you guys there's so many challenges in living right now in Florida
there are issues with homeowners insurance with the fact that real estate prices have shut up so
much and for a lot of people buying real estate in Florida is unattainable and then you know what
Home Improvement costs the cost of hiring somebody to get your new roof hurricane-proof windows it's
just insane in Florida and so I'm going to be talking to you very freely about what I have
issues with right now as somebody that owns a home here so this video by no means is about
discouraging you to move here but it really is about ensuring that you know some of the
key pain points that a lot of us homeowners are dealing with right now here in Florida so that if
you make the decision to move to Florida or maybe you're somebody that already lives here and you're
looking to purchase a home you know what you really need to account for you know what you're
getting yourself into now if you're new to my channel my name is Katrin fitzenreiter I'm a real
estate agent in the southwest region in Florida if you enjoy this type of content do me a favor
like this video I really appreciate it first of all but also it does help out the performance of
this video so without further Ado let's actually get right into what really has been bugging me
let's talk about the homeowners insurance Market which is a real pain point for most Floridians
their own a home here in Florida and I actually just recently talked to insurance broker to get
her insights and I'm gonna share a link to that video towards the end of this video in case you
haven't seen it yet but it's always good to go to the source and get information from there but here
in a nutshell is what's going on so our prices have gone up so much over the last few years
on average a person here in Florida is paying about four thousand dollars four to five thousand
dollars on homeowners insurance I myself am paying five thousand dollars we're just what feels like a
year and a half to two years ago was half of that and there's talk about major increases coming in
yet again we can expect increases to be anywhere from five to maybe 30 percent on average based on
what a recent insurance broker had told me but it could be way higher in some cases it could
also be lower and you know that's disconcerting to many people who are on a tight budget especially
those who are retired here who purchased they're retired here and they're really needing to stick
to a tight budget having your bills all of a sudden increase by a few thousand dollars a year
extra not knowing when the increases are going to stop is really hard to work through do I think
that the homeowner's insurance Market is going to get better in the future you know I don't actually
see the light at the end of the tunnel yet I believe that with more competition with tighter
regulations we can stabilize the prices I just don't know when that's going to happen and if we
get another hurricane so we're at hurricane season right now but it doesn't really get bad until
about August September October that's typically the three months when I worry about a hurricane
the most if we get another one that comes through here and it doesn't matter where it hit it's in
Florida it could hit in Miami you could hit in the Panhandle the next time we all pay into it
I have a lot of buyers who are very surprised by the fact that their homeowners insurance bill has
gone up even though they're in a location that's never been hit their home has never been hit
unfortunately we all pay into it but I also like to put everything in perspective so there was a
video that garnered a lot of views on YouTube lots of views we're talking about millions of
views the person essentially pooh-pooed the homeowners insurance Market in Florida which
okay I can understand it is challenging for us all to deal with but there were a lot of inaccuracies
in the video so for example he said that now everybody in Florida is required to get flood
insurance not just homeowners insurance but flood insurance and that is just not true so first off
if you're somebody that's purchasing a cash you don't need to get homeowners insurance you don't
need to to get flood insurance right you're you can self-insure I wouldn't recommend it but you
don't but a lot of you are going to be purchasing via a mortgage if you're financing your house then
you're required to get homeowners insurance now if you're in a flood zone say you're in flood zone
AE then your lender is most likely you're going to require that you get flood insurance as well
but that's not what he said he said everybody is required to get flood insurance if you're in a
flood zone X and you're financing you will not need to get flood insurance unless you're with
citizen property and apparently that won't be passed through as a mandate up until 2027. so
just wanted to put that out there because it was misleading that statement this person made
he made it seem like that living in South Carolina it's so much more affordable and yes it's more
affordable but then you have to ask yourself how important is it that I live somewhere where
the weather is warm year round where I am close to some of the most beautiful beautiful beaches
and so as with pretty much everything we have to put things into perspective and determine what is
important to me but here's what you also have to think about if you're somebody that's still
working you are not getting taxed on state income tax in Florida you are in South Carolina so I ran
a calculation utilizing Forbes advisors calculator online on Seventy thousand dollars income okay so
if you were to make seventy thousand dollars in South Carolina you have to pay South Carolina
state tax which comes out to three thousand five hundred dollars yes homeowners insurance
is cheaper in South Carolina but guess what you have to pay state income tax right if you're
somebody that's retired you may not really care about that as much but if you're still
working that's that's a big one so I compared South Carolina average cost to insure home
to Florida where Florida came in at about four thousand six hundred dollars okay
South Carolina is coming in at three thousand dollars and that's the average cost to ensure
a home with over five hundred thousand dollars in dwelling coverage we look at just the average
cost to ensure a typical home in South Carolina it's about one thousand three hundred dollars in
Florida it's about two thousand one hundred dollars and so the home insurance crisis in
Florida the costs involved are going to differ very much depending on where you live the type of
home you have if you have a new construction home the cost for home insurance is going to be far
lower if you're close to the coast it typically is more expensive so there's a lot of variables
that go into pricing these home insurance costs right and so you may actually see some people
on my videos saying well I only pay a thousand dollars of owner's insurance and then some are
coming back saying they're getting stuck with a bill that's eight nine thousand dollars it really
depends on location the type of home have the built how updated it is now I will say this that
the cost to improve a house has gotten so crazy expensive here in Florida it's just insane foreign
looking to get hurricane proof windows and so I've talked to about four different providers
installers they all quoted me PGT Wingard Windows quotes that I'm getting are between 80 to 120
000 which first off is super expensive because just a few years ago the cost of hurricane-proof
windows were just a fraction of that and also how can the cost differ so much between these
different providers it's just insane and so here's my recommendation for you if you're
