Florida Insurance SCANDAL: Costs Are Actually Falling (Here’s Proof)

It's a huge wake-up call for thousands of Floridians whose homes and valuables were badly damaged during Hurricane Debbie. New data shows Citizens, Florida's insurer of last resort, denied 77 percent of homeowners' claims. The premium has spiked nearly 1,000 percent. In total, condo owners used to pay $56,000 a year. Now, it's more than half a million dollars. Richard Falco is one of 50-plus families impacted. I can't afford it. I'm a retired school teacher on a budget. Hurricane Milton brings up fears for many over insurance policies and prices. Days before the storm struck Florida, the state-run insurance agency announced that it would be shedding more than 300,000 policyholders in Florida before the year is over. It's no secret, if you want to clickbait something and get a lot of views, all you have to do is put Florida and real estate market in the title. Now, if you want to double your views and your interactivity of any video or article you may post on the Internet, all you have to do is say Florida and real estate and crash or housing crash. But I'm here to dispel a very key part of misinformation that's happening right now, and I'm going to prove it with receipts. Because one thing that we're seeing take a lot of blame in terms of the Florida housing market and its changing shift that is currently taking place, and there is some argument to be made because a lot of homebuyers have been waiting on the sidelines and a lot of people are still moving here. We have areas in Orange County and Polk County, particularly through central Florida, where people are moving in versus people moving out at a pace of more than two to one. So there is a huge popularity, there's still a huge influx of people looking to buy in the state, but one of the things that's happening is misinformation and disinformation in the news is trickling over into people's planning and it's causing them to make terrible decisions. Another thing that's happening is this same misinformation is causing people who own homes now to pay thousands more a year in housing expenses because they do not know one simple fact, is that the news is loaded with garbage and misinformation. Let me show you the receipts. So as I'm shooting this video, this is a current search. All I did in the top was put Florida housing market insurance as the word search for news. At the top, look at the most recent two, three weeks, one week, four days, one week. Look at what the news headlines say. Florida housing market dips as hurricanes and insurance hikes impact local areas. Skip down here. Florida housing market cools down what? Amid high insurance and an active hurricane season. It's almost like verbatim. Channel 2, by the way, is Florida's active news here in central Florida. But look at the next one down, MSN, which I think is a Microsoft company. Florida housing market cooling down amid high insurance and active hurricane season. This is like Project Mockingbird, right? Is that what they call this, where you actually duplicate all the news? It's carbon copied, and we're basically seeing the same print over and over. Further down, two months ago, Yahoo Finance, Florida's housing market faces major setback as high insurance costs and storm concerns drive buyers away. Okay, so now if I'm thinking of moving to Florida and I'm checking out the marketplace, I get that as the headlines. Now, let's say, like you, I'm moving to central Florida. I'm coming to Orlando. This is an area where you're not necessarily worried about hurricanes. If you've done your research, you know that all of this noise about hurricanes and a busy hurricane season kind of results mostly to fallen branches and maybe being without power for a day or two. That's kind of our existence in the Orlando market as it relates to hurricanes. But the second thing that you are concerned about is insurance. Now, you'll do a search online. How much is insurance in Florida? And here's what comes up. Hey, it's me interrupting myself. You considering selling your home? Make one call, that's all, and put my nearly 23 years of experience and nearly 4,000 homes sold to work for you. Jared Jones is the way to go. Call 706-5000. Insurance.com seems pretty legit, right? Best and cheapest homeowner's insurance in Florida. Here's what it says on the top line. Homeowner's insurance in Florida costs an average of $4,419 a year. And it'll go on to say that this is double the average cost anywhere else in the nation. Now, performing the same search, this, by the way, is one of the top results from a website called Money Geek. It says, find your financial happy place. And it goes down and it starts to look like a very legit webpage. There's all kinds of graphs and data, and it says right across the top, average cost of homeowner's insurance in Florida for 2024. And when it has the year, wow, this is fresh data. This must be very, very important. So you go down, look what the leading headline says. The average cost of homeowner's insurance in Florida in 2024 is $8,770. This figure surpasses the national average of $2,423. Now, by the way, this one is almost believable now, because if you remember back to 2023, everybody was saying the average cost in Florida was around $6,000 annual for insurance. Now, in the backdrop of higher prices and the fact that people are now thinking that insurance is a mounting snowball, I want to present to you a couple of insurance quotes that we are getting right now in December. I'm going to show you a reachable price point here in the Orlando marketplace. A newer home just inside of $400,000. And I'm going to show you another home that's over a million dollars in the Orlando market in Orange County. We want a very populous area just to give you a balance of, hey, what are the different counties pricing these things at? And mind you, the house I'm going to show you plus one million is obviously not just insuring higher cost. So we should see an $8,000 insurance bill on that million dollar property. But I'm also sure you've also heard that, hey, you know what, if the roof is over 13 years old or 12 years old, you know, kiss that goodbye. You go buy a house that's a resale and the roof is any older than that, even though they last 25 years or 30 years as their rating, you might have to just rip the sucker off at 14 years just to get insurance and spend $20,000 on a new roof. Well, all of that is going to be debunked because I'm going to show you that value of house in Orange County with over 19 year old AC and over 19 year old roof system and show you exactly in December, 2024, what is happening with insurance? Because if you're spooked by insurance, you're about to find out that it's an unnecessary fear and knowledge is power. And I'm going to show you the receipts and what's even worse. If you own here now already, you already have your cars