I've worked in Property & Casualty insurance for nearly two decades.
Flood maps are insanely out of date. The insurance industry in general has a hard time with systemic changes; the whole idea behind insurance is that the past predicts the future and so if you know in the aggregate how many times X event happens per year and what it costs, you can insure for it and make a profit. That breaks down when systemic changes mean that the past no longer predicts the future, but rate of change is much harder to account for. A guy I work with described it as "the failure of reality to conform to actuarial principles", which might be the funniest thing an actuary has ever said.
That riskfactor website is interesting. I wouldn't make any decisions based solely on it, but it's definitely more in line with proprietary industry models than government maps. One thing I will say, though, is that if you have information that your risk is higher than average, and your insurance company doesn't have that information, that's a pretty good time to buy insurance.
I’m confused - I thought citizens didn’t even sell flood policies. They are starting to require some policies to have flood coverage per the requirement of the state legislature, but it affects homes in flood zones anyhow, which arguably should have purchased flood coverage already one would think. Maybe your friends are confused or conflating issues? =/
That said, insurance prices here ARE nuts. Our costs have more than doubled over the past two years and we are with Citizens, and we were recently offered a buyout from citizens that would have more than tripled our costs. I hate citizens as much as everyone, but they can’t reasonably expect me to opt into paying nearly $12K per year on a $250K insured value policy. That’s insane.
You are correct that Citizens doesn't sell flood coverage. You are also correct that insurance prices in Florida are insane. I understand the impulse to blame Citizens, but they're a symptom, not a cause. Citizens isn't an insurance company, really, they're a government service trying to act like an insurance company for the benefit of Floridians. The problem is, they're not even close to covering their long-term costs and people are already mad about how high the premiums are.
Premiums of 5% of your property values roughly equate to a prediction that your house will be a total loss in about 30 years (factoring in Citizens expenses). That's a conservative estimate for a LOT of Florida, and I'm constantly baffled by how much conversation goes on, even here, about 3 ft of fill dirt or 5 ft of stilts. Check out a projection of sea levels over the next 100 years (NOAA is here
https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/, but any of them will work.) Think about how many trillions of dollars of real estate are covered in the blue even as short as 20 years out, and then think about how all of the stuff not in blue is now that much more coastal than it is now, and factor in the impact of increased convective storm activity.
Florida insurance prices will only go up. My guess is, the state is underfunded by about 50%.
