147
California exodus of home insurance companies continues (www.latimes.com)
submitted 6 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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Two more insurers are pulling out of California’s troubled homeowners insurance market, straining a marketplace that already has seen the pullback of several other companies that have cited increase costs related to wildfire risks.

Tokio Marine America Insurance Co. and Trans Pacific Insurance Co. submitted filings to the California Department of Insurance stating they will not renew 12,556 homeowners policies with a premium value of $11.3 million starting July 1. Also not being renewed are 1,624 dwelling fire and liability policies with a premium value of $1.7 million typically sold to owners of rental properties, as well as personal umbrella coverage.

The companies, subsidiaries of Tokyo-based Tokio Marine Holdings, are completely exiting the homeowners marketplace. Several major insurers, meanwhile, including State Farm, Farmers and Allstate, have limited their exposure in California by cutting back on the number of new policies they issue or tightening underwriting standards. State Farm, for example, announced in March it would not renew 72,000 policies.

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[-] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 55 points 6 months ago

According to the article, they didn't renew 14,180 house policies, the article also links to another article where 72,000 policies were not renewed. 86,180 uninsurable houses are awknoladged by the article.

But, california has 13 million households. This means that 7 tenths of a percent of calofornia's houses became uninsurable this year.

Insurance companies choosing to not insure a tiny fraction of the most at risk houses is not them "pulling out of California's troubled homeowners insurance market" (sic) nor is it an "exodus."

This article has some major spin, and greatly overstates the importance of what's happening. They mention a big number of houses without context, to try and convince you this is a deeply concerning thing. Unless you own one of the forest houses in question, this isn't abig deal.

[-] Hello_there@fedia.io 12 points 6 months ago

I have yet to see any evidence that any of these coverage denials are related to being in any sort of higher risk area. We're not talking about houses in the forest, or on coastal bluffs, or next to the beach, etc. That's just a smoke screen to cover their incentives to put out news stories like this so they can pressure regulators to allow them to charge more for insurance.

[-] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

This article doesn't discuss locations whatsoever. I have yet to see any evidence either way. If you find something do let us know.

[-] Hello_there@fedia.io 2 points 6 months ago

All of the articles speculate climate change is a factor, and I think that's one of the things that the insurers quoted in the initial news. However, there was no evidence that was the case.

[-] mdd@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

I live in CA and try to keep track of things like this. These are two smaller companies along with many others that have stopped insuring homes in CA.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago

Households and houses are not at all the same thing. One apartment building could have over a hundred households.

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 26 points 6 months ago

So California and Florida, two of our biggest and most important states, are rapidly becoming uninsurable. Great.

[-] harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 6 months ago

The rest of the Gulf Coast won't be too far behind, especially if there's a couple of Cat 5s.

[-] Neato@ttrpg.network 9 points 6 months ago

Just means any time something big happens to a poor person, they lose their house.

[-] bluGill@kbin.social 7 points 6 months ago

If you live near the gulf - close enough for hurricanes to destroy a house you either need to build to withstand hurricanes (an engineering problem - I don't know how feasible it is) at greater cost; or you need to build cheap planning on rebuilding from scratch every few years.

[-] minibyte@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Florida updates their building code roughly every 3 years, and has specific “Hurricane resistant” measures.

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Do newer homes that have higher hurricane resistance get lower homeowners insurance premiums?

[-] Veraxus@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago

California fine unless you live in a major fire danger area, which is a relatively tiny part of the state. This is bad-faith alarmist clickbait.

[-] LordCrom@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

In Florida over 7 years my home Insurance went from 2,000 per year to 10k per year with a 20k deductible...... Crazy and unacceptable

[-] xploit@lemmy.world 24 points 6 months ago

You'd think that's the insurance companies would be greedy enough to sue oil companies for damages, you could probably try to make that case, but alas it's easier to drain regular people dry and then fuck off.

[-] whereisk@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

When Berkshire Hathaway owns both sides of the coin why would you sue yourself?

[-] WhatsThePoint@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

They just raise rates or pull out, they don’t care. Same thing with health insurance and fraud. They almost never report fraud to the government for prosecution because it costs to investigate. They just raise rates to account for it. Medicare and medicaid prosecute fraud at drastically higher rates. Plus, they won’t sue oil companies, most of them have the same major share holders or are owned by the same conglomerates.

[-] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago

Shit like this and healthcare should just be in your taxes.

Would be a lot cheaper for you, no risk of your insurance shutting down to avoid claims after a disaster, more money in the pool to get everyone paid out faster, and no golden parachutes and other executive bloat sucking up 98% of the money and making service irredeemably worse.

[-] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Meh I agree with healthcare.

Wildfire insurance I put in the same category as flood insurance. Most of the time, people are living places they SHOULD NOT BE LIVING. Turn those areas into state/national parks.

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 6 months ago

I still contend that this would not be an issue, if home values were not so outrageously higher than incomes. Yes, climate change and ill-informed forest management are also factors. However, better affordability would greatly reduce the risk to insurers and homeowners alike.

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
147 points (95.1% liked)

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