Heads up Florida residents...

[kadee79]

In case you have one of these companies as your insurer....

More than 50,000 Floridians are about to lose their home insurance, and many of those people have not been told that yet.

This comes as the start of hurricane season is less than two weeks away.

The three insurance companies dropping more than 50,000 customers are Universal Insurance of North America, Gulfstream Property & Casualty, and Southern Fidelity.

While some insurance agents are reaching out directly to their customers to let them know they’re getting dropped, it’s on the state to send out the notification, and with those letters going out last week, there’s a good chance not everyone is aware they’re about to go into hurricane season without coverage.

Brightway Insurance agent Matt Carlucci Jr. is one of the agents who has been calling clients all week.

“It’s mostly being driven by roof fraud,” Carlucci said. “Insurance companies, at the end of the day, because they had been losing so much money, they decided, look, we’re going to raise our rates to the point of where we’re going to collect the cost of a new roof from your premiums in about three years.”

www.news4jax.com/news/florida/2021/05/18/3-companies-dropping-more-than-50000-florida-home-insurance-customers/

[busymom]

It seems we moved away just in time.  We actually had insurance thru Brightway, but a different office & agent.  Glad that at least their company is trying to inform their customers.

[andi9899]

An insurer is not going to drop you without telling you. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen and against insurance regulations. It's the insurer's responsibility to let people know, not the state.

[Tiny]

Yep, just got the letter from Gulfstream Property & Casualty that they are not renewing my insurance at the end of June (renewal date 6/29/2021).  

I had them for one year. In 2020 my insurance company (10 years with no claims/no issues) dropped my insurance and I wound up with Gulfstream - for 20/21.

I had gotten the 21/22 renewal from Gulfstream and the cost jumped another 1K for a total of 3K (which I was pretty much prepared to pay). But they've gone and dropped me.

I've got an appointment with my insurance agent for tomorrow. to go over insurance options.


I no longer have a mortgage on the property - so maybe I can just let the property go "feral" and not have any coverage on it. OK. I won't do that.

Will let you know how much my next policy  costs me - I expect it to be about 3K

ADDED: 

from the OP: 

“It’s mostly being driven by roof fraud,” Carlucci said. “Insurance companies, at the end of the day, because they had been losing so much money, they decided, look, we’re going to raise our rates to the point of where we’re going to collect the cost of a new roof from your premiums in about three years.”

Yep.  About 8K would put a new roof on my property.     So 3K * 3 years = 9K.    The current roof is about 5 years old (that's how I can kind of guesstimate the current cost of a new roof for my property.) 

[Tiny]

I wonder if some of my issue is that my policy ends right at the start of Hurricane Season. I wonder if I go insurance-less until October/November (and then get insurance - so I have a renewal date after hurricane season)  if this problem with having my insurance dropped would go away.

::sigh::

[kadee79]

Tiny....a JFYI....we came down & helped clean up after hurricane Charlie in the Punta Gorda/Port Charlotte area.  My first MIL lived in Punta Gorda.  Anyway, the roofs that we saw that had little to NO damage were the metal roofs.  Shingle roofs had been peeled off, many tile roofs had caved in, but the metal roofs were still intact or might have had one edge slightly turned up at the bottom.  This was not just on residential homes, but also on large buildings that were both retail & office type buildings.  Even one large building (several stories) that was in the process of being built had it's red metal roof still intact while the middle of the building had been really torn up...most of it had only been framing for walls, but a lot of that framing was ripped out...while the roof held!
That was one of the main reason I told DH we were having a metal roof when we built our house...and we do.  It recently made it thru a hail storm with no damage and we had some super high winds as a residual of hurricane Michael and it also held fast thru that....while a post on our deck was blown down & several trees here on our land were stripped bare!

[Tiny]

The new roof I had done was a "flat" roof and it was replaced due to age (it had sprung a leak and rather than do another "patch" I opted to have it replaced (the age thing - the patch wouldn't buy me much more 'roof life') not due to storm damage.

I do hear you about the metal roof. I have another house with an asphalt shingle roof in Florida. the roof's approximately 17 years old and it's replacement is on the horizon (with in 5 years I'm guessing). I will be taking roof longevity/storm durableness into account when I replace it. This house is older and has it's original windows and storm shutters and is in a subdivision with similar style houses - so I'm watching to see what the other homeowners are doing when they go to replace their roofs.

[gambler]

I keep flood insurance on south fla property, figure FEMA will cover all else and they have