More Californians Could Lose
Home Insurance After Wildfires
Wall Street Journal,
by
Nicole Friedman
Original Article
Posted By: NorthernDog,
11/3/2019 12:33:21 PM
A new wave of wildfires is likely to reduce the availability of home insurance in vulnerable areas of California. Home insurance already became scarce and expensive in some regions after insurers’ massive payouts for wildfire losses in the state in 2017 and 2018. Home insurers have declined to renew tens of thousands of home-insurance policies in areas with high wildfire risk in the past two years. Now, as firefighters battle several large blazes across the state, 2019 could shape up to be another year of outsize wildfire losses, though this year’s fires have so far not caused significant damage compared
Reply 1 - Posted by:
RedWhite&Blue2 11/3/2019 12:57:29 PM (No. 226111)
Note to Californians:
GET OUT NOW!
(Thanking GOD that we got outta there)
Veterans for Trump 2020
12 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Penney 11/3/2019 1:23:17 PM (No. 226123)
What goes around, comes around, eh? ...They should have tended the garden better, pulled the weeds and cut out the underbrush, but the activists thought that they knew better. .....They didn't. Sad
12 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
HPmatt 11/3/2019 1:26:57 PM (No. 226124)
One of the smartest run states in the World! So forward and leading the way. California - you are such an inspiration and example to the other states!!
9 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 1:50:14 PM (No. 226135)
These are residences in high fire zones. When I was in Santa Barbara in the 80s, almost all of Santa Barbara was “California FAIR Plan”. They could not get regular fire insurance. (Most of Santa Barbara is chaparral-covered hills.) Only the flat downtown area was not CFP. That may have changed after the fire that swept through Hope Ranch in the late 80s.
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 1:52:52 PM (No. 226136)
Do those in hurricane zones have insurance coverage to cover potential damage, destruction, flooding? Ditto tornado areas? Flood plains? Just curious. I’ve never lived in any of those, so don’t know… but it does seem to me that few areas in our country are without risk when it comes to natural disasters...
6 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 11/3/2019 1:57:07 PM (No. 226138)
Re #2. Let's hope the state doesn't decide to 'do something' to stop those greedy insurance companies from raising rates. S/off.
That would start a large scale exodus of companies from California and affect insurance availability in non-fire risk areas as well. California is a huge and mostly desirable market but there are other problems as well....locust-like hordes of ambulance-chasing lawyers scouring the state for clients is just one. It won't take much more for a bunch of insurers to just throw in the towel and walk away.
3 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 2:13:32 PM (No. 226145)
FTA:
Beyond the size of the losses, insurers and reinsurers were shocked at how the California fires in 2017 and 2018 spread. Previous catastrophe models, which help insurers estimate losses, didn’t fully account for high-speed winds that could cause embers to travel more than a mile, carrying wildfires across highways into populous urban areas.
3 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 2:16:01 PM (No. 226147)
Ah, here is more:
Reinsurance prices have also been pushed higher by three years of hurricane damage in the Caribbean and U.S. as well as several typhoons in Japan.
Contracts for reinsurance are often written to cover several types of natural disaster in many states or regions, so it can be difficult to quantify the effect of current and recent wildfires on overall pricing. Reinsurance pricing for California wildfire risk could increase between 30% and 70% when annual contracts are renewed for 2020, while the average global price increase for those contracts would likely be less than 10%, said Hardeep Manku, credit analyst at S&P Global Ratings.
The insurance industry had long regarded wildfires as a secondary peril that wouldn’t cause more than a few billion dollars in damage. Hurricanes and earthquakes, which can cause tens of billions of dollars in damage, are considered primary perils.
I didn’t know that risks were figured on a global basis rather than just locally...
3 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
GoodDeal 11/3/2019 2:28:18 PM (No. 226153)
They need homeowners insurance covering pre-existing conditions. So after your house burns down, you can still get a policy covering fire damage.
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Omen55 11/3/2019 2:30:07 PM (No. 226155)
Keep voting for dem & keep burning.
