Cape Coral, Fla., was devastated by Hurricane Ian last year, but real-estate agents still pitch waterfront homes as “Gulf access haven.” Insurers take a different view. Home-insurance premiums are soaring in the Southwest Florida city, and there is evidence that the higher costs are starting to affect the real-estate market, the Wall Street Journal reported. Buyers’ concerns about insurance costs are slowing sales and causing some canceled deals in areas with particularly high flood or wildfire risks. Home-insurance companies are trying to claw back steep underwriting losses by hiking rates, or pulling back from disaster-prone areas such as Cape Coral. The average annual home-insurance premium for Floridians has tripled in five years, from $1,988 in 2019 to $6,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. The cost of flood insurance—mandatory for some in the Sunshine State—is rising faster still in many vulnerable areas. The federal National Flood Insurance Program, which provides most policies, recently changed its pricing to more closely tie premiums to risk. In Cape Coral, the average annual flood-insurance premium for a waterfront zip code has increased from $1,791 to $4,728 a year, federal data show.
