Insurance is one of the biggest expenses that residential real estate owners face in Florida.
For Florida condo owners, about 20 percent of their monthly maintenance fees typically go toward paying the premiums required to insure an association’s buildings and common areas.
This expense does not cover insuring each owner’s individual unit but rather the association’s common areas.
Florida condo owners paid an average of nearly $1,450 annually or $121 per month for insurance premiums, according to a new report.
An August 2024 report said the average monthly maintenance fee for a Miami-Dade condo tower with at least seven floors is $1.08 per square foot for towers with fewer than 300 units and $1.20 per square foot for structures with more than 300 units.
Based on this report, Miami-Dade County condo owners spent 26 cents per square foot to insure towers with less than 300 units and about 23 cents per square foot to insure highrises with at least 300 units, according to the report.
Given that insurance is mandatory for lenders to provide financing for individual condo purchases, the state of the insurance market is crucial to the Florida real estate market.
It is against this backdrop that we have created a video with an AI-generated narration of the latest Florida Property Insurance Stability Report. Published in July 2024, the 26-page report was authored by Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky.
State law requires the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation to publish the Property Insurance Stability Report annually on January 1 and July 1.
This report does not include any changes that may have already been instituted - or are coming - to Florida's insurance market following the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which hit the west coast of the state twice in two weeks between late September and early October of 2024.
The next Florida Property Insurance Stability Report is scheduled to be published on Jan. 1, 2025.
The report examines 13 points (verbatim) :
1. Litigation practices and outcomes of insurance companies.
2. Percentage of homeowners and condominium unit owners who obtain insurance in the voluntary market.
3. Percentage of homeowners and condominium unit owners who obtain insurance from the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.
4. Profitability of the homeowners’ and condominium unit owners’ lines of insurance in this state, including a comparison with similar lines of insurance in other hurricane prone states and with the national average.
5. Average premiums charged for homeowners’ and condominium unit owners’ insurance in each of the 67 counties in this state.
6. Results of the latest annual catastrophe stress tests of all domestic insurers and insurers that are commercially domiciled in this state.
7. The availability of reinsurance in the personal lines insurance market.
8. The number of property and casualty insurance carriers referred to the insurer stability unit for enhanced monitoring, including the reason for the referral.
9. The number of referrals to the insurer stability unit which were deemed appropriate for enhanced monitoring, including the reason for the monitoring.
10. The name of any insurer against which delinquency proceedings were instituted, including the grounds for rehabilitation pursuant to s. 631.051 and the date that each insurer was deemed impaired of capital or surplus, as the terms impairment of capital and impairment of surplus are defined in s. 631.011, or insolvent, as the term insolvency is defined in s. 631.011; a concise statement of the circumstances that led to the insurer’s delinquency; and a summary of the actions taken by the insurer and the office to avoid delinquency.
11. The name of any insurer that is the subject of a market conduct examination that found the insurer exhibited a pattern or practice of one or more willful unfair insurance trade practice violations with regard to its use of appraisal, including, but not limited to, compelling insureds to participate in appraisal under a property insurance policy in 3 order to secure full payment or settlement of claims, and a summary of the findings of such market conduct examination.
12. Recommendations for improvements to the regulation of the homeowners’ and condominium unit owners’ insurance market and an indication of whether such improvements require any change to existing laws or rules.
13. Identification of any trends that may warrant attention in the future.
Besides the narrated report, please find behind this paywall a series of four supplemental charts and a transcript of the video.
