Owning a home in Florida is a huge gamble. Some people are starting to question whether it’s worth it.Business Insider by Dan Latu, Jordan Pandy, Madeline Berg 10/6/2024
• Some Florida homeowners are reevaluating their costs and comfort with risk post-Hurricane Helene.
• One seller near St. Petersburg slashed the asking price on their home, which was flooded, by 40%.
• Some weigh whether homeownership in Florida is worth it given the high cost of both insurance and homes.
Days after Hurricane Helene devastated Florida and four other states, Compass real-estate agent Alexis Smith-Frady is picking up the pieces in her own home.
More than three feet of water flooded her 1,400-square-foot bungalow in Bradenton, she said, adding that a FEMA inspector who visited deemed it unhabitable.
Now, she's bouncing between hotels until she figures out a more permanent solution.
"We have kind of a two-level house — it's not a two-story, but there are two levels," Smith-Frady told Business Insider. "The top level was spared last year with Idalia, and then this year it got our entire house."
"We have kind of a two-level house — it's not a two-story, but there are two levels," Smith-Frady told Business Insider. "The top level was spared last year with Idalia, and then this year it got our entire house."
She said she did not have flood insurance for the first 11 years she lived there but now has flood and hazard insurance that costs her about $7,000 a year. By contrast, Smith-Frady added, she owns a cabin in North Carolina where the insurance bill is about $700 a year.
She's not sure whether to repair the existing home or start from scratch.
"If we fix our home, it's going to be a three- to six-month process," Smith-Frady said.
"But if we build, it will probably be closer to 18 months because there's going to be quite a few people trying to do the same thing," she added.
Hurricane Helene caused $30.5 billion to $47.5 billion in wind and flood damage across 16 states, CoreLogic estimated. The real-estate data firm expects the National Flood Insurance Program to provide about $4.5 to $6.5 billion of insurance to homeowners across Florida and the southeastern US — including in parts of Florida that haven't experienced a hurricane like this in a while.
Smith-Frady lives inland, and while her home is on a river and susceptible to flooding, the southwest part of Florida is usually spared significant destruction from hurricanes. The last major hurricane to hit the Tampa Bay area, where Sarasota is, was in 1921.
It's a harsh reality that many Florida homeowners may face the effects of hurricanes or flooding at some point — and they're reminded of it often when their flood or home insurance bill is due. Florida is the most at-risk state for hurricanes, with nearly one out of every three homes — a total of 3 million — susceptible to storm-surge flooding, according to a hurricane risk model by insurance software company Guidewire.
Hurricanes haven't significantly affected Florida home prices, real-estate data experts told Business Insider this week, and the Sunshine State is still one of the most popular states to move to.
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