We hear this sad spiel from time to time. But, as Mark Twain once noted, there are three kinds of untruths: "lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Truth is, I pay about $500 less per year on my home in TV than I did on my home back in Minnesota, and my home here in TV is valued at $150,000 more than was my home in Minnesota.

it must have fallen off the today's posts. . . ergo, it never happened

If you live in Florida so did your home.

Remove the ability to “assign” benefits to a third party. That would greatly reduce the lawsuits by unscrupulous roofing companies.

Yes, I want government involved. Remove the "one way attorney fees" and the ability of policyholders to “assign” benefits to a third party. Both were written into law by government, so let's have them remove this obviously, misguided language.

Misleading to say the least. Property tax RATES are key. Not the dollar amount which depends on home value. And on that - Florida ranks low

That's just about the same as a gallon of gas 4 years ago. Hurricanes and government are two logical explanations.

We had homes in the mountains of Northeastern CA until we moved here in 2021. Because of wildfire losses, insurance kept rising into the $5-6k range depending on the fire hazard rating of your area. Then the insurance companies stopped taking on new policies, then they started to cancel policies at the renewal date. Below is a link to another article about national insurance rates showing how CA has some of the lowest rates. This is because the majority of homes in CA are NOT in high-risk areas and the companies stopped spreading the liability over the whole state. The homeowners in high-risk areas are facing terrible rates. Like FL, CA created a "state backed" insurance program for those who cannot afford the high rates, but the premiums were still high, and the deductible is outrageous. But at least they have something.

Average homeowners insurance rates by state in 2023

Of course, it's easy to blame DeSantis for our insurance problems, but to be fair, Gov Newsom isn't helping much there either.

Neither do I but we’re getting screwed and folk are dipping into hard earned savings to keep up with escalating home insurance cost.
What I can’t understand is why some Floridian homeowners are prepared to stand with opportunists, robber baron insurance companies instead of rallying around their homeowner neighbors!

Here I quote recent reporting:

“Florida home values are only the 18th highest in the country, according to Zillow, so pricey real estate doesn’t explain the nation’s highest homeownersAnd I quote: insurance rates. The state, for sure, gets battered by hurricanes and other types of extreme weather and that has an impact. But that, surprisingly, isn’t the biggest problem, either.

Instead, Category 5 fraud and abuse have made Florida’s homeowners insurance market so unprofitable that 15 carriers have become insolvent in the state since 2020 — and others refuse to do business there. “This is a man-made catastrophe,” says Logan McFaddin, vice president of state government relations at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. “It’s not just the weather. It’s frivolous litigation and fraud.”


After years of dawdling, the Florida legislature passed a slate of insurance reforms in 2022 and this year, which DeSantis backed and signed. The insurance industry praised the legislation as essential to luring carriers back to the state and lowering costs for consumers. But there are likely to be years of legal challenges ahead, and premiums could go even higher before they start to drift down.


Critics say DeSantis should be doing more to help Florida homeowners now instead of campaigning out of state. That's shaping up as a liability for DeSantis if his presidential campaign gathers steam and he becomes a serious contender for the Republican nomination.

DeSantis ought to have a solid record to run on, given that Florida is America’s fastest-growing state and it broadly outperforms the US economy. But the governor’s record leaves some explaining to do, including problems DeSantis has brought on himself. His battle with the Disney Corp. began as a culture war dispute. But it has grown into a giant legal battle pitting the governor against the state’s biggest taxpayer, with Disney CEO Bob Iger calling DeSantis “anti-business.”

Meanwhile, a law DeSantis signed in May, addressing illegal immigration, has caused an exodus of workers that’s hurting farm owners, construction firms, and other types of business.

A man rides his trike past a destroyed house following Hurricane Irma in Big Pine Key, Florida, U.S., September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Fraud country? A man rides his trike past a destroyed house following Hurricane Irma in Big Pine Key, Florida, 2017. (REUTERS/Carlo Allegri)
Florida’s insurance woes predate DeSantis.



Extreme weather linked with climate change is pushing insurance costs up in many areas exposed to it, including Florida and other states vulnerable to storms, floods, fires, and droughts. But Florida's insurance costs are considerably higher than in other disaster-prone states.

Florida has long been a haven for scammers, with laws that made insurance companies especially vulnerable to lawsuits. Until recently, Florida had “one-way attorney’s fees,” which meant that insurers had to pay the legal fees of any policyholder who sued and won, while insurers had to pay their own legal costs if they won. Another quirk of Florida law was the ability of policyholders to “assign” benefits to a third party, such as a contractor, who would sue the insurer on their behalf, sometimes without the policyholder's awareness.

