Had this extension not happened today, hundreds of thousands of Florida homeowners would be receiving letters from one of the respective 17 Home Insurers mentioned here saying they only had four months more of coverage.
WFLA headline: Florida property insurance downgrades delayed, ratings agency says
by: Mahsa Saeidi
Posted: Jul 25, 2022 / 01:53 PM EDT
Updated: Jul 26, 2022 / 07:48 AM EDT
https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/florida-property-insuran…
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation said last week that 17 property insurance companies total would likely be downgraded on Tuesday, July 26 by the rating agency Demotech. However, 8 On Your Side Investigator Mahsa Saeidi learned Monday that the downgrades will not happen on that date, according to Demotech.
“We are changing our deadline,” Demotech President Joseph L. Petrelli said.
Industry experts say the potential downgrades of the insurance companies will impact hundreds of thousands of families across Florida – including in the Tampa Bay area.
Article says this is politics. Not rising claims as due to hurricane damage, global warming, or finances.
Downgrade may force insured with mortgages to change insurance providers possibly at higher cost or reduced coverage.
“Article says this is politics. Not rising claims as due to hurricane damage, global warming, or finances.”
I read the statement that politics may ( should be “is” ) be involved. Florida seems to be
a highly desirable place for people to live, and to migrate to, but not to me.
I have always been for American society sharing the burden for the costs of unforeseen events,
but Florida getting hammered by rising sea levels, hurricanes, and wind damages, these are
not unforeseen events. All of us know it is going to get worse in the flat as a pancake peninsula
state of Florida. The insurance companies, and the reinsurance companies, darn well better be jacking up the rates of property insurance in the coastal areas of the SE, and the Gulf of Mexico.
Oddly enough, these areas are bastions of carry your own weight, pull yourself up by your
own bootstraps rhetoric. From the outside looking in, the majority of people in all of these
areas speak to their hatred of government intervention. Reagan had the famous quote that
the scariest words in American society are " I’m from the government, and I’m here to help".
So get FEMA and other Fed programs out of the equation, and let the great, hard core Capitalists
of the American southeast and Gulf Coast start paying market rates for the true cost to society
of setting up home in these areas.
( fyi, I know all Floridians are absolutely not like that, and i know Peregrine Trader is
especially not like that. And I’m not like that, I do think American society should band
together and help each other. But I’m getting real tired of the recipients of Government
bailouts railing against the Government and other taxpayers that are saving them )
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Paul, Joe has a better feeling for what this is all about. Politics is only delaying the inevitable downgrading of these insurance firms. You can’t force a for profit business to stay and insure homeowners if the mortgage lenders require an “A” level rating. Politics has already made a mess of the money losing insurer of last resort - Citizens - which already insures 800,000+ Florida homeowners and which “only” raised 2022 rates by 11% and which still doesn’t have the cash to payback the State of Florida for their recent $2 Billion bailout. (Citizens is also a Government Sponsored Entity, hence, they got bailouts whereas all other insurers did not after Irma.)
More about all this later. It’s a crazy story. And I think John Oliver could need two or three episodes to explain how we got to where we are today in Florida with no end of FOMO buildout in sight. (Moreso on the mainland than down here in the Keys as our land is so limited.)
I’ve got a very busy day ahead of me and I foresee a detailed reply in the next 48-hours.
By the way, all Insurers in the Keys are very cognizant of Climate Change and accelerating sea level rise. There are areas on Big Pine Key where the only things left showing humans once lived there are concrete pads - some with pilings and bent rebar sticking out like sculptured steel spaghetti - and now these pads are under high tide seawater maybe 20 days out of the years rather than just one or two days during Kings Tide.
Here’s what is going to happen, however: the downgrades will come. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners will then have just four months after the downgrades to find new Insurance. And the way it’s going now - and this is being said by Insurers which would remain behind with “A” ratings - this means that most homeowners who wish to keep their homes will be forced to pay double what they paid one of these 17 Insurers about to be downgraded to a new insurer, and expect half the coverage of their old policies at twice the price.
It’s all Mother Nature related. And politicians cannot hold back her fury. More later. And good take, UpnorthJoe if you’re still reading this thread. You read the tea leaves well.
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