foot homes there were typically seeing premiums double to $10,000 or more for wind-storm insurance. They are facing a total home insurance cost of more than $13,000 a year on average, Ms. Johnston said, or about $1,100 a month.

The complete story (you might need to register for free to read it)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/us/29florida.html

 

[brewer12345]

Like I have been saying: plan on spending a lot more for HO insurance for the forseeable future. If you are in FL, bend over. The FL insurance market is broken and may never recover.

 

[justin]

Dear Florida:

You may want to move. Other states have insurance for a little bit less than $13000 per year. In the middle of the floodplain in an indland area that occasionally gets hit by hurricanes, I'm paying under $1500 total per year for all home insurance.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Mines 750 a year, and we live in a flood plain with a volcano a couple of miles away

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

in defense of florida (like i really care lol)...

yeah, our rates are high and going up (another 16% or so this year) but i've never heard of anyone paying $10,000 for windstorm on 1,500 sf of living space. what was it? on a $2mm cottage set directly on the beach? i notice the article failed to mention.

my citizen's windstorm is about $1,500/year on about 1,400 sf. a friend recently expressed outraged that his friend's house went up to (i think it was) $5 or 6k for coverage on a $1.5mm house closer than mine to the beach. i'm 3 miles from surf, a nice bike ride but no storm surge. i also pay flood insurance as we've some rivers nearby.

no one ever said paradise was cheap. and if you want to live in a million dollar house, you really ought to be able to afford it. i don't know who these people are who think they can retire to a $1-2 million dollar house on a small pension and some social security. my parents & life taught me that it takes more bucks than that.

i know that i won't be able to keep my parents' million dollar waterfront house but i'm not blaming insurance or taxes on that. i simply look to how lazy i am and that lifestyle isn't worth it to me to work that hard. frankly, i can't wait to get away from all this money. instead of a life of more, i'd rather one of enough.

 

[brewer12345]

lazy, are you east of I-95?

I also have to wonder how long Citizens can go on subsidizing policyholders. As long as the gummint and the voters permit it, I guess. Maybe they will bring back an income tax to pay for it.

 

[shiny]

frankly, i can't wait to get away from all this money. instead of a life of more, i'd rather one of enough.

Sounds like a good philosopy to me.

Just wondering, do you mean get away from the money in the beachfront neighborhood, your town, or worrying about your own (family) money?

 

[Jarhead*]

Mines 750 a year, and we live in a flood plain with a volcano a couple of miles away

Fuzzy: Flood (Surface Water) is excluded on ho's policies, so as you probably know, that wouldn't have an upward draft on your rates.

Living in a flood plain does give you access to fed Flood Ins. Good idea? Don't know how you feel about it, but if I were living in the flats, knowing about Yuba Cities history, I'd consider it.

 

[HFWR]

$878

 

[Brat]

I would get flood insurance were flooding a risk.  The limits are low per structure but there are ways to work around that.  Husband had a client who wanted a beach house.  He designed three small structures (living, dining, kitchen; bedroom, bath garage; bedroom, bath) connected by a fence with a fire pit in the center. Fully insured for floods.

 

[justin]

I guess I should clarify - $930 for flood insurance (bought separately) and $425 for fire/wind/etc. insurance.

 

[WanderALot]

$500 for HO, another
$400 for Earthquake.

Earthquake insurance has a very high deductible (15%), but got no choice in CA.

 

[Sarah in SC]

$767 h/o only. In a "B" flood zone, elevated house, so no flood needed. Wind & Hail also not required. The beach house we sold 5 yrs ago was much higher, as we had flood, W&H, and h/o--and were going up every year, even though that house was also elevated (but also ancient-1932 built).
Sarah

 

[justin]

I'm officially a couple feet below the 100 yr flood elevation in the worst zone you can be in - 'A' maybe?

Although the city just spent $2 million to remedy the flooding issue and supposedly FEMA is going to issue a "LOMC" (letter of map change) to show that I'm no longer exposed to such a severe flood threat.

Based on the city's and my own hydrologic calculations of the watershed basin I'm in and observing actual water levels after short-term 100 year rain events, I'm not too worried about getting flooded.

 

[farmerEd]

I'm at 1500 feet above sea level...if I get flooded you guys are all in trouble .

I pay about $850/year for HO ins including $1M umbrella.

 

[justin]

I'm at 226 ft above sea level. A very localized flood would get me but not many others around me.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

lazy, are you east of I-95?

