Florida Faces Exodus as Residents Declare Insurance Crisis Final Straw

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Newsweek

Published Oct 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM EDT


Florida's home insurance crisis is becoming too dire for some residents who feel they may have no choice but to leave the state in the face of high premiums and hurricanes. Several residents have spoken to Newsweek about how with "no solutions" in sight to fix the problem, they will likely have to relocate.

The current home insurance crisis has been several years in the making, with several factors at play. Premiums have skyrocketed following numerous deadly hurricanes that have battered the state in recent memory. In 2022, Hurricane Ian caused a whopping $112 billion in damage, the costliest storm in Florida's history. Recent storms Helene and Milton, which arrived within a fortnight of one another, have already resulted in $1.4 billion and $2.4 billion in losses respectively.

As if the threat of destructive hurricanes wasn't enough, the industry has in recent years been dealing with litigation from roof-insurance scams, as well as reinsurance costs having risen sharply. Reinsurance serves as backup coverage for insurance companies, offering a financial safety net to cover large or multiple payouts after events like storms or natural disasters.

Higher costs and payouts for insurance companies mean higher premiums for consumers. According to virtual insurance company Insurify, Florida homeowners paid an average annual premium of $10,996 in 2023—the highest in the country. The exorbitant costs are forcing Florida homeowners to either self-insure or under-insure because "insurance costs are so high and insurance companies have been pulling out of the state," Florida-based expert broker and real estate advisor at Sotheby's International Realty, Jenna Stauffer, told Newsweek.

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/florida-exodus-home-insurance-crisis-1976454

[gay texan]

1. And this is what you get when your gov

Decides to fight culture wars....

[getagrip_already]

2. Of course they dont blame scott or desantis.....

This must be bidens fault.

[Ray Bruns]

6. You're damned right it's Biden's fault. Because he's so out of touch he wasn't controlling the weather with the Jewish

Space Lasers and letting all the illegal immigrants buy all the toilet paper with the government checks that nobody seems to have issued!

[Deep State Witch]

3. Not surprised

I keep tabs on the Venice, FL area where my MIL lives. She's getting up there, and has talked about moving back to Indianapolis to be closer to her other two sons and granddaughters. There are literally HUNDREDS of two-bedroom villas and houses available right now. Three of them in her little neighborhood. And she's about 5 miles from the Gulf.

[Captain Zero]

8. Sounds like housing prices will be coming down there

for sure.

Billionaires can buy them up and rent them for $3500 a month.

[enid602]

10. Can't borrow as much

Lenders look at all your housing costs when deciding how much to lend to you. With huge insurance and property tax (no state income taxes) bills, Floridians can’t borrow as much money, which depresses property prices.

[verargert]

21. and rent them for $500.00 a month.

[melm00se]

29. Poison pill

A lot of associations have been adopting poison pills into their association documents.

The most popular is that a new owner has to own the property for a minimum of 12 months before they can rent it out. This prevents a lot of investors from gutting a neighborhood and flipping it from owner occupied to rental communities.

As to FL insurance: This has been a looming issue for decades. The big part of the issue is the way that we regular insurance companies and limit their risk pools. If you limit a risk pool to one state, a bid disaster can kill an insurance company if they are over insured in a disaster area.

If we would move from a limited state pool to a regional or national pool, a lot of these issues will fall away.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

28. Hedge funds have already snapped up residential properties at alarming rates...

We’ve been renting a 2BR/1BA house in Sarasota for 8 years, originally at $1050/mo. Most recently, it’s gone up to $1400/mo and the landlord is selling out from under us so we’re frantically looking for something “affordable.” There is nothing. Anything close to our present rental is about 2K—and located in the shittiest of neighbourhoods. Anything comparable to what we have now is more like $2500 or more. I’m loathe to consider a mobile home, having just barely survived two damned hurricanes in a month (Milton hit our keys head on, and it’s not pretty).

Add to this that I haven’t had a raise (fkg Walgreens…) in two years so we’re talking rents MORE than I make (son is my roommate and has an even worse employer). We can’t even afford to leave the state, even if we could make twice as much elsewhere. No clue where we’d even go.

Obviously, we need to address the fact that oligarchs are controlling the housing market to everyone else’s detriment—but it’s Florida. Just one more thing pushing us to start thinking along the lines of a real class uprising. Maybe just one obscenely rich guy to the guillotine and the rest would get the message…

[slightlv]

35. I think we should outlaw Hedge Funds,

as simply predatory businesses. As soon as I see that one has bought a company, I know that company is soon to be bankrupt. Their entire way of doing business is predatory, and *everyone* involved gets hurt (except for shareholders of the Hedge Fund.) This has recently become a hot button issue for me, as they began buying Veterinarian clinics, etc... and jacking prices so high that it hurts to get your animals care, if you can afford it at all.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. It's one way to fix a housing crisis. Will it go all the way that FL starts turning blind eye to undocumenteds?

[IronLionZion]

16. They need workers to rebuild

and they can complain that "nobody wants to work anymore".

[Jit423]

5. Trump will claim folks are leaving because of "the border crisis."

Automation and AI kill a million jobs and he and his cult blame immigrants.
The environment chases people from their homes in the flood lands and he blames immigrants.

We must win this election decisively and if just by a hair, we must fight to preserve the results as though our lives depended on winning.

[verargert]

22. What border ? Surrounded by water.

[DBoon]

34. Trump will just draw a border with his magic sharpy

[Miguelito Loveless]

7. It begins

Each subsequent hurricane season will get worse, and more people will flee. As people leave, they dump their houses on the market for whatever they can get. At first their will be buyers, but as more insurance companies leave, more people will flee, and more houses will go on the market. As housing prices fall, banks will start to push for larger mortgage payments, and foreclose on those who can't pay the higher rates, which dumps more houses onto the market, pushing prices further down.

