Saved $ on Home Owners Insurance!!!

[sprink52]

We just refinanced our home recently and the appraised value of the dwelling structure now exceeds $400K. This per Florida Statutes allows my insurance carrier to increase the hurricane deductible from 2% to 5%. The deductible now applies to a calendar year and not per storm. Any way, due to our "code plus" construction and "superior wind mitigation" we saved an additional $1200/year on our hurricane premium. Looks like the insurance carriers are getting smart and rewarding those of us who try to prevent large claims from being necessary.

[HurriCat]

Yeah, we'll all just fling open our footlockers full of cash and get all of these upgrades. Hey, it's only money!

Let's see... Florida property and home values (for now) are going way up. That means higher deductibles. So then we pay more for stricter code requirements and upgrades. Plus, the insurers are raising rates. Yeah, we're SAVING money.

This is like the seasonal gas pricing-brainwash - where they jack it up a dime or twenty cents. Then they back off about three cents and everyone is happy that "prices are down". (make it a double)

[sprink52]

At the end of the day...the premiums are less than they were last year and we didn't make any upgrades,the house was built this way originally.

[alicia-w]

i'm sure that's probably an exception rather than the norm.

our insurance just went UP and we havent filed a claim since 2000. In fact, we went over our policy line by line with our agent and they found that OOPS our coverage was based incorrectly on a survey of ANOTHER HOUSE!! Smaller, a tract home, etc etc etc. We have a custom home that's 800 sq ft bigger than the survey they had on file. Once we found the correct survey, our insurance went UP$800. The good news is that we have flood insurance, hurricane insurance, and something called loss-of-use coverage. All in all, including contents, it's about $650K worth. Sure am glad we checked on it and that Dennis caused no damage to the structures on our property!

[alicia-w]

Florida approves Nationwide homeowner insurance increase

DENISE KALETTE

Associated Press


MIAMI - Florida homeowners covered by Nationwide Insurance will pay more for their coverage after state regulators approved an average increase of 21 percent on home policies and 25 percent for mobile homes.

The Columbus, Ohio-based company asked the Florida Office of Insurance to allow rate increases last January. A number of other companies requested rate increases after the disastrous 2004 hurricane season. Nationwide is the state's fourth-largest home insurer with about 300,000 customers.

The company cited rising reinsurance rates and greater financial risk. Nationwide had asked for a 28.3 percent rate increase for home policies and double the current rate for mobile home policies. It insures fewer than 5,000 mobile homes in Florida.

"The rate we requested is based on the future risk that we determine is out there for our Florida customers. It is not an attempt to recoup past losses," Nationwide spokesman Joe Case said. "We're not allowed to do that under Florida law. It is based on computer modeling," which analyzes thousands of potential risk scenarios for Florida.

The models were computed before last year's hurricane season, he said. The rate increases are scheduled to go into effect in September.

Allstate Floridian recently asked for an increase of almost 10 percent, backing off a bit from a proposal that would have meant an average increase of nearly 30 percent.

"Clearly, Florida has the most difficult property insurance market in the country," said Deb Clouser, a spokeswoman for Allstate Floridian, the second largest home insurer in Florida, with about 750,000 customers. "We have the largest catastrophe exposures in the country."

The Nationwide rate increase reflects the reality of doing business in Florida, she said.

Allstate, based in Northbrook, Ill., has had to purchase $1.6 billion in private reinsurance for the 2005 hurricane season, Clouser said. Last year, it paid about $2 billion in claim losses from the four hurricanes that struck Florida. On Tuesday, Allstate had 500 people and eight mobile response units ready to respond to claims from Hurricane Dennis.

State Farm, Florida's largest home insurer with about 950,000 customers, was granted a 5 percent rate increase last December.

Spokesman Tom Hagerty said the company has not filed for a rate change since then. A decision on whether to request another increase would be based on company claims, "rather than reacting to something a competitor does," Hagerty said.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/12114909.htm

[Persepone]

A warning to those who live in parts of the country where hurricanes are infrequent/non-existent. The provisions we are reading about for Florida have quietly been applied to insurance in Massachusetts, Ohio, and other parts of the country and if you don't know what is going on in Florida and aren't paying attention to the fine print on the renewal paperwork, you won't realize that dramatic changes have been made to your homeowner's policy!

Homeowners Insurance has gone up nationwide and the "storm" deductible as a percentage of coverage now applies in places where hurricanes and other named storms are unusual. Our policy actually only says that the higher deductible applies in the case of "named" storms-but for many other policies up here, any "wind damage" seems to get that higher deductible (5%).

And we do not get credit for any steps we may take to protect against wind damage...

I would pay special attention to "water damage" coverage as the result of a storm--here you are not covered for any water damage unless it is the result of some sudden damage (e.g., to the roof or to a wall) because a tree comes into your house or something. I think you get better coverage in Florida!

We also have a very low cap on any "mold" damage--as others have said on this board, you'd have to rip your walls open to check--and coverae is too low to cover consequent damage...

At least in Florida the issues are known and the local legislators, etc. are aware of the problems. Up here these provisions have snuck into our policies silently and no one is aware of them and even if they read the words, they have no clue about what they would mean...

So those of you who think you are not affected by the Florida insurance crisis, go and take out those policies and amendments and read them over very carefully....

[jes]

I'm in Mobile and just called my insurance company regarding credits for installing window protection during storms. The insurance credit is not available in Alabama --- only Florida. I have coverage with one of the few companies that does not have a hurricane deductable, although I'm sure they make up for that somehow. The mold coverage has a $10,000 ceiling which is not near enough. I wish a retired insurance agent would open a consulting business to read over our policies to make sure we're not missing something in the fine print --- the policies are too complex and repetitive.