Real estate agents stick by the adage that “kitchens and bathrooms sell homes.” In Florida, good roofs are also doing some of the selling.
The turbulent property insurance market, while improving, has changed the way people buy houses in the Sunshine State. Prospective Florida buyers, already dealing with higher inflation and mortgage rates, are finding they must also be concerned about the age and condition of the roof.
Florida insurance has always cost more than most states, but some homeowners are seeing their rates double or more. Volatile weather in recent years has led insurers to post deep underwriting losses, prompting some to pull out of the state, sharply raise rates or cancel coverage. Roofs are a good indicator of potential insured losses, so some insurers don’t renew policies unless homeowners have them replaced.
“The first question I was asking was about the roof,” recent Florida buyer Martin van der Plas told CoStar News. “It’s a critical component of buying a house now. If you have a roof that’s over 20 years old, it’s nearly impossible to get insurance.”
Lenders require homeowners to have insurance as a condition of a mortgage. But the resulting higher costs these days are prompting some residents with paid-off properties to sometimes cancel their policies to avoid rate hikes, brokers say, while other owners consider selling their homes and becoming renters or even leaving the state.
Assuming a new owner escrows taxes and insurance, even a moderately priced Florida policy can raise the monthly payment by hundreds of dollars or more, agents say. They add that it’s a major concern for some buyers already pinched by high home prices.
“First-time and middle-income buyers are going to feel it the most,” Phil Gutman, founder of Miami-based Gutman Development Marketing, told CoStar News.
Insurance premiums for Florida condominium buildings have also increased significantly in recent years, with homeowner associations passing on the added costs to owners, with some reeling from special assessments. After the collapse and demolition of the Champlain Towers South condo building in 2021 in Surfside, Florida, new state regulations require regular assessments and repairs in older buildings.
To be clear, higher property insurance rates are also a concern in Texas and other states hugging the U.S. coastline, with predictions of severe weather and higher material costs for rebuilding homes factoring into widespread premium increases, according to a report from Insurify, a virtual insurance agent.
But the narrow Florida peninsula, with more than 1,300 miles of coastline along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, has always faced a heightened hurricane risk compared to other states. The six-month hurricane season began June 1, and meteorologists have predicted an unusually busy season due to near-record ocean temperatures, La Nina conditions and reduced wind shear.
While Florida homes are insurable, options can be limited, depending on risk and replacement cost value, according to Mark Friedlander, director of communications for the Insurance Information Institute, a research and education group.
Roof Life Expectancy
Before writing a policy in Florida, some insurance companies insist the roof has at least five years of life expectancy left, according to Michael Citron, founder of Parrot Realty in the Fort Lauderdale area. As a result, houses with newer roofs typically attract plenty of showings, and buyers tend to be more skeptical of properties with older roofs, agents said.
In some cases, buyers use the condition of the roofs to their advantage in negotiations.
In the upscale residential enclave of Parkland, northwest of Fort Lauderdale, a recent home inspection for one of Citron’s clients revealed three leaks on a 23-year-old roof. Citron and the buyer went back to the seller, who agreed to reduce the price of the house and provide credits toward a new roof and closing costs, all totaling $36,000. The sale is scheduled to close later this month.
Meanwhile, 25 miles northeast in Palm Beach County, van der Plas and his wife bought a four-bedroom, ranch-style Boynton Beach house built in the 1930s. The $890,000 deal closed the week before Memorial Day.
The seller had replaced the roof within the past 10 years and renovated the inside of the house, two reasons the property attracted a bidding war, said Danielle DiLenge, an agent with Realty 100 who represented van der Plas.
Still, the owner had to pay to address two electrical issues. Even with those fixes and a relatively new roof, van der Plas, 36, was surprised the best insurance rate he could get was roughly $11,000 a year from Citizens Property Insurance, the state-run insurer of last resort.
“That doesn’t even include flood insurance,” he said. “I’m taking out a separate policy for that.”
Highest Costs in US
Van der Plas is paying about twice the statewide average of $5,533. That’s the highest average in the country, figures from consumer finance website Bankrate.com show. But the average estimates vary widely, depending on the source.
On the opposite coast, in southwest Florida, more buyers are rethinking plans to live on barrier islands since Category 4 Hurricane Ian made landfall there in 2022 as one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the United States, said Marlissa Gervasoni, president of the Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association serving the Fort Myers area.
