Can’t Afford The Villages
 

I thought I had everything figured out for moving to The Villages. I had to wait for my divorce to go through to buy a house. It went through last week and I am now rethinking if I can afford living in TV.
What is scaring me is homeowners insurance and car insurance. I have a place in MA that I can register the car, so that would make the insurance much cheaper. I am in N Ft Myers and homeowners and car insurance has jumped in price since Ian. Have the prices also gone up for insurance in TV?

If the prices of the houses in TV doesn't scare you, insurance has gone up between $300 to $1000 more a year, according to posts. Some people have had to put on a new roof, which ups the ante considerably.

Yes, home insurance rates have gone up (a lot) EVERYWHERE in Florida. Why?
1. recent hurricanes caused lots of damage, which we all pay for in our premiums
2. roof scams. we all are paying for those "free" roofs
3. inflation

Car insurance rates are based on where the car is garaged. The Villages is a bit expensive because we have a lot of careless drivers. Rates also increase as you age. Each milestone birthday means a bump in car insurance.

OP, a lot depends on the age of the house, ours is a 2013 vintage concrete block with wind mitigation on the roof, the result was a mild increase of around $300. Car insurance also depends on your selected coverage, especially deductibles, I tend to have $1000 or higher deductibles, I just got the bill, 2 cars (2012 and 2021 vintage) and it is around $1700, I have some questions and will be discussing with agent shortly.
The age of the roof on your house will have a big impact on your insurance rate, if it is approaching 15 years, you better plan on a new roof in your future (at your cost).
Hope this helps, make sure you account for all of the other expenses. Search this site, as there is another thread on the typical living expenses.

What is wind mitigation?

VT, is that $1700 for six months or a year? We were paying $146/month for two cars (2011 and 2005) with Farmers. In 2020 we sold both and bought a used 2018 Ford Explorer with all the bells & whistles, and insurance for that car alone jumped to $182/month. We said goodbye to Farmers and now have something through Allstate for low mileage use. Hard to say how much we've saved because we left shortly after switching, and the car is now in storage. But it definitely was not going to be $182/month.

in what place in Massachusetts did you find car insurance cheaper than living in villages ? A Boston guy would like to know, compared to rates my friends pay up there it feels here like I’m getting it for free ( thank you State Farm )

Per year

We have Hartford car insurance $700 year with AARP membership, also with limited usage, we use golf cart bunches, $100/yr Safeco

I have not discussed with my Agent because auto and home insurance will not be due until fall. I know it’s a fact auto insurance does go up with age. No public transit in The Villages but you do have golf carts for transportation to everywhere in The Villages and cart insurance is currently must cheaper than car insurance. Home insurance is an issue everywhere in Florida (especially on the coast). The State held a special session but little was accomplished regarding the higher rates for home insurance. Seniors on a fixed income may just have to “tighten their belts” because no relief regarding insurance rates seems to be in sight.

Best to call various insurance companies and get rates. We pretty much do this every yr or two. AAA in the Trailwinds Plaza served us well this year. Next year could be different. We just play the game.

Personally our rates have not gone up YET. Centra Florida will always(or should) be lower than areas on the coast. Do beleive that rates in you area will skyrocket up in price and people in Central Florida will go up but not as much.

If you are a resident of Fl and your car is garaged here it would not surprise me that the insurance company would not pay your claim. Your car would also have to be registered in MA.

That is my concern, the insurance and taxes.

Traveler's with a $500 deductible.

I do not understand. I am a FL resident, and my car stays here. Why would my homeowners not pay becauswe of my car? You can not have a car registered in two different states.
I have one house and one car insured in both FL and one in MA.
Can you explain?

Our home is a 2 and 2 1200 sq ft ranch in Amelia. It was built in 2009 and has the original roof.
Homeowners insurance went up from $1250 to $1500 when we renewed 2 months ago. Not bad.

We live in Indiana and are going to be snowbirds in Oct when we'll both be retired. We'll stay Indiana residents until we sell our home here in a few years.
Car insurance is much cheaper here.

Costs comparisons include a lot of factors. Massachusetts has a state income tax and high property taxes. Some things are cheaper and some things are not... Our car insurance went down $500 when we moved to Florida. Basically, shop around for all insurances to ensure you are getting the lowest possible rates.

Another reason home insurance is going up is because home values have gone nuts. More expensive home, costlier to replace, higher insurance. We bought our (2/2) home 6 years ago and a few month ago the IDENTICAL HOME with less improvments than ours had next door to us sold for just over 2X what we paid. Not looking forward to July H.O. insurance renewal though. Always has been under $900 with maxed out coverage. July should be interesting. Auto hasn't been too bad though. 2020 Kia also with full coverage under $900 from The Hartford. Our taxes is NJ were just about $10K and here well under 2K so that covers some of the other stuff.

