I just got my new bill. I thank God that for this little cheap house worth barely 150K I’m only paying 3K in insurance. I DONT live near water, I live in a no evac zone above sea level, live in an area hurricanes don’t hit often, and unbelievably if a hurricane hit I’d have a deductible over 3K.
For that, I’d have to have the wind totally whip the roof off my house to make it worthwhile claiming. After all, if I flood, they won’t pay me anything anyway, will they?
Its a racket.
Totally agree, many of our friends are dropping their wind insurance (hurricane insurance)...we are considering it (of course, you can’t do that until your mortgage is paid off.)
But the way we figure, our wind insurance costs around 3500 per year, our wind (hurricane) deductible is around 5000, so we might have to come out of pocket if our roof blows off, but after a couple years of savings, we’d be better off being self-insured. We’d keep liability of course. Truth is, the odds of the roof blowing off is very low.
I’ve tried to call around for other quotes (other than State Farm) but the only company that will write us a policy is Citizens. This is a house that is solid block, built in the 40’s, updated to Miami Dade Code in 2001, survived many a hurricane, and never (according to the previous owner, and now according to us for the last 20 years) has had any damage or filed a claim.
There are natural disasters all over the country...floods this past year in the northeast, and midwest, but Florida seems to be the favorite target of insurance companies even when we go years without hurricanes of significant damage. Insurance companies are cherry picking in Florida, charge high rates for houses that are in no danger, cancel you if you make a claim, take money from the State but don’t use it as intended. Crist says he’d investigate the way State Farm recently manipulated the state offer...but I haven’t heard anymore about it.
Perhaps we Americans should take a look at how Amish folks handle these problems. Someone’s house or barn blows down, the Amish get together as soon as they can and rebuild free of charge. I don’t believe the Amish folks carry any insurance.