Major Insurance Companies Cancelling Homeowner Policies All Along East Coast - NYT

EDIT

In the last three years, more than three million homeowners have received letters like the Grays’ as insurance companies, determined to avoid another $40 billion Katrina bill, have essentially begun to redraw the outline of the eastern United States somewhere west of the Appalachian Trail. Public officials in Southern states from Florida to Texas have been fighting insurance carriers for years over rising rates and withdrawal of services, but officials in the Northeast have only recently joined the fray.

Companies including Allstate, State Farm and Liberty Mutual have “nonrenewed” policies not only in hurricane-battered places like Florida and Louisiana, but in New York and other Northern states that have not seen hurricanes in years. Since last year, those three companies and others have turned down all new homeowners’ insurance business in New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts and the eight downstate counties of New York.

An independent insurance agents’ group puts the Grays among about 50,000 residents of the New York metropolitan area — and about one million homeowners in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states — whose policies have been canceled since 2004. While most homeowners have been able to find coverage with other major insurers, or with smaller companies, in most cases it is at higher rates and with larger deductibles. The companies say they are obliged to avoid undue risks where they see them, and to remain solvent. “Considering what happened between 2003 and 2005,” said Robert P. Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry lobbying group, “and considering that the best meteorological minds are telling us that for the next 15 to 20 years hurricane activity will be heavier than normal, if we didn’t do something to reduce our exposure, we’d be out of business.”

In response to a growing torrent of complaints, state officials and lawmakers have lately begun to push back, if gingerly, against the industry, which they see as overreacting to the hurricane threat in the Northeast. “My concern is that this situation is being manipulated by the insurance companies in order for them to get higher rates,” said State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, who calls the cancellation of policies in his eastern Long Island district “more than a problem — it is a crisis.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/nyregion/16insurance.html

:eyes:

1-year insurance policies was a scam. You should be able to purchase 30-year homeowners' insurance policies, to lock in a fixed payment for that time period, since it is the mortgage companies that mandate insurance.

The whole "home" industry is crooked as can be, if you ask me.

Maybe it's because I'll always be me (until I finish my gene... never mind) but I may not always live in this home?

homes until the 30-year mortgage is expired timewise?

Seems a real stretch to me.

It's easy enough to cancel a policy. I can cancel my life insurance policy any time I want, even before my gene... never mind.

Personal weakness, I guess....

Unless you share my black and sarcastic taste in humor.

that we depend on that are just snatched away from all of us. We pay our insurance for years in many cases and then it is just taken away at the company's whim. What happens to all that we put in but never used because we have never filed a claim. I call it a SCAM.

Is catching up to us.

From what I have heard in these parts (MA). This has only affected people who are directly on the water or a major bay or estuary. Places that will definatly take the brunt of any significant storm surge. IIRC more than 1/4 mile inland was excluded from this.

When you build your $5million vacation home on a exposed south facing beach in the Hamptons. I don't get too concerned about your complaints when the Insurance company says they have previously underestimated the risk and have to raise your rates.