I also have to wonder how long Citizens can go on subsidizing policyholders.  As long as the gummint and the voters permit it, I guess.  Maybe they will bring back an income tax to pay for it. 

ya, east of i-95 here. they say we are more at risk but it is really such hype as it depends on where the wind blows that day. as florida has long been home to sun & scam, we are also getting scammed by the insurance companies. the panhandle probably gets hit more by canes than us but our rates are the highest. could it be because they smell more money here?

as to citizens subsidizing. not quite so. it is the insurer of last resort and they charge, by law, the highest rates in the state. well, at least that was true until recently. since orlando & tampa have been joining citizen, they've found themselves rather overexposed.

so now (& i just learned this) they are dumping 20% of their customers. sure hope i'm not one. a friend i just spoke to (investigating the claim of that times article), unfortunately got snagged.

there are two or three companies which citizens is dumping us on. these companies are allowed to raise rates 130% to 150% higher than even the insurer of last resort. supposedly some of this money is then kicked back to citizens. you can get back into citizens but only if you wind up without insurance for 2 years. not good.

income tax? funny. solution: don't work.

florida wind insurance

Just wondering, do you mean get away from the money in the beachfront neighborhood, your town, or worrying about your own (family) money?

clarification: no money worries here, just need to get away from moneyville. it's too much. it's not real. i miss my uppermiddleclass upbringing.

my dentist's assistant was upset a few months ago, not only because she didn't win the 45 million dollar lottery, but because now it was down to "only" 3 million. i said, what are you nutz? a 3 million jackpot nets you about 1 million and that gives you retirement. she retorted, but the houses here cost a million. and i'm thinking to myself, girl, you got problems.

get me out of here

 

[shiny]

just need to get away from moneyville. it's too much. it's not real.

I understand. I've been there. Its a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there!

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Fuzzy: Flood (Surface Water) is excluded on ho's policies, so as you probably know, that wouldn't have an upward draft on your rates.

Living in a flood plain does give you access to fed Flood Ins. Good idea? Don't know how you feel about it, but if I were living in the flats, knowing about Yuba Cities history, I'd consider it.

we're in a good spot, its something I looked closely at when we bought. We're pretty far from the levies, there arent any rivers within 8-9 miles, the whole subdivision has good drainage and elevation, and the house is up on about a 4' elevation over the street. My ex does mapping for the USGS and she checked it out for me and said it was a very low risk area.

My wifes old place, on the other hand, was wedged a quarter mile from two levies with problems, had two rivers less than a mile away, and was in an area flat as a pancake with no drainage. Even with that, in the two levy failures in the last 15 years, neither flood came close to her place.

 

[ladelfina]

lazy, nothing to do with FL and storm insurance, but I hear you. "no one ever said paradise was cheap", you bet...

We sold for about $600k in Boston and bought for about $550k in Tuscany, thinking we were a bit ahead of the game. Well, our living area is 2x the size, our yard is 20x the size, but I have to deal with endless dusting, cleaning and mopping everywhere, our gas bill for heating is about 4x what it was in Boston although the weather is far milder and I keep the thermostat lower (enormous energy prices and taxes, no Italian concept of insulation, 14 ft. ceilings). For the first time in my life I actually paid a guy to help with pruning trees, hedges, etc. this winter... Even at €8/hour he spent over two solid weeks this winter working, and that doesn't count the time we spend ourselves continuously weeding, mowing, watering.. There's a "rain water holding tank" (shaped like a pool, wink wink) that to turn into an actual pool would take minimum  $40k-$50k and involve excavating a meter or so of bedrock, so for the foreseeable future it will remain a crumbling cement hole painted blue.

Here practically everyone who has more than a 2-bedroom apt. has "help". The assumption is that no one takes on an actual "house" without an army of Filipinos, Poles, and so on.. Having paid strangers in my home makes me queasy, and the expense makes me cringe. Having servants. however, seems to be the norm for 'bourgeois' life here.. (i.e, above subsistence level). Who knew?

A tiny ratchet up in relative economic "class" brings with it a whole host of extra headaches and expenses. "Society"-wise, we are sandwiched between the (few) rich ex-fascists and the (many) active communists!! There's no in-between.

Uneasy lies the head, and so forth..  :  


--P.S. My (ill) mother is the proud owner of a lot in Ft. Meyers, FL, which my grandfolks bought back in the '60s as a potential "retirement" scenario. ( I gather there was a lot of this speculation going on..) No one in our family has even seen it!!

