It doesn’t start and stop with black mold covering your walls or blue tarps where your roof used to be… Hurricanes continue to chip away at the wallet long after the physical damage is cleaned up and long forgotten.
After Andrew in 1992 State Farm -and many others- stopped writing new policies in south Florida. Some just pulled out of the state totally. Of course, if you lived in the rest of the state it was fine with SF… because there was no money out of pocket at that time anywhere else.
We just haven’t had big names down here since then writing paper, but that was okay, because the slack was picked up by other companies.
We have had to switch insurers once already since moving here, which worked out fine. One small company went belly up, but another picked up the slack… until Poe Financial, which owned three insurers, went tits up as well.
One of Poe’s companies, Florida Preferred, holds our homeowner’s policy.
Bottom line, NOBODY is writing in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, so we all get thrown into the Citizen’s pool, which is state owned. Used to be the ‘last resort’, now it’s a haven for… any and everyone.
OH, did I forget the best part? The tidbit that has my stomach churning? Yeah, our premiums are going to double. At least.
Certain things make me homesick, and this is one….
We must be thinking on the same wave length. I wrote about the insurance companies this morning also. I have friends in Stuart who were dropped and are now under Citizens, paying $3K a year, for an 1800 sq ft. standard ranch house. My parents are also in Stuart and holding their breath that they get another year of coverage.
I haven’t asked my inlaws in Miami if they still have coverage yet. Some topics just get their blood pressure up too high.
We were covered this year, but… no guarantee that next year we’ll have the same company at all. It’s insane.