Rinse and repeat.

[getagrip_already]

9. More likely....

They will go at auction, picked up real estate speculation funds.

Those funds will buy them for pennies on the dollar, do basic flip level repairs and rent them out uninsured.

If they get hit again, they will just walk away, take the loss, and another spec will pick them up and start over.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

Between the low cost of entry, the low cost of maintenance, and the tax writeoffs, they will turn handsome profits.

Hoa's will fold once enough units are owned by the reco's.

Insurance is for suckers who pay full price.

[EarthFirst]

11. ::private equity has entered the chat::

[TBF]

24. Right? And they don't even need to rent them to young families -

they'll be happy to use them as airbnb type places for tourists to rent during the winter. Private equity is very adept at figuring out how to make things profitable for themselves.

[JoseBalow]

12. Florida is unsustainable, get out while you can

[The Mouth]

13. If you build somewhere that hurricanes strike every few years...

why would you expect anyone to sell you insurance?

Here in California, people rebuild on the exact same spots that wildfire burns ever couple of decades and then wonder why they can't get insurance.

[mahina]

14. Aren't people required to have insurance by their mortgage companies? And HOAs?

So just like last time in 2008, people just walk away and file bankruptcy or default on their mortgages? What happens then?

I do foresee a time when the coastal buildings become homes for the poor folks and the rich folks live inland.

We are already seeing immense losses of our beaches, sand, scooped away, trees. We loved for generations, dying from lack of water as the waves lap your roots before they finally fall in.

You can protect the beach or you can protect the property, but you can’t protect both. It makes a lot more sense to just demolish the property and let the ocean take what it will.

I hope they’re giving away free kayaks with all of these high-rise properties in Kakaako that are going up like a whole new Waikīkī except without the jobs.

[The Mouth]

23. Real Estate Investment Trusts and

people who can afford to pay cash buy up what is walked away from.

I might have my fire insurance canceled, fortunately I own my home free and clear, so I can tell State Farm to go get fucked, but if I had a mortgage I could be hosed.

[Magoo48]

15. A lot of folks I'll be leaving Fla. in the coming few generations.

[IronLionZion]

17. That's why I vote for the party with the magical weather control machine

instead of the party that bans books and discourages people from vaccination. Florida real estate is sketchy as hell. There are crooks and grifters taking advantage of people all over that state.

[keithbvadu2]

19. Hey, republicans::: why can't you control the weather? Are you too stupid or God won't let you?

[tanyev]

18. Will DeSantis take credit for emptying the "Free State of Florida"?

[jimfields33]

31. Florida is filled. 250 a day are moving in. It will be good

to see some leave. We are at 23 million and counting. In 2020, we had just over 21 million. Not sustainable. If we can go back to 21 million or less, it would help a lot.

[PortTack]

20. Boy I feel sorry for them....enough is enough. Most can no longer afford to live there.

[DENVERPOPS]

25. Driving the streets of Denver

I am seeing a huge influx of cars displaying other states license plates....Florida and Texas lead the count........

[Traildogbob]

26. Damn it!

Build a wall. They are coming to take our jobs, rape our women, EAT our dogs and cats! 😱😱😱Leave the DeSatan, Rubio, Scott, Gaetz and Loooony stink behind.

[duncang]

27. Who's going to work in their low pay jobs?

People won’t be able to afford living there. Trumpsters don’t want immigrants anywhere in the U.S. who’s going to pick the oranges? The people who can afford living there won’t be doing it. That is if orange trees will be able to survive there in the future.

Who’s going to clean up those vacation rentals? The investment fund bro’s themselves?

Will restaurants have people to staff them?

[NGeorgian]

30. Don't come to Georgia---We are full.

Home prices here are going crazy.

[raccoon]

39. SC as well.

[OAITW r.2.0]

32. Life on a sandbar during the time of climate change.

Ooooops, sorry Ron, didn't mean to mention the phrase "climate change" . Let's call it a Hurricane optimized environment.

[OAITW r.2.0]

33. Kind of an anecdotal observation, but I've seen a lot of cars with Florida plates recently in Central Maine.

Don't know if they are tourists or checking out properties to buy.

[jimfields33]

40. Snowbirds getting ready to go to Florida for four months?

[OAITW r.2.0]

41. Could be snowbirds, but maybe relocating snowbirds? Don't know.

Central Maine is a pretty cheap place to relocate to. Property values are well within budgets for anyone selling out of FL.

[democratsruletheday]

36. Hey BumRushDaShow....please don't

link Newsweek. It's a right wing trash site IMO. Just read some of their 'top' stories that tear apart Kamala. THey suck!

[BumRushDaShow]

37. ALL of them "suck" and CNN is probably #1 right now

The issue here is that there are actual news stories going on that other sites like the broadcast network ones, aren't reporting because they prefer to talk about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey and other nonsense. But some of these center-right sites that focus ONLY on "politics" and not "entertainment" or "sports" or "lifestyle" or "cooking", etc., with "politics" as a side show, often scoop that news.

Note that Newsweek is NOT "Breitbart" or "OAN" or the "Washington Times" or "Blaze" or "Fux Snooze", which are certifiable RW loon sites.

[uncle ray]

38. Thanks for what you do BRDS.

now you can't say it's a thankless job!

[democratsruletheday]

42. I WOULD say that Floridians can come to Michigan...

we have the room but not the housing. There's a shortage and crazy inflated prices like most of the rest of the country right now. Cheap land though....can always build I suppose.