Homeowners Insurance For Florida
Florida Homeowners Insurance
In case you are with Florida's state run insurance carrier, your home insurance rates are going up by approximately 10% this year. If you have your Florida home insurance with a private company, you will be facing rate increases from 10-15%. However, if Florida insurance companies have their way, you could be losing significant discounts that could dramatically increase the price of your homeowners insurance.
Florida Homeowners Insurance
Currently, Florida homeowners enjoy what is known a wind mitigation discount for a number of home features that will make your home more resistant against hurricanes. Home insurance companies have to give you this discount under Florida law plus a specific formula should be used to calculate it. It offers discounts for things like the form of your roof, whether houses roof has a secondary backup system for removing water, the strategy used to attach your roof to the walls of your home, and whether or not your property has hurricane shutters and others.
Home insurance consumers in Florida have enjoyed these discounts which is often up to 50% of the wind premium over a home. However, homeowners sometimes are disappointed with those discounts also. One homeowner who was showcased in the St. Petersburg Times invested $5,225 to boost the garage door and for hurricane shutters on his home in Spring Hill, Florida. He was very upset to discover that his $5,225 investment would only supply him with a discount of $16.11! Other homeowners in Florida have saved a lot more.
Started in 2002 together with improvements to the Florida building code, these wind mitigation discounts were an important step in the process to supply lower Florida property insurance rates to those with homes less likely to sustain serious damage inside a Florida hurricane. Those discounts were doubled by the state of Florida in 2006 so that you can provide some rate relief following your 2004/2005 hurricane season.
At this time with the approach of the 2010 Florida legislative session, home insurance companies are asking legislatures to lessen some of those discounts. In a few areas the companies may have a point. For starters, there does appear to be a certain amount of fraud associated with those discounts. This fraud could be the result of homeowners misrepresentations and also due to errors inside the findings from the home inspection. In any event it could lead to homes being granted discounts they are not entitled to. Companies also explain that the doubling of these discounts in 2006 was much more of a political response to high rates than a scientific process to properly price the discount in line with the real way a house would perform throughout a hurricane.
Some companies are ordering and investing in new mitigation inspections to obtain a more accurate picture of the property hardening mitigation steps that have been performed on your home. If a re-inspection on your home produces discrepancies, you may lose some of your discounts and face a massive increase in your Florida home insurance premiums.
From your perspective as a homeowner, rolling back these discounts would add significantly to the cost of your Florida property insurance. And this would happen during one of many worst recessions during our lifetimes. For some Florida homeowners having these mitigation discounts modified or eliminated could result in thousands of dollars in additional premium costs.
This is a critical development that Florida homeowners needs to be following. Even slight changes for the mitigation discounts could cause massive increases in Florida property insurance premiums that will make the pace increases already approved look like small change!
In case you are with Florida's state run insurance carrier, your home insurance rates are going up by approximately 10% this year. If you have your Florida home insurance with a private company, you will be facing rate increases from 10-15%. However, if Florida insurance companies have their way, you could be losing significant discounts that could dramatically increase the price of your homeowners insurance.
Florida Homeowners Insurance
Currently, Florida homeowners enjoy what is known a wind mitigation discount for a number of home features that will make your home more resistant against hurricanes. Home insurance companies have to give you this discount under Florida law plus a specific formula should be used to calculate it. It offers discounts for things like the form of your roof, whether houses roof has a secondary backup system for removing water, the strategy used to attach your roof to the walls of your home, and whether or not your property has hurricane shutters and others.
Home insurance consumers in Florida have enjoyed these discounts which is often up to 50% of the wind premium over a home. However, homeowners sometimes are disappointed with those discounts also. One homeowner who was showcased in the St. Petersburg Times invested $5,225 to boost the garage door and for hurricane shutters on his home in Spring Hill, Florida. He was very upset to discover that his $5,225 investment would only supply him with a discount of $16.11! Other homeowners in Florida have saved a lot more.
Started in 2002 together with improvements to the Florida building code, these wind mitigation discounts were an important step in the process to supply lower Florida property insurance rates to those with homes less likely to sustain serious damage inside a Florida hurricane. Those discounts were doubled by the state of Florida in 2006 so that you can provide some rate relief following your 2004/2005 hurricane season.
At this time with the approach of the 2010 Florida legislative session, home insurance companies are asking legislatures to lessen some of those discounts. In a few areas the companies may have a point. For starters, there does appear to be a certain amount of fraud associated with those discounts. This fraud could be the result of homeowners misrepresentations and also due to errors inside the findings from the home inspection. In any event it could lead to homes being granted discounts they are not entitled to. Companies also explain that the doubling of these discounts in 2006 was much more of a political response to high rates than a scientific process to properly price the discount in line with the real way a house would perform throughout a hurricane.
Some companies are ordering and investing in new mitigation inspections to obtain a more accurate picture of the property hardening mitigation steps that have been performed on your home. If a re-inspection on your home produces discrepancies, you may lose some of your discounts and face a massive increase in your Florida home insurance premiums.
From your perspective as a homeowner, rolling back these discounts would add significantly to the cost of your Florida property insurance. And this would happen during one of many worst recessions during our lifetimes. For some Florida homeowners having these mitigation discounts modified or eliminated could result in thousands of dollars in additional premium costs.
This is a critical development that Florida homeowners needs to be following. Even slight changes for the mitigation discounts could cause massive increases in Florida property insurance premiums that will make the pace increases already approved look like small change!