"Florida’s property insurance market has been chaotic since 2007, when bad public policy forced insurers to flee Florida," Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis's Florida press secretary, told Yahoo Finance. "Since 2007, the main cost driver has been excessive litigation."

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Still, nobody addressed the causes of Florida's insurance crisis during DeSantis's first term as governor. This “toxic legal environment,” as a recent industry report put it, created a thriving climate for unscrupulous lawyer-contractor partnerships. Contractors told homeowners they could get cheap or free repairs, even if unnecessary, by claiming some weather event caused the damage and suing the insurer if it found otherwise and refused to pay. Many insurers would settle, knowing they’d have to pay the other side’s legal bills if they lost. Others would go to court and risk paying the legal fees. Trial lawyers became adept at pumping up their fees and sharing strategies with contractors about the best way to prevail in court.

The practice caught on after Hurricane Irma in 2017, when insurance claims came in much higher than expected for a storm of that magnitude.

It appeared that contractors, egged on by trial attorneys, were encouraging homeowners to get work done, especially roof replacements, and blame it on Irma, even if those homes sustained little or no damage from the storm. There were even allegations that some contractors would stomp around on roofs with cleats on to tear up the shingles and simulate storm damage, then charge the insurance company for a full replacement.

Billboard ads for storm-damage lawyers and public adjustors who assess the extent of storm damage began to proliferate.

Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis speaks at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. June 9, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
Insurance problems: Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. (REUTERS/Jonathan Drake)
Insurance litigation exploded, with the recent industry report finding that Florida accounted for 7% of all homeowners insurance claims — roughly comparable to its share of the US population — but 76% of all lawsuits involving homeowners policies. Insurance companies normally pass on higher costs to customers, and premiums began to spike in 2020. A 2021 report by Guy Fraker of the James Madison Institute estimated that litigation costs alone cost the typical Florida family an extra $487 per year in 2019, with an annual growth rate of 26%. That “hidden tax” would be more than $1,200 per family in 2023.”

Story continues

Location, location, location. Center of the peninsula, far from oceans, higher ground, better construction, yada, yada, yada……

Brilliant. Let’s have government put insurance companies out of business by not allowing them to collect enough money now to pay out huge property losses in the future when hurricanes hit Florida. That is a brilliant way for government to help the people.

While we are at it, let’s have government pass a law banning hurricanes coming to Florida. That will certainly lower insurance premiums.

Look, the blame game is easy, but reality is a little harder to swallow. If we all want lower homeowner rates then we must look to mother nature and ask her not to send hurricane to Florida. Then we must ask when a storm does cross our path that we put in all legitimate claims for payment and not the myriad of claims that submitted by people looking to get a new roof and the storm is definitely a good excuse to put in a claim even if there was no real damage caused by the storm. Third is the lawyers and the litigation cost that is expensed by the insurance companies. You must understand, insurance is one of the most regulated business in the country with Florida being no exception. Insurance companies are in business to make a profit not a windfall and conversely they are not in business to loose money. So the next time a storm comes to our great state and you see a shingle hanging on your roof, you may think twice before having that roof replace and not call a handy many to replace the one shingle. Remember, I said if you have a legitimate claim then by all means the insurance company should pay for the damage, but so many have bogus claims and guess who pays for those too; we all do. Every claim that is adjusted is part of a larger actuarial cost calculation that ultimately ends up on a cost analysts on the governors desk requesting an increase in insurance premiums. You see the insurance companies must file for premium increase and show that increases are justified by the amount of claims the company has paid out. So mother nature, bogus claims and let's not forget lawyers litigations is why we all pay higher homeowner rates.

Friends of mine life in a duplex in Ft Myers which was not damaged by the last or any hurricane. Their insurance went up to $2500 a quarter or 10K a year. In that area with so much devastation what can people expect? And poster has no idea what New Orleans or Houston pays. It's a choice to live in these areas or anywhere in Fl and if you can't afford it then move somewhere else. I have a 3 bedroom courtyard villa, middle of the block, built in 2004 and my HO ins is $1486 this renewal in 2023. The choice is yours, the risk is high for these companies, so make the choice that best fits you. In poker the stakes may be too high and people fold - same scenario here.

Interesting though, that the increase in homeowner premiums is not stopping the rapid growth of people relocating to Florida.

I moved here in December, and my homeowner premiums actually decreased over what I was paying in Colorado.

This is a free market which has nothing to do with elections. The weather is the coastal destruction that all Florida residents have to bear in their insurance.