Florida’s explosion in insurance premiums threatens to ground the state’s highflying housing market. Florida home prices soared more than 60% since 2019, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin, the Wall Street Journal reported. That rate has slowed more recently, and the state’s home prices in September edged up 2.7% over the previous year, Redfin said. While rising interest rates and the large price run-up are the biggest factors, higher insurance costs are starting to play a role, brokers say. Home-insurance costs are rising everywhere, but they are rising especially fast in Florida where premiums have tripled in the past five years. Some premiums have increased by about nine times what they were last year, according to Oscar Seikaly, chief executive of NSI Insurance Group, who said he has handled insurance premiums that cost as much as $600,000 a year for multimillion-dollar homes. In few places are soaring premiums more apparent than in Flamingo Park, where a combination of older, historic homes and ballooning property values have caused insurance costs to double for many homeowners in the past year. Even though the West Palm Beach neighborhood resides on a coastal ridge, where most of the homes are well above sea level and outside the flood zone, insurance rates for wind coverage are soaring there.