looking to improve your house make sure make sure you talk to at least three or
four different providers and also make sure that they're better business bureau rate and
if you can try to get information from somebody else who's actually utilized their services I
think that's invaluable but at the very least make sure they're reputable and that they have
a good warranty in place but so now I'm dealing with these high costs of improving my house do I
do I do why not do it will prices come back down again next year what if we have another hurricane
that comes through will there be more demand for hurricane-proof Windows my point being is
the prices of Home Improvement jobs have gone through the roof and that's if you can even
get somebody to work in your house for some of the smaller jobs say it's a five thousand
dollar job that's considered smaller it's hard to even get labor to come in and help you out a
lot of you are looking to update your roofs I've seen some of the recent quotes come through and
this is here in Sarasota for a shingle roof thirty thousand dollars for a two thousand
square foot home now I know the picture of the roof matters but let's just say the roof costs
are insane my neighbor is getting quotes for his tile roof his house is about 3 000 square feet
eighty two hundred thousand dollars it's just gotten so expensive to improve your house here
in Florida in some places in Florida in Sarasota for example if you were to do a pricing analysis
new construction versus existing home that you bring up to the level of new construction when
it comes to renovation updates that in many cases it may make more sense to purchase a
new construction home versus a home that needed some updates and you're willing to put the work in
you would want to run that analysis talk to your local agent to help you kind of do that analysis
less and less of you can now afford purchasing a home and I truly believe that everybody should
have the choice of being able to live in their own house or renting the affordability has gone
really down especially for those people where the wages just haven't held up with the price increase
I'm going to show you this chart and it's from Redfin it looks at the median sales price as of
May of this year and there's two points I want to make based on this chart okay so first off
when we look at Florida which is the black line the median price as of May of this year was 407
thousand dollars the U.S medium price is 419 000 years ago Florida trended quite a bit below the
U.S median and now it's really close to what it costs on average in the United States to purchase
a home this is median sales price for all types of homes got single family homes in there condos
co-ops and so forth now let's move up the lines here New Jersey 478 thousand dollars New York this
is New York state 525 000 California state 786 000 the really high line over there in Orange that is
Manhattan so a small part of New York 1.3 million dollars two points I'm gonna make here first off
there's a lot of places across the United States where prices are still way more expensive and
these states are more expensive on this chart it's actually also where a lot of the people are
moving from so they can afford the life here in Florida because where they're moving from
it's more expensive still but also looking at this chart you'll see that the prices just across the
board except for my hands a little bit more choppy here prices have increased across all these states
you know their seasonality built into it and so you'll see you know from a visual standpoint that
line kind of going up and down up and down but if you were to draw a line through it it typically
does go up over a long period of time so point being is that prices haven't just shut up here
in Florida they've shut up across many different states in the United States a lot of those that
are purchasing in Florida right now are coming from places that are way a more expensive and that
makes it more difficult for those people who live here in Florida because their income hasn't risen
but what they're starting to see is these prices go up up and up and so it is frustrating because
you're somebody that's maybe looking to purchase and you just don't know do I purchase now or do I
wait for a pricing correction or a price drop and my recommendation to you is follow the data follow
credible economists and they don't always get it right but at the very least they're educated in
making these economic assertions just stick to what feels right for you gut feeling it's just
something that I always try to follow if it doesn't feel right for you don't do it you're
something that's going to be living in a place say seven to ten years then you're really mitigating
the risk if you were to purchase because shall there be a real estate crash you'll be
in that house long enough to really write it out especially if the other option would have been to
rent kind of the same high level as your mortgage bills would be there's talk that the mortgage
interest rates are going to start dropping towards the end of the year nobody really knows but maybe
if you're financing wait a few more months maybe wait another six months and see if the mortgage
interest rates are at a much more favorable level for you and that's also going to give you time to
understand what the real estate market is doing this year because it's it truly is confusing
so my point today was to share the truth with you in terms of how I feel as a homeowner what I go
through and also what I'm seeing as a real estate agent that is working with a lot of buyers that
is talking to a lot of buyers in my recommendation for you is to make sure that you look at the data
and really understand your own budget how much will it cost me to live in Florida how much will
it save me or not save me should I get a new construction home or purchase an existing home
and update it later I mean there's a lot of data that you can pull together to help you make those
comparisons I understand that many of you are going to be moving from outside of Florida so a
lot of the costs that we incura here in Florida are going to be new to you and I wanted to make
sure that I had something helpful for you and so I created an Excel spreadsheet that captures
probably about 90 to 95 percent of the cost that you need to at least anticipate think through as
a home owner depending on what type of home you purchase and I'm going to share that with you
I'm going to link to the Excel spreadsheet in the description section of this video just make sure
that you update the cost because I put averages in there for Florida but those costs are really
independent on where you live so you're going to want to talk to some of the local service
providers talk to your real estate agent that can kind of help navigate those costs with you guys do
me a favor if you enjoyed this conversation that we have today like this video I really appreciate
it listen I was just trying to share my issues with Florida living right now especially as it
relates to being a home owner my intentions has always been to provide you with factual
information understanding that I love living here so I'm not trying to get anybody not to move to
Florida to Sarasota I absolutely love living here but I'm also somebody that is very upfront as to
you understanding what the costs involved are and so make sure you know what you're getting
yourself into do your homework now if you're someone that's looking to purchase or sell in
the Sarasota Bradenton and Venice and Liquid Ranch area I would love to be your realtor of choice
call me email me anytime I love hearing from all you guys absolutely thank you again take care