Blog: Any ideas to fix property insurance mess?

If you own property in South Florida, you know the only thing worse than the threat of a hurricane is the reality of windstorm insurance.

As in, no matter what happens, our rates keep going up.

When we have a bad storm year, they go up.

When we don’t have a storm for seven years, they go up.

When someone else has a storm, like New York and the northeast, they go up.

And now the Legislature is considering a sweeping bill that would drive more people from state-run Citizens and make it easier for premiums to increase on all policies, Citizens and non-Citizens alike.

I wrote about the topic for my Sunday print column, which you can read here.

The Legislature’s out-of-touch approach seems to be, let’s make this market attractive to the private companies and competitition will solve everything. But private companies want to cherrypick all the risk out of the equation.

Some people say we need a national solution (national disaster fund) or a regional solution. Others say maybe Citizens needs to get bigger, as in it should be the only windstorm insurer for the whole state, which would spread the risk and boost revenues and reserves.

I don’t know what should be done. All I know is my insurance cost has more than tripled in 13 years of home ownership, and if an “actuarial sound” rate to reflect the risk bankrupts homeowners then you can kiss this whole state’s economy and growth goodbye.

Anybody have any thoughts to solve this mess? Feel free to share.

View the original article here:  http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/michael-mayo-blog/sfl-mayo-insurance-20130211,0,2012195.story