Outrageous Insurance $$$ in Florida
 

We've been Progressive customers for 6+ years - car, home, golf cart. Of course every renewal period costs UP. We got a new car and sold our old one. Our car insurance went from $1250 year to $2100. Outrageous - we drive under 5K miles per year with a PERFECT record. No claims and credit rating is 840.

So, we will shop around next week. We'd like to actually GO to insurance offices around The Villages, rather than phone or on-line. Went to Villages Insurance a couple years ago to get rates from them and no better than Progressive at the time.

Suggestions?

Our progressive auto insurance (2 cars, no accidents or claims) went up $800, when I went to AAA office to complain about the increase they said they were seeing this on a lot of policies. On the flip side, the house insurance increase was very reasonable, so we stayed with progressive for the time being.

I recently got low-balled on car insurance by progressive. Guess I will have to look around in 6 months again.

I wanna get low balled

Not going down
 

The way insurance laws are written in Florida, rates aren’t going down anytime soon either.

Villages Insurance is a broker. They represent numerous agencies. Progressive is only one.

We experienced the same thing with Progressive: our car insurance more than doubling and home insurance increasing by several hundred dollars per billing cycle. Our Progressive agent found us a home policy with a company called Cabrillo Coastal at a bit more than half of what we were paying Progressive when we dropped them, and an auto policy with USAA: not cheap but maybe 75% of what we were paying Progressive.

Don't know how true it is...I heard that Progressive is looking to leave Florida entirely and is looking to make as much as possible before that happens.

We experienced the exact same thing with our Progressive insurance quote. We found that Progressive would give us a huge discount (approx. $1,950 to $1,250) if we had a monitoring device and drove less than 6k miles. We don't mind the monitor because we are safe drivers. Don't know about Cabrillo Coastal but I would check them out first.

Florida is the most expensive state for car insurance. This is due to the high number of catastrophic claims brought about by extreme weather. The Sunshine State ranks second in true cost, with motorists spending almost 6% of their income on auto coverage.

Florida is home to three metropolitan areas with the highest true cost of car insurance. These are Miami, Tampa, and Orlando.

What kind of "monitoring" device?

That is an unusually large discount so, it makes me think they are able to reduce so much because they're selling the info they get from that device to a third party. That's the only way I see those economics making sense. If you don't care about that, that's fine. If you do care about your info being sold and being monitored all the time then, read the fine print.

Same story, never an auto or home claim, got new roof and progressive raised even MORE than their usual 25-30% standard raise every billing. Drive auto less than 5K a year, perfect credit no debts of any kind, and it still keeps going sky high. Even tried the Villages Insurance broker, they couldn't find any relief. Tried "Kin" broker who advertises so often, same as all the others, bait and switch, VERY attractive premiums and in 6 months, they make up for it. For home, GREAT RATE, half of our premium, but we didn't "bite". Brother in law did, switched for their low rate. Next annual period when they expected the same bill, no, it had more than doubled and it was more than the premium we felt was unrealistically priced by Progressive. Now B.I.L. can't go BACK to their previous carried as switching constantly causes rates to go even higher. So, if YOU find any actual worthwhile answers to this "problem", let all of us know on this blog site ! Seems in a free market economy, just like pharmaceutical companies, profit is the motive, not being "good" to people. Insurance is like a casino and the house does NOT want to loose ! We are living in a world where rebuilding from devastation is extremely expensive and materials and labor scarce; while, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and hail continue. I don't see an end to insurance rates taking a large portion of a an income. Hope I'm wrong !

This is so depressing. We’re kind of fortunate in that we can absorb these continual exhorbitant costs. But many with fixed income will not. All insurance costs, especially here in Florida is out of control. I wish that our leaders in Florida would assault this topic and drive change.

We were going to search for more affordable insurance soon. This is depressing….

I always thought that insurance companies are regulated by the state. However, they seem to be making record profits so it looks like someone is not doing their job.

