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Florida homeowners, property insurance facts: Hurricane damage claims


As the state staggers out of back-to-back hurricane hits, the number of claims filed for damage to residences is already in the six figures.

Property owners who have filed claims have done what experts on all sides recommend as paramount: Report damage to your insurance company as soon as possible before you start thinking about calling a contractor.

“That’s number one,” said Don Phillips, past president of the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters, with 49 years in insurance claims including stints with insurers and as a public advocate representing policyholders.

Read full story:You have storm damage. Here’s 5 things to know to get insurance money

Here are some other key considerations.

Will 2024 hurricane damage to vehicles increase car insurance costs?

Damage from a tornado spurred by Hurricane Milton at the Windgate community in Palm Beach Gardens at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024.

Eva Kelly-Cubells knows her 2016 Chevy Cruze — and tens of thousands of other cars swamped in hurricanes Helene and Milton — did not go quietly.  

The 86-year-old Punta Gorda resident and her cat evacuated to a friend’s house on Sept. 26. There, Kelly-Cubells thought, she would be a safe distance from the canals and ponds that surround her manufactured home for Hurricane Helene’s anticipated visit. Deep in the night, though, she heard the water surging across the nearby road and then something even more ominous: a cacophony of car horns going off. 

“Then it would stop, and you’d know that was the end,” Kelly-Cubells said. 

Read full story:Hurricanes might mean Floridians get swamped again: With a car insurance increase

Storm emergency offers reprieve from insurance deadlines, policy expirations and cancelations

The McMasters family in front of their tornado ravaged home in Wellington.

The day before Hurricane Milton landed twisters in Palm Beach County — damaging 315 homes in a neighborhood about 15 miles from her house — Patricia Cramer went online to pay her insurance bill and made a startling discovery. 

 The West Palm Beach resident’s policy with Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which she had bolstered just a few months earlier, had been canceled, she learned. The cancelation went into effect Oct. 5. That was the same day that Gov. Ron DeSantis had included Palm Beach County in an emergency declaration ahead of the oncoming storm. 

“I was on pins and needles,” Cramer, 79, said. 

Read full story:Storm emergency offers reprieve from insurance deadlines, policy expirations and cancelations

Hurricane Milton likely to be a first test of insurance reforms and spawn a recurring argument

With Hurricane Milton’s passage, storm assessments are well underway across Florida. But one likely outcome, insurance industry watchers fear, is that owners of shredded and torn properties are in for a financial soaking.

A vulnerability in Florida’s property insurance market — finger-pointing over whether water damage was caused by flood inundation or breaches in the structure that let rain through — is likely being exposed again by Milton’s sea surge, devastating winds and torrential downpours along a vast swath of the state, from Siesta Key on the west to Daytona Beach on the east.

Read full story:Flood or wind? Milton may expose, again, Florida insurance coverage gap

Hurricane Milton’s hit: How will it affect our insurance premiums in Florida?

A mounted deer head is part of the debris washed out onto the street by storm surge after Hurricane Helene hit the area on September 27, 2024 in Steinhatchee, Florida.

Even though the one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton caused immense, widespread damage and killed hundreds of people, it won’t be a disaster for the state’s insurance industry, according to early assessments.

However, homeowners will not know how or if those storms affect their rates until next year.

Read full story:How bad will one-two hurricane punch be for insurance policyholders?

After ’60 Minutes,’ Palm Beach County legislator calls for probe of Ian insurance payouts

Destruction caused by Hurricane Ian on Sanibel Island, FL., is seen on Saturday, October 1, 2022,

Even as Florida continues to clean up after back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton, news broke recently on another major storm that hit Florida — this one from two years ago.

Reports that damage claims from 2022’s Hurricane Ian were systemically downgraded have a Palm Beach County state lawmaker leading a call for a Florida grand jury and a select legislative committee to investigate.

Read full story:PBC lawmaker: Investigate ’60 Minutes’ report on Hurricane Ian claims

Hurricane Helene exposes flood insurance as nation’s slow-moving crisis

Oct 2, 2024; LAKE TAHOMA, NC; Members of the Indiana Task Force 1 Search and Rescue team search for a missing woman along the Buck Creek. Her fiancee was also swept into the flood in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, but was rescued. Helene’s swath of destruction brought historic rainfall, flooding, power outages and 140-mile-an-hour winds across the Southeast. North Carolina that bore the brunt of damage, with vast swaths of cities like Asheville underwater, residents trapped in their homes with no lights or food and few functioning roads for rescue workers to help them. Mandatory Credit: Thomas Costello Ii/USA TODAY NETWORK

While she baked cookies at her home at the foot of the Smoky Mountains, Vicki Hunter heard a flood alert for the other side of the river. An hour later, she was hanging on for life.

Hunter, 62, like countless others in the inland counties of Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, was completely unprepared for the events of Sept. 27 as Hurricane Helene came to call. The death toll of 215 deaths and climbing is already the most deadly of a mainland weather event since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Beyond the heartbreak, though, financial trauma from the event promises to linger into the future.

Little of the damage is covered by insurance and that reality has already filled GoFundMe with pleas for help, spotlighted the ailing National Flood Insurance Program and spurred leaders to call for a re-evaluation of how flood insurance works and who should buy it. All as another tempest, Hurricane Milton hammered another part of the already-battered Florida Gulf Coast this week.

Read full story:Majority of homeowners left to clean up without insurance after Hurricane Helene

Expert advice: My mortgage is paid off, can my HOA still make me get homeowners insurance?

Live in a home governed by a condominium, co-op or homeowner’s association? Have questions about what they can and cannot do? Ryan Poliakoff, an attorney and author based in Boca Raton, has answers. 

Question: I live in a villa which is attached to another villa, of which there are six on my street.  The whole subdivision has attached villas which total about 190. All are single story with a garage.  I have lived in the development for over 20 years and own my home free and clear with no mortgage.

Read full story and get the answer: My mortgage is paid off, can my HOA still make me get homeowners insurance?



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