After living in our house in Florida for six years without any insurance claims whatsoever, on Friday I received notice that our insurance carrier - FedNat Insurance, is cancelling us. I just love insurance companies.
John: We ran into the same thing last year - our carrier was not renewing policies in our zip code due to too many "wind damage" claims on roofs. In our community of 248 homes, I'd say 50-60 got "$1000 roofs" over the last few years. We found a new agent who got us a new carrier, but at exactly double the cost. This year the policy went up by about $120, and we considered ourselves lucky. Being snowbirds, we pay more anyway. My advice is to stay away from Citizens - they have a terrible track record of not paying claims. Good luck. UticaGeoff
Had a former insurance cancel me without my knowledge. They told me they tried to contact me and I never responded. I was deployed to Iraq and I found this all out when I returned, I had no coverage for 5 months. I never went with an independent after that. I know it doesn't represent all independents, but I went with USAA after that.
USAA, aside from their outstanding customer service, sucks, and is no different than any other carrier here in Florida. They have raised my rates once again, soon it will be outside of our ability to continue coverage. Hence, we are headed out as soon as we are able, back to the land of the automobile, MI.
Ha, I paid off my house two years ago and canceled my insurance. We are socking the money away into the bank. Right now I do need a new roof and I am going to pay for it with cash, and still have money left over. I know many people don’t have that ability to pay off their house. I only owed 85,000 so I took the money out of one of my pension funds. It was only getting 1.5% interest anyway. The savings on insurance and mortgage interest put way more money back in the bank for me. PS, I had state farm insurance on my house and cars for 35 years. Never made a claim on either one. They canceled my homeowners insurance over 10 years ago, so I canceled all my cars insurance with them. As far as I’m concerned they can kiss my beep!
State Farm for me...been with them for 33 years...i got a direct hit from a EF-3 tornado 4 years ago that tore off a 1/3rd of my roof....dropped the ceilings under that....broke roof trusses...blew down my privacy fence....ruined carpets,laminate and furniture. My local agent was there an hour after it hit with tarps,flashlights with batteries,bottled water,ice and Subway sandwiches Right under $100k worth of damage......they cut me a check for $5,000 the day it hit for whatever i needed. Easy to deal with thru the whole process....i could not be happier with them. Have all my car insurance with them too. Heck.....they were even serving up free Sun King BEER at their booth an the MECUM on friday Peace WildBill
Yes it is, a lot of people are paying eight to $12,000 a year and their house is not that fancy. That’s flat out ridiculous I forgot to say, and those prices are with very high deductions. They basically pay for nothing
There are two segments to homeowner's insurance in our area of Florida. The regular homeowner's is the same as it was on our house in Massachusetts except it excludes hurricane damage. The second segment is hurricane insurance which is more money then the regular insurance. I have said elsewhere that I am more afraid of fire then hurricanes. The bulk of hurricane damage is by water, not wind. We don't live near water, so major hurricane damage doesn't concern me all that much. We have a metal roof, impact-resistant windows and a whole-house generator, so we are in pretty good shape. The house is concrete block. I also had the two trees closest to the house removed, so we have lowered the chance of roof damage a bit. The house is paid for, but we have a home equity loan, so I'm guessing that the bank will require insurance, even though the bare lot is worth about four times the amount of the loan. Perhaps six times.
I hear you John. The hurricane insurance is the expensive part. In my neighborhood of 10,000 people, i’ve only seen one carport roof get blown off from a hurricane. Nobody else had any damage in 35 years. I don’t get it, how they can charge so much. I have literally stayed outside for every single hurricane because it is fun to watch. Of course I stay on the leeward side of the house.
After reading Bill’s post I see there are many many things that hurricane insurance will not pay for. They will not pay for privacy fences, or sheds, or rain damage after your roof blows off. You should’ve had flood insurance. They don’t pay for a dang thing.
One of the big scams that has caused some of the problems is roof repairs. Company offers you a free roof inspection. They find damage, get you to sign off on repairs and they will handle the insurance claim. Then they litigate the claim. We just had someone solicit us to inspect our roof. Told them NO. FL legislator is looking at a fix, but trial lawyers are fighting it like crazy. And so the home owner loses.
In NYC property insurance went up up 25-30% over last year and deductibles shot up huge also.Dont get me started on realestate property taxs.
In another thread (a while back) it was mentioned that materials and labor costs have gone up so rates have had to increase to cover that even if nothing else changed. Patrick
I live in Mooresville, Indiana. This happened 2 years ago and the building still hasn't been fixed/torn down.