Insurers start seeing profit, continue rate hikes | Repairer Driven News.

I believe that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation regulates insurance companies.

Resources.

And some companies have requested a 50% rate increase!

Two private Florida insurance companies propose 50% increase

And some have requested no increase or even a rate decrease!

19 Florida insurers file for rate decreases or no increases in 2024

The ‘leaders’....including the chief executive have received millions in insurance industry contributions. From top to bottom they urge their constituents to exercise 12-18 months of patience while the reforms they’ve enacted can take hold. Comical.
When making these types of deals.....you would think that they would ask the state regulator to freeze any proposed increases for that same time period....as a sign of good faith.....and ‘patience’ on their part as well!

Car and other insurance
 

The Dan Newlin type attorneys contribute a lot to the cost of our premiums.

I would be careful to go for the cheapest quote you find. Read everything about the policy. If there’s an issue in your life you want a company that has a good track record.

Florida has one of the highest number of accidents of any state.That along with storm damage to cars is the reason for the high insurance rates.

My Progressive home insurance doubled 2 years ago even after putting on a new roof, but for some reason this year went down $600, exact same coverage. Try Southern Auto Owners for your car. Mine and several friends premium only went up $100 for the year, same coverage.

I went thru the villages a year ago and they beat usaa, aaa, Hartford and somebody else I was looking at. So I just got done calling a few of these companies back for a new quote and usaa was over $1200 more just for auto, and the others were $200-$600 more. For 2 newer cars, I pay $2300 a year.
House went up <$200, golf cart and umbrella stayed the same.
If a car insurer wants you to put in a device in your car using the OBD plug, that’s the better option than the phone software. I have used both in the past but haven’t used anything for the past couple years. The software on your phone is the worst for numerous reasons and if you want to know, send me a PM and I’ll tell you the issues.

Being a snowbird vs driving in Villages, TV is an accident waiting to happen & we are all old.

I use traveller's for my truck. I paid like 1250 in NC and a bit over 1500 here.

If I'd rolled the dice and self-insured from the git-go...I'd be way ahead of the game

but, like most of us... I bet on having a loss and the insurance companies I've used throughout my life bet I wouldn't

so far, they're way ahead and I'm running out of runway... so, it's looking like the dice came up better for them

A good video on Florida’s HO insurance issues
 

Worth watching this YouTube video. He is right on point.

https://youtu.be/F9gwAMSVuRw?si=W-B2C3dSE4TrYx9j

When I moved to Sumter Co, 10 yrs ago, I bought a house I could afford, comfortably. Since then, my taxes have gone up 25% my home owners have gone from $800.00 a year to 2300, my car insurance is horrifying, and now I have a letter saying they want $355.00 a year for some fire rescue thing.... to be voted on soon. I am no longer here comfortably......

It was less money for us to split our home and auto to two different companies rather than bundle. Don’t rule that option out. A broker can help to figure that out rather than going to the insurance company directly. The Villages Insurance is an example of a broker, but there are many options. Also no one has 840 credit, especially if you don’t have/manage significant debt, so you may also want to get your credit score from two of the three credit agencies to see exactly what score the insurance companies are seeing.

Good point about the option of not bundling. The goal is to get the lowest premiums that coorelate with your risk tolerance level and this can be obtained by utilizing several insurance companies. Also, The Motley Fool states, "1.31% of Americans with a FICO® Score have a perfect 850 credit score -- based on the number of adults eligible for a FICO® Score, there could be about 3.04 million with perfect credit."

Huh?
You absolutely can have an 840 credit score. OP never mentioned managing debt nor should they have to. That is an exceptional score. If they’re maintaining that than obviously credit agencies are honoring the activity needed to do so

We are supporters of DeSantis, but just wrote him an email showing our displeasure with the state of the insurance costs in Florida - highest in the nation and no sign of alleviating. SOMETHING must be done to address this issue.

