Brother, can you spare a dime?

I paid for my home insurance last week and I’m still in shock.

I know everything costs more, but this is ridiculous. Owning a house or apartment, once considered a given right in America, is now a luxury for many people. Apart from outrageous grocery prices and ballooning expenses for almost everything else (the Consumer Price Index is setting new records), basic property costs are becoming untenable. And you don’t gain much by renting.

This isn’t just wire brushing. The numbers are real.

Let’s take a look.

Zillow says the median Florida home price is $435,000. If that doesn’t grab you, try this. Broker Brothers reports the median sales price for a home in the greater Naples area is $800,000 and in Bonita Springs, $725,000. Those are median prices.

According to Zillow, Florida is home to seven of the 10 most expensive neighborhoods in the country, where property valued at $10 million and up is not uncommon. Lower-floor condos in waterfront high-rises are seldom listed for less than $4 million, and in some areas, that’s considered chump change.

TRECKER

The housing market is on a binge. Socalled “million-dollar cities” are springing up around the country, 550 of them with home values in the million-dollar-and-up range. Zillow says there are 10% more of them this year than last.

What about mortgages? No relief there either. The national average is a staggering 7%. According to the Wall Street Journal, mortgage rates have more than doubled over the last three years.

And those able to buy a home may not be able to maintain it. Ownership affordability sank last year to its lowest level since the 1980s. We’re talking about mundane things like lawn maintenance and everyday repairs, not to mention utility bills, worsened by expensive green energy. Home improvement is disappearing.

And if you can afford to buy and maintain your home, can you also afford to pay your taxes to ante up the big bucks needed to underwrite the surrounding infrastructure? Many people can’t.

The big bill is usually the property tax. While the Collier commissioners actually cut millage this fiscal year, no one expects that to happen again. Taxes will almost certainly rise as operating and capital costs go up.

But the big kahuna is none of the above. It’s not the purchase price, the mortgage, the maintenance cost or the property tax. The big kahuna is home insurance. And it’s a killer.

Nationally, property insurance rates have risen 20% over the past two years, thanks to floods, storms, wildfires and other natural disasters. And the rates in the Sunshine State are the worst of the worst.

According to Insurify, the average U.S. premium is $2,377. Florida has the highest premium at $10,996, followed by Louisiana, which has a modest premium of $6,354.

How about cities? Florida has the six most expensive, all on the east coast. Hialeah tops the list with an average premium of $17,606.

Insurance fraud, coupled with rampant legal expenses, is a big contributor to this horror story. While Florida residents make 9% of all homeowner claims in the U.S., they account for 79% of all lawsuits, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.

Is Tallahassee addressing this problem? The lawmakers are trying. In 2023, the legislature passed SB 7052 in an effort to provide some consumer relief. We’ll see if that helps.

In the meantime, stoke up on some cash, renew your policy and hunker down for what’s forecast to be one of the worst hurricane seasons on record.

The 2025 insurance rates should be doozies. ¦

— Dave Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Florida.

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