Amendment 1 could improve insurance rates statewide, property appraisers say

This November, Florida voters will be asked to give homeowners who “improve the property’s resistance to flood damage” a tax break by preventing the property’s assessed value from going up because of the flood mitigation improvement project.

One outcome if approved by 60% of those voting on it could be lowering insurance rates statewide, said Broward County Property Appraiser Marty Kiar.

“If you could be incentivized to make your home better, maybe get less damage from a flood to where it’s much more protected, that’s less risk the insurance companies have,” Kiar said. “And so, hopefully, that would translate into savings for all.”

It could potentially he said, “bring down insurance rates in the future.”

In 2019, the non-profit research group First Street Foundation found, “increased tidal flooding driven by sea level rise has eroded $15.9 billion in relative property values between 2005 and 2017. Among the 18 states analyzed to date, Florida has seen the greatest loss in relative home value at $5.4 billion.”

The report’s top 20 hardest hit cities across 18 states included Miami Beach, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Key Largo, Jacksonville and Key West.

“Rising water damages homes in many ways,” Duval County Property Appraiser Jerry Holland told Local 10 News. “It may not wipe out the structure, but if water gets in there and causes more damage to the sheet rock, it can be very expensive. If something can be done, where the home is either raised up higher, or when a new home was built, that the elevation is raised higher, or some kind of retaining wall that prevents the flooding, then in the long run, you know, there’s going to be less insurance damage, and that’s going to benefit all of us.”

November’s constitutional amendment ballot question comes amid a volatile time in Florida’s private property insurance market.

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It also comes post-Hurricane Ian when experts say a flood of claims could impact homeowners statewide.

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“What we’ve always seen is when the insurance companies are hit with these large storms, and damages, they have to recover their costs, in a sense from all of us,” said Holland. “Typically insurance rates are affected by the amount of losses within the state, so if we can do something that minimizes the losses, if we can prevent and have less property damage from rising water, it will help everybody who’s insured in the state of Florida. The long-term effect should be insurance rates not going up.”

“The fact that the legislature is thinking about how to protect us better from rising seas and King Tides and effects of climate change, I think is an excellent thing,” said Kiar who added, “And your home, that’s pretty much the most valuable asset that all of us have.”

Ballot question:

• LIMITATION ON THE ASSESSMENT OF REAL PROPERTY USED FOR RESIDENTIAL PURPOSES. Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution, effective January 1, 2023, to authorize the Legislature, by general law, to prohibit the consideration of any change or improvement made to real property used for residential purposes to improve the home’s resistance to flood damage in determining the assessed value of such property for ad valorem taxation purposes.