What a difference a highway can make to buyers of Florida home
insurance.
The highway in question is Interstate 95, which more or less hugs the east coast of Florida from Jacksonville to Miami. It drops south on a map like a blue border marking where the Atlantic Ocean ends and Florida turf begins, running through Daytona Beach and Palm Bay, West Palm Beach and, finally, ends for Miami homeowners insurance policy holders.
FLORIDA HOME INSURANCE AND 95
Homeowners along that side of Florida get their financial bearings from
I-95: If they buy or build a house on the east or coastal side of the
interstate, they will pay more for their home insurance than they will pay
if they settle into a house on the west side of I-95. Why? Do hurricane winds
stop blowing when they reach the interstate pavement? Is the highway a
meteorological signpost, having been built at the exact longitude where storms
magically abate?
The answer is more prosaic than that: After Hurricane Andrew devastated south Florida in 1992—killing two dozen people, wreaking some $30 billion in damage, and leaving 250,000 people homeless—authorities decided to establish boundaries of the coastal region where home ownership was deemed to be most risky. Chosen as the arbitrary demarcation point between east and west was the federal ribbon of concrete running south from Jacksonville.
While the highway was an arbitrary and imprecise reference point—as opposed to, say, setting the distance at 2,500 feet from the coast—it did have the advantage of clearly delineating the high-risk area. Any line strictly drawn a certain number of feet from Atlantic waters tended to run through houses and properties, further confusing the issue, whereas houses sit cleanly on one side of a highway or the other.
So Florida home insurance is a more expensive proposition for homeowners on the seaward side of ’95. A windstorm policy is required, and the wind insurance portion of a policy can account for as much as 60% of a Florida home insurance premium. Having shutters for windows and extra strength built into a house to bolster it against wind can help reduce premiums but not entirely offset the additional cost.
While the higher cost of Florida home insurance in critical strips along the coast can be painful to the pocketbook, the extra cost is a realistic insurance response to a real threat. A house in the Florida Keys or coastal Dade County can be buffeted by winds as high as 150 mph. Northward from Dade, the coastal wind threat is pegged at 140 mph. This is not child’s play, as homeowners in the Homestead area learned when Hurricane Andrew blew ashore.
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insurance, house insurance, wind policies, and townhouse insurance, and car insurance quotes.