Interesting. Also in a 2/2 in Amelia from 2009 and we are (have been) paying ~$900 from Travelers thru Villages Insurance with full (max) coverages including 10% ded sinkhole. Next renewal is in July of this year. We'lll see where it goes from there. Last July it went up by under $100. Previous (original) owners had new roof put on around 2014 under original home purchase warranty due to a recall of some sort. MANY homes here roofs were replaced in ~2014 for that recall. Maybe that made a difference.???

If you have a car that "lives" in Florida, it must be registered and insured in Florida. It does not matter if you also have property in Massachusetts. This issue is not whether your homeowner's would pay, rather whether your auto insurance will deny coverage if you falsified the main location of your car.

Check with your insurance agent as YMMV

No - but thanks for giving me all this information about your situation??

Home and car insurance have exploded in TV like the rest of Florida.

The problem with insurance is also that now insurance companies are limiting the number of insurance policies they will allow in an area. i was thinking I would have to change insurance companies and in checking with various companies, two of the 3 I checked told me they had already met their quota at this time, and just to keep checking back each month! The third was ridiculously expensive. Thankfully my current insurance company and I reached an agreement and I didnt’ have to change policies.

I do think insurance, however, would be cheaper here, both for car and home, than in North Fort Myers. Also, getting a home that has a newer roof, and a good 4-point inspection along with a wind mitigation report, should get you a good price.

1. Steel straps at each roof truss end, properly nailed, that attach trusses to top plates and studs much more securely than a couple nails. They really do help prevent roofs from being pulled off by a hurricane. They are easy to install during construction, though it costs at least $200 in materials and several hours of hard labor. Much harder to install them when insulation is in place, and may not be done adequately.

2. Correctly installed plywood or USB sheathing on top of the roof trusses and under shingles. This means that most of the sheathing nails installed with pneumatic nailers actually penetrated the trusses and that the number of nails per 4x8’ sheet is according to code. Back when Hurricane Andrew hit the Miami area, doing colossal damage, studies showed that much of the damage was due to roofs being pulled off because the trusses were just toenailed to the top plates and because many sheets of plywood roofing were secured with 4-8 nails that actually penetrated the trusses (instead of the now required every 12” in the middle of the sheet and every 6” along the edges. Properly secured roofs tended to survive.

3. Higher quality shingles (sometimes called architectural shingles) instead of cheap ones, which are easily blown off in high winds. Good ones are thicker and stick to each other better. They also cost quite a bit more, though installation cost is the same, more or less.

A wind mitigation inspection costs about $100, takes only a few minutes, and includes photos. If your house passes, it can save you $500 a year on your insurance. Money well spent. Ideally, don’t buy a house that doesn’t pass. Fixing it after the fact is expensive.

Home and car insurance went up a lot in IL on the last renewal also. Their explanation was high claims experience over the previous several periods. So it is not specific to FL.

Shop around, as premiums vary wildly. I got HO quotes for TV that were different by over $700/year for basically the same coverage.

I’d be surprised if car insurance in The Villages isn’t cheaper than in Massachusetts. We are old, so there are plenty of fender benders and scratches, but car theft is rare. House insurance has gone up, but it’s not cheap in Massachusetts, either, especially if you factor in that people there tend to have larger and more expensive homes. Real estate/school taxes here are much less than in some states and more than in others. I have friends in New Jersey who pay four times as much per square foot for taxes as I pay.

Housing in The Villages is more expensive per square foot than houses outside The Villages within an hour’s drive that aren’t in retirement communities. However, while there are many parts of the country where decent housing is much cheaper (half or less), there are many places where a home of similar age and build quality (though perhaps larger) is much more expensive. Move here from metropolitan Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and you may find the housing delightfully affordable. My dad and sisters live in Denver. A house there similar to what I have here would cost at least twice as much.

Of course, the larger the house you buy here, the more it costs, including taxes and insurance. A great many of us downsize by 50% when we move here.

[QUOTE=DiviAruba;2211794]I thought I had everything figured out for moving to The Villages. I had to wait for my divorce to go through to buy a house. It went through last week and I am now rethinking if I can afford living in TV.
What is scaring me is homeowners insurance and car insurance. I have a place in MA that I can register the car, so that would make the insurance much cheaper. I am in N Ft Myers and homeowners and car insurance has jumped in price since Ian. Have the prices also gone up for insurance in TV?[/QUOTE

Are you planning to keep the place in Ft Meyers too? Otherwise your insurance should be lower in TV than FM since hurricane risk is lower in Central Florida.