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 11/3/2019 2:43:12 PM (No. 226163)
And the Environazis' answer will be to "Move into an apartment in the city, stop invading the wild spaces and ruining them".
The vultures are coming home to roost, and poop all over your.....everything.
7 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DVC 11/3/2019 2:44:33 PM (No. 226165)
#5, CFP sounds like another government nightmare.
3 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 3:24:56 PM (No. 226189)
Re #14, CFP is not a state agency.
The FAIR Plan is an association located in Los Angeles comprised of all insurers authorized to transact basic property insurance in California. Coverage is available to all California property owners, provided submission guidelines are met.
The FAIR Plan provides insurance as a last resort, and should be used only after a diligent effort to obtain coverage in the voluntary market has been made.(Snip)
There is no public funding, or taxpayers’ monies involved. The FAIR Plan is not a state agency.
https://www.cfpnet.com
1 person likes this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
DCGIRL 11/3/2019 3:30:19 PM (No. 226194)
According to Newsom, it must be climate change.
3 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
DVC 11/3/2019 3:42:45 PM (No. 226204)
#15, "it is not a state agency"......but then why does it exist, how does it exist? If it isn't a state agency, and it is only used after you can't get commercial insurance, it sounds like a "government gun to their head" forced deal.
"association located in Los Angeles comprised of all insurers authorized to transact basic property insurance in California. Coverage is available to all California property owners,".....and I'll bet that the
"all insurers" is NOT voluntary. Either provide insurance under our state rules, or get out of the state.
Still Marxist, central planned, non-free market BS.
3 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 3:58:13 PM (No. 226221)
Re #17, there is quite a lot of information about CFP on the internet, starting with its own website linked above. I have no interest in sparring. Why don’t you go and do your own research...
5 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
earlybird 11/3/2019 4:07:19 PM (No. 226226)
Re #17, more information for you. Here is Kansas’s FAIR Plan.
https://ksfairplan.com
And here are the links to the FAIR Plans in various states across the country:
https://www.thebalance.com/fair-plan-policies-2645392
3 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
zephyrgirl 11/3/2019 9:46:40 PM (No. 226386)
I have several friends who live along the Front Range in Colorado. They've all had to hire consultants who tell them what to do to minimize their fire risk so they can get insurance. One had to cut down a number of trees near his house. Another had to trim all her trees on her lot up to 8 feet off the ground and clear out shrubbery near the house. She already had a metal roof. Once they finished all the recommended changes, they were able to get insurance.
3 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
DVC 11/4/2019 2:35:28 AM (No. 226467)
After some research, as recommended, I find that :
After the massive inner city1968 "race" riots, which burned down a lot of black neighborhoods, and where the insurance companies saw no financial future, Congress permitted the states to enact laws to create "FAIR" plans to basically force insurance companies to insure where they didn't want to insure. If you dig a little deep, "FAIR" plans are:
"Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plans — state-run insurance plans that make property insurance available to those who cannot obtain it in the voluntary market. The specifics of each plan vary from state to state, but all plans require licensed property insurers to participate in the pool and share in the profits and losses. "
Note that the FAIR plan is an alternative to the "voluntary market" --- which means the insurance companies are required to INVOLUTARILY participate in a pool to insure people that the insurance companies really don't want to insure because they are too high a risk.
Government central planning coercive garbage, NOT free markets. The government has a way of cynically naming their laws for exactly what they ARE NOT...... like these being called "FAIR" when they are anything but fair.
So, basically if you get ANY fire insurance in Cali, even the "voluntary" kind, (and many other states, too) you are subsidizing the people that are in the ultra high risk areas where the insurance companies would not normally write policies, but are forced to write these un"FAIR" policies, and spread the losses around. Believe that the companies recover their "FAIR" losses by raising premiums elsewhere above what they would be. A hidden tax on everyone to subsidize the fire insurance for those in fire prone areas. How communist of them.
1 person likes this.
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There are some other options such as only insuring for a fraction of the home's value, or insurers willing to take on higher risk - for a price.