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

We sold for about $600k in Boston and bought for about $550k in Tuscany, thinking we were a bit ahead of the game. ...
--P.S. My (ill) mother is the proud owner of a lot in Ft. Meyers, FL, which my grandfolks bought back in the '60s as a potential "retirement" scenario. ( I gather there was a lot of this speculation going on..) No one in our family has even seen it!!

tuscany. just the sound of its name. you have no idea how jealous i am.

you should do well on the fort myers property, especially if waterfront & deepwater at that. i know those went up quite a bit there & in nearby cape coral. but not as much as naples to make bubbling as big a fear. i've even heard on a few different venues that there's room for more increases on property values there. (though those would all have come from the non-bubble camp).

 

[ladelfina]

tuscany. just the sound of its name. you have no idea how jealous i am.

: Come on by!

I am usually embarrassed to say "Tuscany" as it is such a cliché. We ended up here by chance, not by design, as DH was supposed to start up a partnership with a Roman colleague who happened to have a vacation home on the other side of Monte Amiata and was going to chuck it all in in the big city and join him in a startup in "the boonies". That didn't happen, so he's making the best he can of it on his own. We're in Sarteano because it was where we could find the only decent single-family house available in a land of apartments and ruins of old 'casali'. (Want a re-development project? Here there are loads.)

When I'm feeling 'dreamy' I look at the map of Italy and realize that a romantic-sounding name like "Montalcino" just means Oak Mountain, "Baia Verde" = Green Bay,  "Fiumicino" = Little River.. that's what Italians hear!

---
Ft. Myers waterfront? Not that lucky.. it's kind of in the middle of the main residential area, it appears, across the street from some whopping big church. Again, since it's a "hand-me-down" lot, whether we get $50k or $500k is immaterial. As long as it is non-zero! The prop. taxes have been kept up on it. but I'm amazed they let vacant lots just sit there. In NE, you'd probably have the city whining that you'd have to clear it or that it's a 'nuisance'. Every so often mom gets letters from local FL RE agents, but she bins them. Dunno why, since she has never had any interest in even visiting the lot to see it (though Ft. Myers looks like a nice place), much less building a house and/or moving there.

Last year I sent her the books from the BBC series, "Life Laundry", a great reality show about de-cluttering. Who knows if they address the "clutter" of excess RE?

--
P.S. "Monte Amiata" is, I've heard, a contraction of Monte Amianta or.. Mount Asbestos. The big industry was copper and asbestos mining.

I did find a (low-quality) truffle in our backyard though! Haven't dared to eat it yet.

 

[brewer12345]

ya, east of i-95 here. they say we are more at risk but it is really such hype as it depends on where the wind blows that day. as florida has long been home to sun & scam, we are also getting scammed by the insurance companies. the panhandle probably gets hit more by canes than us but our rates are the highest. could it be because they smell more money here?

as to citizens subsidizing. not quite so. it is the insurer of last resort and they charge, by law, the highest rates in the state. well, at least that was true until recently. since orlando & tampa have been joining citizen, they've found themselves rather overexposed.

so now (& i just learned this) they are dumping 20% of their customers. sure hope i'm not one. a friend i just spoke to (investigating the claim of that times article), unfortunately got snagged.

there are two or three companies which citizens is dumping us on. these companies are allowed to raise rates 130% to 150% higher than even the insurer of last resort. supposedly some of this money is then kicked back to citizens. you can get back into citizens but only if you wind up without insurance for 2 years. not good.

income tax? funny. solution: don't work.

I can sympathize with you, but I don't see any end to increasing FL insurance rates in the next 5 years. Even companies which jacked up rates 150% prbably still cannot afford adequate reinsurance, assuming they found anyone willing to sell it to them (at any price). As for how bad it can get, well, there was a time not that long ago when 75 to 90% of auto insurance in NJ was being provided by the insurer of last resort. Guess what that cost?

As I understand it, Citizens is backed by the state gummint, right? If so, taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for losses that aren't covered by premiums. Take your pick: pay via taxes where everyone foots the bill, or pay via insurance premiums where those that generate the risks pay for them. Either way, someone is going to pay.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Seems like everyone wants to jam the word 'tuscan' into every food product being made. I read an article by Mario Batali who said nobody who knows better wants to eat in tuscany as its considered one of the least attractive options in the region. But the name sounds good...heck, you could even jam it into a movie title...