One of the more difficult things to remember when working on insurance pricing sometimes is remembering that there are real people behind the numbers in my spreadsheets. Thus, it is with morbid fascination that I sometimes follow reports like this one from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:
“This is legalized robbery when I have to buy insurance at 10 percent of my coverage value,” Fleener said. “My insurance costs more than my mortgage.”[.]
She was among the dozens of homeowners, landlords and business owners who relayed their property insurance horror stories on Friday to state Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty.[.]
Joan Gardyasz, who owns a 16-unit rental apartment in Sarasota County, said her Citizens premium is soaring 400 percent.
Combined with higher prices for taxes and a pending sewer connection, she might have to pass along a $180-per-month rent increase to her tenants, who are mostly workers in the service trades.
“The majority of these tenants could not absorb these increases,” she said.
Gulfport City Manager Thomas Brubeil said no commercial insurers are renewing in his town, where 75 percent of the buildings are wood frame.
No one can sell their uninsurable property.
“The commercial real estate market in Gulfport no longer exists,” he said.