As luck would have it, the Florida Legislature just started their annual session on Tuesday, and they promise to act on property insurance in the next 60 days. Unfortunately, everytime they make changes, the consumer seems to lose.

Keep an eye on The Daily Sun for up to date coverage on what changes they are proposing. It might be time to charter The Villages buses and march on Tallahassee.

Actually it was our vaunted FL state representatives who allowed this in the first place. In a "reform" bill that was passed by both houses & signed by the governor in 2011, FL "reformed" the law to create "competition" between insurance companies regarding sinkhole coverage. The new law took effect 1/1/2012. It had the effect that all the insurance agents said would happen..since FL insurance companies were no longer required to provide sinkhole coverage almost none of them will now, and the few that do either have serious stipulations and/or high deductibles for coverage.

I think there are some misconceptions here about sink hole insurance. If your concern is coverage for situations like just occured near Tampa where a hole suddenly opened up and tragically swallowed a man, you are already covered if you have any homeowner policy. Florida law mandates that ALL homeowner policies carry catastrophic sink hole coverage. This means that if a sinkhole suddenly appears and damages your house to the point of it not being safe to inhabit, your insurance will cover it - whether you have the additional rider or not.

What the additional rider covers are situations where the damage is not catastrophic. In this case your coverage starts after you paying the first 10% of your home's value as a deductible. One may argue with that type of deductible, the additional cost of that rider is not worth it.

What I don't know about the nature of sink holes is how often are they sudden/catastrophic versus over a period of time and, for the slow-to-evolve types, how much damage they do versus the catastrophic types. In other words, will the repairs generally be less than the deductible, hence making the insurance rider mostly worthless. Can anyone shed any light on this with a link?

I have no link to offer but a contractor who has done some work for us told me that they had worked on a house locally that had been damaged by the non-catastrophic type of sinkhole activity. The repairs on the $200,000 house were going to run upward of $350,000!! Essentially they were having to re-build the house, plus do the underground concrete injections to shore up the land. Yeek!

Another good reason not to by a resale. You will need the sink hole coverage unless the house is condemed. That means if you have damage to your home, a large hole on your property, or even if it swallows the drive way, you will not be covered unless the house is condemed or you have sink hole insurance.

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Sometimes having sinkhole insurance means nothing. Watch this short video about a couple from Weeki-Wachee who have been living with a sinkhole under their bedroom since Aug 2011, and they have sinkhole insurance.

Their lawyer could not discuss their case because it is in litigation, but he said there are 800 pending cases such as theirs before the courts in Florida.

Here's another link to the same story.


http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/new...-their-bedroom