After property owners in Florida learned they were going to be hit with yet another property insurance hike, real estate agents are also feeling the effects.
Last week, state insurance regulators signed a plan that will tack on a 1% emergency “assessment” to property insurance to deal with issues caused by several large carriers leaving the state of Florida.
According to the order, insurers will collect the assessments from policyholders starting in October and send the money to the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association (FIGA), which is the nonprofit agency created to handle claims for homeowners whose private insurers became insolvent.
Jeanene Ward has lived in her Orange Park home for decades and told News4JAX that she and her husband pay around $4,000 a year for insurance and like most, weren’t happy to hear insurance rates are increasing.
“I just don’t like it, especially when they’re forcing us to get a new roof when there’s nothing wrong with our roof or they’re going to cancel us. It doesn’t seem right,” Ward said.
Emiliya Mustafaeva is a Jacksonville realtor with Avalon Group USA. She said buyers are starting to slow down on purchases and so are investors.
She said realtors regularly see buyers who are not eager to buy a home because of fears over insurance premiums, saying this has been going on for about seven months.
“Right now, I’m currently struggling with one of my buyers. We’re trying to find her a condo and her limit on her funds and how we have to match whatever she would pay for condo fees and everything on top of insurance rates,” Mustafaeva said.
Something that’s frustrating many homeowners is that this primarily funds homes that have been affected by hurricanes and bad storms. For those who were not affected… they’re still seeing the price increase.
Corey Neal, the executive director of FIGA, said the following in a statement: “The emergency assessment is necessary to secure funds for the payment of covered claims, to pay the reasonable costs to administer such claims, including claims resulting from insurance companies that have become insolvent or may become insolvent as a result of losses incurred due to hurricane.”