The soaring cost of home insurance in Florida is causing many homeowners to forego coverage, sell their homes, and even consider leaving the state. Some people have already abandoned the state they once deemed heaven on Earth.
According to a recent Insurance Information Institute (Triple I) research, Florida’s insurance premiums are the highest in the country and have tripled in the last five years. According to Triple I, residents currently spend more than $4,200 per year on average, while the national average is $1,700.
Rising expenses are exacerbated by an ongoing insurance crisis, which has seen 15 major insurers, including Farmers, depart the state in the previous year. Many cited the increased danger of extreme weather events in the state as one of the reasons for leaving Florida, which scientists ascribe to global warming.
While Florida remains an appealing destination for Americans looking to relocate somewhere sunny and with low taxes, the rising cost of home insurance is driving some to leave the state.
According to the US Census Bureau, a projected 275,666 people would leave Florida in 2022, amounting to roughly 23,000 people every month. According to the agency, the majority (46,884) relocated to Georgia (46,884), North Carolina (42,301), Tennessee (36,200), South Carolina (31,456), and Texas (29,975).
Joan Keenan, a retired Illinois teacher, relocated to Florida two years ago with her husband, a retired firefighter, to pursue their “retirement dream. “But, as she revealed, “insurance in Florida is a nightmare.”
“Due to the insurance rates going up, we have a different financial dream these days,” Keenan said. “We live in a small one-bedroom condominium (890 sq. feet) on the intercoastal waterways of Treasure Island,” she added. “Since we moved here our Association fees have gone from $446.00 dollars a month to $656.00.”
Linda, who desired to remain nameless, was born and reared in Brooklyn, moved to Florida from New Jersey in 1983, and believed she had “died and gone to heaven.” Linda, on the other hand, left her Palm Beach County home and relocated to Pennsylvania in August of this year, fed up with her homeowner’s insurance “not being renewed and being moved to Citizens, not to mention the price increases every year.”
This, combined with “the ever-increasing threat of more devastating hurricanes every year,” became “too much,” Linda said. “Politics, in Florida, also added to my desire to get out,” she went on to say.
Linda now lives in Pennsylvania. “I didn’t know how long the seller’s real estate market and astronomical prices were going to last, so when the right opportunity presented itself, I jumped on it,” she said.
Insurance rates have risen as building costs—which are used to calculate how much it would cost to repair a home after it has been destroyed—have grown by a whopping 40% since 2017, as has the amount of lawsuits in Florida.
While the state accounts for about 7% of the US homeowners’ insurance market, Florida accounts for 75% of all homeowner litigation, according to Charles Nyce, department chair, and Dr. William T. Hold, associate professor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University.