Florida home insurance premiums

All right, we've been talking about the homeowners insurance crisis for years now. Experts claim that the market here in Florida is finally starting to stabilize. But a lot of us are still getting jacked up renewal notices. Western Investigator Sheldon Dutez found out why. Living near world famous beaches and amusement parks has its perks, but it certainly costs us. My first I think insurance premium was like $600 a year and now I think we're up around $3,000 a year. Tom Flood has lived in his Orange County home for about 12 years and has seen his premium creep higher and higher. I don't see it slowing down whatsoever. The average Florida homeowner pays about two thousand dollars more than the national average just to insure our homes. Some of the reasons why we pay so much? Rising construction costs and natural disasters, but also lawsuits, something that state lawmakers made changes to prevent during two special sessions in 2022. The Senate will be in order. And it looks like those legislative reforms are starting to help stabilize the market. Eight companies are now approved to start doing business in Florida, and state regulators say huge national companies like State Farm, AAA, and Kin have committed as well. Also, more private companies are taking over hundreds of thousands of citizens policies. And when it comes to rate filings, it also looks like things are trending in the right direction. I checked in with the Office of Insurance Regulation to get some new data and I found out that the number of insurance companies that filed to lower their rates actually more than doubled over the last six months or so. And so far this year, 46 companies told regulators they don't plan to raise their rates. Sure, this is great and all, but a lot of us are still paying more each year on our premiums. Those are base rates. Your premium is a combination of a base rate with individual rating factors for the property, including its replacement cost value. That explains why the premiums are still high despite overall stabilization in the market. But what impact could Helene and Milton have? I asked Fred Karlinsky about this. He's a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig and represents insurance companies and regulatory matters. Overall, the Florida home insurance market was healthy enough to absorb these two big catastrophic storms. The Florida homeowner's market was healthy enough as well as the reinsurance market, yes. The Florida property insurance industry is in its best financial position in nearly a decade. This positions them very well to act as a financial first responder to their customers for this year's hurricane activity. Are we ever going to go back to like, you know, pre-2020 days with our insurance premiums or have we reached a new watermark here in Florida? It's very difficult to turn the clock back. That's why we're just hopeful that rates are starting to stabilize. In Maitland, Sheldon Dutez, WESH 2 News.