insured. You already have your house insured. I'm willing to bet you're paying thousands per year more than you should. I'm going to show you how to help yourself in that situation as well. Let's dive into these quotes. All right. The first property I'm talking about is really where we sell homes here in the Orlando marketplace near Disney World. This is the Davenport, Haines City area, North Polk County. This particular house is five bedrooms, three full baths, nearly 2,700 square feet. These folks got this home under contract with my team in the mid 300s. It is nearly brand new. It's got a 5,500 square foot lot. It's built in 2022. And I know what you're already saying. Well, that's a newer house. That should be pretty easy to insure. Yes, but the one I'm going to show you in a second is a vast contrast to this particular property. Nonetheless, in your minds, can you guess what you think this house is insured for? Now, you're also going to assume in your head, well, if the average is four to eight grand, and this is below average, maybe I can insure this house for what the rest of the country is getting their insurance for. Maybe this house will be insured for $2,800 or $2,400 a year, $200 a month, something like that. You would be wrong because on my screen is the insurance quote that will be used for this closing. The bid for this insurance is $851 a year. The second opinion bid for this same house came in at $1,100 per year. Now, as you can imagine, this relocating family who's moving here from out of state reached out to me, as obviously my team is helping them. They said, Jared, look at these quotes. Is there some funny business going on? Because this is so ridiculously low, we were expecting maybe four or five grand a year to insure our new house. And as I do with my clients sometimes, I went through the policy and looked at all the deductibles and looked at all the specifics of their policy, and everything are industry norms. There's no corners cut. So now you're saying, Jared, that's a newer one. Show me an older house. Show me a more valuable house. Let's get one of those nasty 10,000-year policies going. Oh, here you go. This is a property in Orange County. This is the Orlando metro area, the main county for Orlando. This is going to have a 1.2 mil plus, a little over 1.2 price tag at sale. This house is a 2005. It's got a 2,700-foot main house, and it's got a separate apartment and three-car garage dwelling additional to the main house. So you've got somewhere around 5,000 or 6,000 feet under the roof to insure and covered square footage. Now, that means a little bit different to the policy that I just showed you. This is a lot more under roof than what you just saw. Now, to give you a clearer picture of exactly what's going on insurance now, let me tell you this as well. This was built in 2005, and as we help the buyer, we come through inspections to find out that this roof is original. The air conditioning system, as I mentioned earlier, is original. This is different because now the insurance is banking on different circumstances with what they might be hit with with insuring this house. Hey, this roof may only last five years or maybe five to seven years at best, and then they're gonna be banking on replacing a very big roof system. But my friends, my buyers are stunned to find that shopping their policy with this house, this size value, these conditions of age, $3,400 annual. $3,400, typical premium, typical setup for insurance, and this was stunning for the buyer. And I gotta say, the reason why I put all this together and I wanted to show you what is happening is because here's what you need to understand. When the real estate market went to crisis levels in 2021, where there was potential collapse on the horizon, we had seven or eight insurers go out of business between 21 and 22, and that's seven or eight out of 40 total insurers that we had to choose from in the entire state. And many of the other 30 or so that didn't go out of business, I'm talking like 20 out of the remaining 30, they were on watch lists because they were financially in trouble. They did not have financial backing. They did not have enough revenue coming in to support something bad happening. And in 2022, laws were passed that completely changed the system, completely closed massive gaps that caused our insurance in Florida to be massively expensive. And I did a recent video with Mark Freelander on this channel maybe a month or two ago where he went through and was saying, it's only going to get even better. And I took a lot of heat in the comments. Many people went in the comments and I know insurance isn't popular. I get it. I'm frustrated with insurance just like you are. I'm a human with a house payment, with insurance that I probably never use or if I did use it, something really small and then you pay the price for those kinds of things. So I get it. There's a hundred reasons to hate insurance, but I want to dispel the notion that things haven't changed. They have radically changed. Now let me tell you one more bit of advice because as I saw the insurance industry changing, I made some calls on my own situation and I saved thousands. And here's what I found out. I was with a major brand insurance company for my autos. I then made a call to a single insurance broker who has access to all the major brand insurers and within 24 hours, I had an option for auto coverage, 4,000 less than what I was paying for the exact same coverages with a different brand company. And the reason why is because every two or every three years, whatever insurance company you've been planting your flag with, over time, they will make you pay in the long run. And ultimately what has to happen is you cycle to a different company. And again, this is my opinion of how it works. This is not a guarantee. This is not how maybe everybody will experience in the market, but on a two year, maybe three year cycle, if you go and look and reshop your insurance, you can save money. And my friends, just as a gift for all of you following my channel, this is not a sponsorship. I get nothing by referring my particular insurance vendor, but I've had a good experience, so I can't help but mention him here on the channel. If you'd like me to link you up with him, shoot me an email at info at jaredjones.com. Be more than happy to make an introduction, but that's the update for now. Let me know what you're seeing in the comments and let's talk about it there. If you're in the central Florida area and you're looking for a great church, I'd love for you to join me at the Grove Bible Chapel. Just visit joinmeathegrove.com for full details. When the housing market feels complicated, you need an expert by your side to make it simple and easy. Make one call. That's all. And put my 23 years of experience and nearly 4,000 homes sold to work for you. Jared Jones is the way to go. Call 706-5000.