?????? No one has 840???? Well we do, on each agency. Zero debt, but we charge a lot on our 3 credit cards and pay off totally each month. No idea how you can make a blanket statement as this....

You have to shop insurance every two years in Florida. I have been here since 1997 and that has held true for all those years

Outrageous hike. Try AARP/Hartford.

I’m with State Farm 40 years. Clean record, excellent credit score. They just raised my auto insurance 30% for no reason. I would change but I haven’t anyone more reasonable yet.

I just switched from AAA to State Farm and I’m saving $600 a year. Thing is I didn’t realize that they want me to put a beacon in my car so they can track things about my driving habits. if I don’t put that in I will lose the discount. Not sure how much the discount is. Stay tuned… I have not installed it yet. Not sure I will.

No Florida is not number one, tha title is held by California.

per Forbes.

California
$2,462
Colorado
$2,489
Connecticut
$1,730
Delaware
$2,462
Florida
$4,326

New York eeeked out Florida by a couple hundred$$&

Switched
 

Called Villages Insurance, where we had Progressive. Didn’t much care when I asked them what to do next. So I shopped around ended up with State Farm , saved about $500 from Progressive. It absolutely amazed me that Villages Insurance didn’t care about me or offered options. They just sent me off to their cancellation department. Learned that customers are not very important.

Cabrillo
 

We have had Cabrillo for several years. My check on them convinced me they were a good company. We had a significant claim and had no issues getting payed.

Car insurance costs main driver for increases are jury awards in Tampa/Orlando/Miami.
 

Have close relative in the business at high level. Think about it. Total your nice car and it costs 50-80K. Get a jury who thinks they are sticking it to the insurance company by paying out a Million on an injury when they deserve 500,000, they forget insurance companies are going to make a certain profit % average over 5 years..... so they raise rates (any company does that...that is why raising corporate taxes is a joke. Company wants ebit return of 15%? raise their taxes 10%? No problem...prices increase 11.5% = 10% +15%). High jury awards from the NE make it south.. Even storm damage on cars is not as big an impact. They pay loss on car not a Million $$. Why do you think you see all the lawyer ads in FLA but not in say Georgia or the Carolina's? Juries there do not have that thought process. Awards are fair. One jury award can equal 10 accidents in a heartbeat. Auto rates are not impacted by homeowners rates. Your auto rates are not based on your driving as much as the RISK of you getting in an accident where the person calls a "call my cell on Saturday lawyer who sends you to his favorite Doctor.... you know the story. One of the Largest M ajor, M ajor firms actually stopped settling claims out of court (25% of award....vs. 30 - 35% if it goes to trial) during the pandemic due reduced cases. Awards were the same since most are not major injuries but they got 5 - 10% more. Insurance company wrote same check at trial as they offered in advance. Need loser pays lawsuits.

We are all getting hammered because newer cars are loaded with lots of worthless technology that cost a small fortune to replace in the event of a minor accident. Replacing a rear bumper on an older car costs about a thousand dollars. The same replacement on a new car costs over five thousand dollars because it contains multiple sensors and a camera. All of this technology that is supposed to make driving safer, and correspondingly less expensive, is having the opposite effect. It’s creating a society dependent on sensors, rather than driving skills, resulting in both more accidents and substantially higher repair costs. When a friggin Tesla gets in what is seemingly a minor accident, the insurer is likely to consider it totaled because of the excessive repair cost.

There is no free lunch .. this applies to insurance
 

Insurers are motivated by profits, just like other businesses. I have yet to see an insurer that includes altruism in their business plan.

When the market allows insurers to make a profit they will compete to write coverage on the risks (insureds) they see as presenting a potential for profit…….I only hope I live long enough to see that day.

So, from many respondents here, the reality seems to be that there is little - if anything- that we consumers can do to lower our costs. Seems to be a runaway train that is unstoppable. I truly do not know how some homeowners and car owners will manage there costs and budget.,, Sad.