Posted On: January 5, 2007, 10:47 pm CST

Posted By: Scott

People from other states don't have a clue what's happened here in Florida. I bought a home here not quite 2 years ago. My initial property insurance was $1650/yr. Last year $2850/yr. Now, $3900/yr. The house I owned in Atlanta was worth roughly the same amount and my insurance there was about $450/yr.

I have never filed a home owners claim in my life. I feel like I'm being penalized by the rate increases that have occurred here in Florida. In addition, my property taxes doubled. The assessment was much higher than the realtor said it would be adjusted to being the new owner of my current home. Now, I'm paying nearly $700/month just for taxes and insurance.

I live an hour north of Tampa. Bought the house out here to try and provide a nice place to live for my family and now this...

Some people dont realize that the Florida state legislators sold us out. In the past, Florida could negotiate with insurance companies because they had access to there p&l data for the insurance entity regardless of where they wrote insurnace. For example, if a "xyz" insurance lost $1 billion in Florida in 1995 but made $40billion elsewhere, Florida has access to that data. Now, with the legislation passed under ins. commission Mike Gallagher, Florida no longer has access to the data for that insurance company from other states. Florida must deal with these entities as if they were Florida entities only. This is not true in other states where the underwriting is spread more evenly. I think our Florida state level legislators sold us out. Someone did. Was this a "K" Street project conducted by some highly paid lobbyists? Well nice job. Guess you achieved what you set out to do.

When I lived here in the 90's, we had no such problems.

Hopefully, our new governor Charlie Christ means what he says when he says he'll address the Florida insurance and county property tax issues.