Re: Pearls Before Swine: Uncle At The Door

William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

>
People in the reinsurance industry started paying attention to the
problem of climate change a long time ago.  At about the turn of the
century two big ones, Munich Re and Swiss Re, decided to stop offering
coverage on the US gulf coast.  Others simply put up prices. As
insurance companies rely on re-insurers to take some of the risk
companies had to raise rates to preserve profits.

Florida has special problems, though, since all of their elected officials
seem to be either in the construction or real estate business.  This means
that Florida building codes have been much more lax than the rest of the
country, and quite especially so for a hurricane and flood-prone area.

Things improved a good bit after Andrew, when we got to see TV coverage of
houses torn apart with chipboard subroofing and styrofoam sheeting all
over the place, but there's still a lot of stuff not built to the newer
code, and the newer code is nothing to write home about.

Rising insurance narrows  the pool of potential buyers. Banks won't give
mortgages for uninsured houses, so if you can't afford both the mortgage
and insurance payments you can't buy. Prices will have to drop until
houses start selling. If you are an older person trying to cash in on
your house before moving to care or rental housing, you won't get the
price you were expecting.  And if you are renting, higher insurance
costs will be passed on to you.

This is a big deal.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."