Southern State Residents Consider Selling Homes and Fleeing After Shocking Change
In recent years, beautiful weather and sane governance have attracted hundreds of thousands of people to Florida.
In fact, last year it became the nation’s fastest-growing state for the first time since 1957, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Florida’s population increased by 1.9 percent from 2021 to 2022, with an estimated gain of 416,754 bringing the total to 22,244,823, the bureau reported in December.
According to Newsweek, however, skyrocketing home insurance premiums have had the opposite effect, prompting thousands to flee the Sunshine State. Many more soon might follow.
In fact, some homeowners have seen their premiums surge by an astronomical and unsustainable 900 percent, the report said.
The situation has become so bleak that some people have opted to go without insurance. Others, meanwhile, have sold their homes altogether and relocated to different states.
An estimated 275,666 people left Florida in 2022, according to the Census Bureau.
Mark Friedlander, director of communications for the Insurance Information Institute, told Business Insider that Florida homeowners already pay an average of nearly $6,000 per year for insurance compared with a national average of $1,700.
Part of the problem stems from Florida’s high risk of severe weather, which always drives up insurance premiums. This level of risk makes insurers skittish.
“Insurance-company insolvency is a real problem in Florida,” Friedlander said.
On the other side of the equation, homeowners face difficult choices.
“How many Floridians are living paycheck-to-paycheck or feeling financially maxed out?” Friedlander asked. “They cannot afford to bear these mass increases every year.”
Severe weather, of course, constitutes nothing new in the Sunshine State. Something else, therefore, has driven this unique crisis.
Last month, the mortgage application site Bankrate did a deep dive into the Florida homeowners’ insurance crisis. The overall picture proved startling.
For instance, Bankrate noted that “Florida accounts for only 9 percent of the country’s home insurance claims but 79 percent of its home insurance lawsuits, many of them fraudulent.”
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed multiple bills designed to crack down on fraud and stabilize the market. Much of that fraud has originated with unscrupulous and predatory roofing contractors.
The exorbitant legal costs that accompany fraud settlements, however, have driven major insurers out of the state altogether.
In short, DeSantis and Florida lawmakers face a serious challenge.
Since 2020, the state has enjoyed glowing press in conservative circles, and for good reason. In the 2022 election, Floridians gave DeSantis and the state’s Republicans a resounding stamp of approval.
However, this sort of crisis in the housing market, left unchecked, could turn Florida into a semi-feudal state. In that event, only a few ultra-rich residents would own homes. The middle class would face exile. And the mass of Floridians would own nothing.
In fact, that would match the nation’s overall trajectory. Massive public debt, of course, always redistributes wealth upward. So do wars and pandemics.
More than anything, America’s Founders feared concentrations of wealth and power. They knew that republics could not survive if the few made war on the many. In that case, a vanishing middle class would lead to an aristocracy without titles.
Faced with surging prices everywhere, Americans already face difficult choices. They cannot lose their homes due to mounting fraud and excessive litigation.
After all, if they do not own anything, they become dependents and subjects of the few who do.
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