Dealing with the Aftermath of Hurricane Ian

All eyes are on Florida right now, as we deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. It was indeed a very scary few days. As I’ve mentioned in many of my videos, I live in a home that was built in 1910, which as I like to say has been through 112 years of hurricanes, but I’m also just a few houses from a major lake. Now I’m just two houses from that lake, as the lake has crept its way down the street. Luckily on my street, the water has actually remained on the street, but other nearby streets in my neighborhood have not been so lucky and there has been a lot of flooding. 

A friend of mine on facebook was flying back into orlando and snapped a picture out of the window of the plane of some rooftops sticking out of the water in the town of Geneva Florida and I recognized just by coincidence that I had sold one of the houses he had caught in that photo. It was canal front – on a canal from the St Johns River which is expected to peak this week. It’s been rising steadily all week. That was very devastating to see.

Some areas in the Central Florida region that have been heavily affected are Deltona and much of Volusia County – I drove through Deltona last week just after the storm and had to turn around several times. Daytona Beach also seems to have suffered much flooding. All of this you can find on social media, and I of course haven’t been everywhere yet, but I have driven through much of Seminole County and Orange county and the parts I saw looked much better than northern Seminole County and Volusia County.

So I lost power for a few days, I lost internet for a few days, but everything has come back. We also have a couple of generators and were even able to loan one out to a neighbor so that they could power up a few things too before power came back on. And that is one thing I will say about hurricanes. You get to know your neighbors. People are truly helpful and ready to pitch in as we’re all in this together. We’re all outside clearing up the lawns, moving logs, replanting our torn up landscaping – we’re all usually way too hot, although Ian brought cooler temperatures so that wasn’t so bad. I’m looking for the silver lining. I watched a news clip where a man was saying Florida was ruined and would never recover. I beg to differ. This isn’t the first terrible storm the state has weathered.

Welcome back to my channel everyone. My name’s Krista Taurins and I’m your realtor on the ground in Central Florida. Please remember to subscribe for all things real estate related, and if you’re interested in speaking to me personally a link to my calendar can be found in the video below and you can set up a call with me. Now let’s talk about how Ian is affecting the real estate market.

Well, first and foremost the already scary insurance rates. Florida lost six insurance carriers this year alone. You might be tempted to think that’s because of hurricanes, but Florida has a totally different problem regarding insurance, and that’s this scenario – and trust me, I get notices on my door and texts about this all the time. Contractors will say they can get you a new roof for free. Who wouldn’t want that? Often there isn’t really that much damage. The contractor promises to take care of everything if the homeowner will just assign their insurance benefit. The contractors then can claim whatever they want from the insurance company without needing the homeowner’s consent. If the insurance company decides the damage wasn’t actually covered, the contractor sues. So the insurance company is stuck either fighting the lawsuit, or settling. Either way, it’s incredibly costly. 17 companies are on a watch list and may lose their A-rating status, meaning they are considered to be in financial difficulty. This means that they won’t be able to write policies for anyone trying to get a mortgage backed by Freddie or Fannie – in other words the majority of loans.

When we have fewer insurers that means that more and more people must turn to Citizens Insurance – the last resort insurance. Citizens is flush with cash right now as they have been increasing their reserves through policy increases, but they have the right to increase everyone’s policy in the state if they start to get in trouble. That means an increase for all homeowners, not just the ones covered by Citizens.

Right now there are very few carriers who are binding policies in Central Florida as most are still waiting to see how many claims they have. I spoke to a Farmers office this morning and they had 6500 claims in the past week in Florida. It was already getting increasingly difficult to get “good’ insurance for older homes, so we will see how many more carriers become even stricter as a result of Ian. The only properties that so far have not really been affected are those that were built in the past 5 years so newer to brand new construction remains a safe bet. And to that end, I tried to talk to as many of my recent buyers as I could and those who had purchased new construction in the area didn’t even lose power. A lot of that has to do with the fact that new construction tends to have underground electrical lines, which is really helpful when things are flying around in high winds. New construction is also never going to be in a flood zone, it’s built up high, so that risk for from the ground up flooding is diminished greatly.

Another change we are seeing is an increased demand for rental properties and in particular furnished, shorter term rentals. I am seeing posts of people needing rentals asap as they have nowhere to go or are staying with friends but don’t want to wear out their welcome. Not only that but you have many out of state workers like roofers, contractors, carpenters and insurance adjusters headed to the hardest hit areas with nowhere to stay. AirBnb and hotel bookings spiked and I imagine that will continue for a long time. If you’re holding onto cash and not sure what to do with it, now might be a great time to consider purchasing a condo to help meet that need for rental properties. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting tenants.

I checked several condos in three counties and I noticed that it does appear that rent prices have already gone up. A 2/2 that was $1500 per month last month is now $1600, and I found similar properties with a slight increase. I think if you’re not looking to make a move yourself, it is a great time to jump into the rental market with perhaps a modest single family home or even a condo.

I noticed a lot of houses were withdrawn from the market immediately following Ian. In the Orlando MLS I saw 2611 properties were withdrawn or taken into temporarily off market status in the past 7 days. There may be different reason for why that happened but I’m sure some of it is due to hurricane damage. I suspect that we will also be seeing an influx of people from southwest florida who want to remain in the state but can’t stay – or don’t wish to stay – where they were living before.