Call the Villages insurance and speak to someone before making your decision. Find out for yourself before believing everyone else’s opinion.

Does the Villages build new homes with wind mitigation?

Hartford for car insurance and umbrella. Cost depends on age and make of cars, age, driving record, and # of miles you drive each year. USAA was a close 2nd. AAA was a close 3rd. Last August, my home insurance didn’t go up for a year old home.

My brother in law works for auto insurers. He told me that once an insurer accepts you and collects the premium they are obligated to pay a claim even if you lied on your policy application. Once they find out you lied they can try to collect the higher premium or just drop you.

Yes. They were doing it prior to the state making it part of the building code.

The cost of living in The Villages.
 

Please compare the cost to live here by which county you chose to live in. The Villages covers 3 counties. Each will be different in the cost for; house insurance, car ins., cost of the house, taxes, bond on the house & utilities. Sumter County has the lowest prices for all the above. Lake Co & Marian County are higher. Know which county before you purchase & compare prices in each county.

Villagetinker is right. Ours went up $600 and it is a 2015 house with no issues. The Florida hurricanes, roof scams, and general inflation are the causes. And these are statewide premiums, so the fact that the Villages have not directly been effected by the hurricanes is not really the issue.

I perform wind mitigation inspections. I am licensed, insured and certified to do so and run an inspection business here in TV.

You've got it mostly correct, there are a few more things.

The type of connection: toe-nails, clips, single straps, double straps
The type of nails for the deck to truss connection. 6d or 8d. There is also a new standard for a thicker ring shank nail, but it's not entirely clear if insurance companies are factoring that in or not.

There is also impact protection. Most of the newer homes that I perform win mits on have additional hurricane bracing on the garage doors. I would say this started in TV around 1998 or so. The oldest homes don't have it. There should be a pressure rating sticker or ASTM rating somewhere on the door.

You can also have impact rated glass and entry doors. I have yet to find any of that here in TV, but I have seen it near the coasts although I have not done any Wind Mits out that way on either side of FL. Further, you can have hurricane rated shutters of various types, again, I've not found that here in TV.

Most homes built after 2004(2002 in some jurisdictions) already have a wind mitigation discount built into the insurance as that is when the Florida Building standards changed. That said, not every insurance provider will provide the discount without the inspection, so be sure to ask your agent. If it is not included, get a wind mit done, it's worth it.

It takes a little more than a few minutes but usually under an hour and it requires some time in the attic but well worth it for the discount.

Please don't take this reply as too harsh or critical:

If the make-or-break factor in contemplating the affordability of moving to TV is the difference in homeowner's and car insurance (if any), then you can't afford to move here.

Yes, I'm sure having the original roof is costing us a bit more than you. Even though they came out and inspected ours prior to writing our policy.
Plus we have all our other insurance here in Indiana. They said if we bundled our insurance with them our rate would drop.

If you are thinking that maybe you can't afford TV, then you can't! It's like the saying about alcohol. If you ever wonder whether you are an alcoholic then you are. Fees and utilities will always be increasing so if you can barely afford it now, you won't be able to afford TV in a year or two.

Sounds like you need to consider a house that is reasonable and comfortable. A patio villa is what we decided on and we live here full time. Cost of house upkeep it a lot less and we have more time for fun. We just got tired of the two house situation. We were spending too much traveling back and forth and worrying about other place when here. Plus cost of keeping up two places. We have considerable more money to enjoy with one house especially since we for patio villa.

Colony has big master bedroom and guest room has enough room for queen bed and crib or cot for grand child we also have pullout sofa for grand kids. Dining room big enough for tabl with six chairs and nook has for more chairs. Living area big enough for seating six to eight. You get the idea. Place for car and golf cart. Here is link to one like ours. Cost of upkeep is a lot less too.

1458 Olympia St, The Villages, FL 32163 | MLS #G5067386 | Zillow

Next, you need to think of all your costs.
You have a place in MA. How much are you spending on this place? Taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, etc. Doyou have a car there too with all the upkeep costs for it? What do you do there for social and fun?

If you become a Florida resident, you will have no taxes on your income, your property taxes will be lower with a cap on any increase each year. If you live here full time then you could use the money from the sale of MA place to pay cash and probably have money left over to live on.

We have 56+ golf courses, 180 clubs, pickle ball, putt put, Numerous pools, biking, and more to keep you busy and meet friends. There are also a lot of volunteer opportunities. Grandpa camps for kids to have things to do when visit.

Take quality of live in consideration along with finances.

Good luck.