Homeowners' Insurance .... everywhere.

[john70t]

Originally Posted by jyl

House prices tank hard.

Which is why CA and other states are letting insurers raise rates much more than consumers or regulators would like - trying to protect housing market.

Estate that is Real.
(sorta)

To the State all those homeowners are only tax chattel. Quant Search is again 'unavailable'.

[RANDY P]

Originally Posted by jyl

He’s described as a multimillionaire real estate investor, implying he didn’t use a mortgage - anyway, he’s a dumb**** to have relied on FAIR, that kind of property, you go to excess & surplus carriers, maybe two of them, and get customized coverage.

If he did it right, he borrowed the money. Bank or (hopefully not) Tony Toenails took the loss.

rjp

[A930Rocket]

We had our homeowners, cars, umbrella with Stats Farm for years. Then Geico for years. Then prices seem to jump up a few years ago. I started looking around, and a lot of insurance companies would not ensure our house in Charleston, South Carolina. We are not in a flood zone, but we are within 10 to 15 miles on the coast. I guess that’s all it took.

I switched to Progressive, the homeowners insurance was about the same, but the auto insurance was half. Now, both the homeowners and automobile insurance have both gone up. We’ve never had a claim for any of our houses, only front windshields.

I should start pricing around for new insurance…

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by jyl

House prices tank hard.

Which is why CA and other states are letting insurers raise rates much more than consumers or regulators would like - trying to protect housing market.

Since when, just the last few years here. The restrictions California placed on insurance companies chased many of them out of the state. The ones left raised their rates, supply and demand. They are going to make it worse by compelling them to write for policies in wildfire areas if they are going to write policies at all.

All while doing less than nothing regarding wildfire risk, mitigation and preparation.

Maybe they don't want anyone to write liability insurance policies except the state.

House prices in California probably need to tank hard.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by Tobra

Since when, just the last few years here. The restrictions California placed on insurance companies chased many of them out of the state. The ones left raised their rates, supply and demand. They are going to make it worse by compelling them to write for policies in wildfire areas if they are going to write policies at all.

All while doing less than nothing regarding wildfire risk, mitigation and preparation.

Maybe they don't want anyone to write liability insurance policies except the state.

House prices in California probably need to tank hard.

I think insurance rates in high risk areas will go up a LOT. There is a price, at which it makes sense to insure in wildfire areas. The insurers will charge that price, and if the state won’t let them, then the insurance market will collapse and hit the housing market.

[KFC911]

I'm not in a high risk area, despite what the ins. folks will "prove" by their statistics. The coastline is, and always has been ... overdeveloped for 4 decades now. Here .... where 3 houses were on 120 acres when mom was a child ... there are several hundred houses built in the past 40 years in places I saw become lakes one afternoon in around 1970. My house was in my rural boy scout camp back then .... surrounded by a bazillion subdivisions of McMansions now.

Cheap houses .... compared to coast or CA .... dirt cheap...

And there is BIGLY money in these parts too... BIGLY, BIGLY $$$.

I'm not one of those

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by KC911

I'm not in a high risk area, despite what the ins. folks will "prove" by their statistics. The coastline is, and always has been ... overdeveloped for 4 decades now. Here .... where 3 houses were on 120 acres when mom was a child ... there are several hundred houses built in the past 40 years in places I saw become lakes one afternoon in around 1970. My house was in my rural boy scout camp back then .... surrounded by a bazillion subdivisions of McMansions now.

Cheap houses .... compared to coast or CA .... dirt cheap...

And there is BIGLY money in these parts too... BIGLY, BIGLY $$$.

I'm not one of those

Overdevelopment is making the entire problem worse. Where 40 years ago it was one house on the coast with some land, now it’s a subdivision of 100. Your $1M loss just became $400M, same hurricane/fire/etc. There’s just way more stuff to damage.

[jyl]

CA and FL are two big states at the leading edge of figuring out how to keep their homeowners insurance markets working in the face of increasing climate risk and losses.

FL’s market was considered approaching collapse in 2023. Most national insurers had left, the remaining insurers were mostly small companies with doubtful financial strength, premiums were rising very fast, the state’s insurer of last resort Citizens was taking on more risk than it could financially support, and I read 1/5 of homes were uninsured although I am not sure about that. In 2023/24 FL made changes to its rules/laws, including restricting the ability of homeowners to sue their insurers, and in 2024 the state said it had turned the corner with premiums starting to decline, Citizens offloading policies back to private insurers, and national insurers coming back. It is unclear if Helene or Milton changed things - there was a huge amount of damage but not that much of it was covered by insurance, so some say the insurance market “dodged a bullet”. Remains to be seen. There seems to still be concern, since the legislature is considering making Citizens the insurers for all wind damage (hurricane etc), which Citizens doesn’t want to do, claiming that would be $3TR of risk that it cannot support.

https://www.newsweek.com/florida-largest-insurer-could-forced-change-its-coverage-2018356

CA was going down a similar path, though I think things hadn’t gotten as bad as in FL, since many national insurers still did business there. In 2024 the state changed a bunch of rules, designed to allow insurers to raise rates (a lot, in high risk areas) and also to force insurers to write coverage in those high-risk areas at the new rates. Two major insurers said they would resume writing new policies. Now we need to see if the L. A. fires change things. I suspect rates will go up even more in high risk areas, and maybe overall.