For houses not directly on the coast, windstorm coverage is slightly less expensive, and, depending on the location, owners may not be required to get flood insurance.
“One of the biggest comments I get from buyers is, ‘I don’t want to live in a flood zone,’” Gervasoni told CoStar.
Even with insurance making homeownership in Florida more complicated and costly, prices have mostly remained steady.
The statewide median price for a single-family house rose to $410,000 last year, 1.9% higher than in 2022, according to figures from the Florida Realtors trade group.
The single-family median also rose in the state’s largest metropolitan areas: 6.4% in South Florida; 3.3% in Orlando; and 1.3% in Tampa Bay.
Home Prices Increase
The statewide median price for townhouses and condominiums increased 5.2% last year to $322,500, according to Florida Realtors, with the three largest metropolitan areas posting gains.
Both single-family and condo sales statewide dropped in 2023 from 2022, but higher insurance rates are only part of the equation.
“We do know that the decline in sales began almost immediately” after mortgage rates started increasing, Brad O’Connor, chief economist for Florida Realtors, said in an email.
Florida’s insurance market has faced crises before. Category 5 Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Miami-Dade County in 1992, eventually leading to the creation of a statewide building code. Meanwhile, after years of limited storm damage, seven hurricanes affected Florida in 2004 and 2005, underscoring the state’s vulnerability to bad weather.
But just before the pandemic, the insurance market started to unravel and progressively worsened, with industry experts blaming the high price of reinsurance, which is insurance for insurance companies, as well as fraud that costs companies millions in claims payouts and attorney fees.
From 2020 to 2023, more than 30 insurance carriers left Florida, went out of business or shed policies, according to Bankrate.com.
Florida’s Insurance Reform
Since 2021, eight residential property insurers have gone insolvent, according to the Insurance Information Institute. In 2022, Bankers Insurance Group told regulators it was exiting the home insurance business in Florida. That same year, Lexington Insurance, a subsidiary of AIG, announced plans to withdraw from Florida and all other markets in which it operated.
Other insurers, meanwhile, asked regulators for rate hikes, in some cases doubling annual premiums. Before state lawmakers intervened in 2022, nearly every insurer offering residential property coverage in Florida raised rates, reduced their footprint in the state or stopped writing new business, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.
To address the crisis, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called a three-day special legislative session. The reforms that resulted included making it illegal for contractors to file insurance claims on behalf of homeowners, also known as “assignment of benefits,” and eliminating one-way attorney fees that forced insurance companies to cover the legal costs of plaintiffs suing them.
The new laws already have had a dramatic effect on the insurance industry in Florida, according to the Office of Insurance Regulation. So far this year, at least eight companies have filed for rate decreases, 10 companies have told regulators they intend to maintain current prices with no increases and eight companies have announced plans to take on new business in the state.
“It’s been an amazing turnaround,” the Insurance Information Institute’s Friedlander told CoStar. “There’s nothing like this in any other state.”
In addition, the Office of Insurance Regulation announced in May that Citizens Property is in better condition financially. Private insurers have assumed 389,000 policies from Citizens since January 2023, a necessary step in stabilizing the overall market, industry officials say.
The statewide building code after Andrew created a standard that ensures newly built houses are as hurricane-resistant as possible, according to Brad Hunter, founder of Hunter Housing Economics, a national consulting firm based in West Palm Beach. What’s more, in an earnings conference call last month, Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley Jr. said one of the reasons consumers prefer new houses is that they are less expensive to insure.
Owners of older homes who hope to lower their insurance rates can harden their properties by strengthening garages, installing impact-resistant windows and making other improvements. Those who participate in the state’s My Safe Home program can get matching grants to fortify their houses, but the $350 million program ran out of money because it was so popular. It’s now on hiatus until new funding becomes available on July 1.
Douglas Rill, a longtime broker in Palm Beach County, is encouraged by the improvement to the state’s insurance market, but he still cautions clients not to take coverage for granted. He told CoStar he remembers a time when property insurance was one of the last items on Florida buyers’ to-do lists.
“In the old days, I could have a buyer call from the closing table, give a credit card number and have the insurer send over proof of full coverage,” he said. “Now the buying starts with the insurance.”