Michelle Frericks, Realtor®

To protect your home against hurricane and flood damage, purchase flood insurance.

Many homeowners learn far too late that their homeowners’ insurance does not cover property damage caused by hurricanes and floods. If you live in a potentially affected area — which could include everything from a home on the coast near a fragile levee that sees frequent floods to one downhill from a stream that hasn’t flooded in years — you probably should buy a separate flood insurance policy to cover your home and its contents. 

Here’s how to get flood insurance, and what it will and won’t cover. (For general information about homeowners’ insurance, read Nolo’s article Homeowners’ Insurance: What You Need to Know.)

Where to Find Flood Insurance

You can purchase flood insurance from your broker or agent through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Flood insurance is available to any homeowner who lives in one of the many NFIP-participating communities (which have agreed to pass and enforce certain storm water and flood plain management laws).

If you need an agent, call the NFIP at 888-379-9531 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              888-379-9531      end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit its website at www.floodsmart.gov.

Get Flood Insurance Coverage for Property and Contents

A flood insurance policy through the NFIP can provide maximum coverage of $250,000 for property and $100,000 for contents. (Property and contents coverage must be purchased separately, even though they may form part of the same policy.) If you want additional coverage, you can purchase excess flood insurance from private insurers. The average flood insurance policy costs $500 per year, according to the NFIP.

If you buy a home in a designated high-risk flood zone and get a mortgage loan from a federally regulated or insured lender, your lender must require that you purchase flood insurance.

If you live in a zone that’s been designated moderate- or low-risk, you don’t need to buy flood insurance for your lender’s sake — but you may want to do so anyway, especially if your own observations indicate that the official designation on your area are out-of-date (a common problem). According to FEMA, almost 25% of all flood insurance claims come from areas with low-to-moderate flood risk. The good news is that you’ll qualify for a preferred-risk policy. The premiums for this type of policy start at only $119 per year (for both property and contents).

Here’s what flood insurance pays out for each type of property covered:

<!–[if !supportLists]–>·        <!–[endif]–>Contents. Flood insurance pays actual cash value (the cost to replace the damaged or lost property with new property, less depreciation).

<!–[if !supportLists]–>·        <!–[endif]–>Property. You can opt for replacement cost coverage (the cost to replace the damaged or lost property with new property, without regard to depreciation) if you’re insuring a single-family home that is your primary residence. Available coverage is at least 80% of the full replacement cost of the building (an amount that’s set in advance for your property) or the maximum available under the NFIP.

Know What Flood Insurance Doesn’t Cover

A good flood insurance policy can be a financial lifeboat following a destructive event such as a hurricane. But flood insurance doesn’t cover everything. Before buying, you should know about the following key restrictions and limitations, which are specific to flood insurance.

Water Must Come From Outside Your Home

If something breaks or malfunctions inside your home — for instance, pipes freeze and burst or a toilet overflows — and this leads to flooding, your flood insurance policy won’t apply. However, your homeowners’ policy should cover these types of losses. Ask your agent or broker to give you the lowdown.

Swimming Pools and Landscaping Aren’t Covered

If something goes wrong with a swimming pool on your property and this causes your home to sustain flood damage, your flood insurance policy won’t apply. Also, don’t expect any reimbursement for flood damage to flower beds, vegetable gardens, trees, or other landscaping on your property.

Small Floods Don’t Count

To be considered a flood, the water that causes damage must have covered at least two acres or have affected at least one other property. Also, if your home sustains any mold or mildew damage that you could have prevented from occurring, your policy won’t cover such damage.

Living Expenses or Business Interruption Aren’t Covered

Your flood insurance policy won’t pay you for any living expenses you may incur (such as renting a hotel room until your property is fixed). Also, you won’t recover any financial losses caused by business interruption (if you operated a business out of your home) or any other loss of your home’s use.

Money and Important Papers Aren’t Covered

Your policy won’t pay for the value of any currency, precious metals, stock certificates, and other valuable papers that get destroyed in a flood.

Improvements and Most Contents in Below-Ground Areas Aren’t Covered

Your flood insurance policy won’t cover any improvements you’ve made to your basement, such as finished walls or floors. Also, almost all personal property (including clothing, computers and electronic equipment, kitchen and office supplies, and furniture) located in basements or other areas of your home below the lowest elevated floor aren’t covered.

If You Want Coverage, Act Now

Unlike other types of insurance, flood insurance coverage doesn’t kick in on day one. With few exceptions, you must wait 30 days after you first purchase a flood insurance policy before your policy will take effect. So the longer you delay looking for coverage for your home, the greater your risk of suffering a loss before your policy is actually in place.

Even if the next hurricane season is months away, you could still benefit from getting a flood insurance policy sooner. In addition to damage from hurricanes, a flood insurance policy will also protect you from losses from other causes, such as heavy or prolonged rainstorms, coastal storm surges, snow melt, clogged storm drainage systems, levee dam failures, and mudslides.

Nathan H. Young
North Star Mortgage Network

Licensed Mortgage Lender

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Good news!! It might be worth talking to a lender about refinancing your mortgage. I recommend Jerri Hente with Megastar Financial. Jerri can be reached at (904) 674-4159.

Click here for full article.

When insurers stop writing insurance MIAMI – Aug. 31, 2010 – If Hurricane Earl flirts with the Florida coast, many property insurers will stop writing new policies. That, in turn, impacts homebuyers who need insurance to finalize their mortgage. Without insurance, they can’t get mortgage money; and without mortgage money, they can’t close.

Insurers have in-house rules about issuing new policies. For example, Florida’s property insurer, Citizens Property Insurance, stops writing policies in a wide area if a hurricane threatens. Some insurers rely on the National Weather Service to issue a storm watch or warning. If that happens, they stop writing policies in the potentially impacted areas.

In all cases, a homebuyer heading to closing while a hurricane threatens should contact his or her property insurance carrier to determine that company’s rules.

© 2010 Florida Realtors®

Great article with tips on protecting your privacy with the new Facebook Places application.

Click here to view.

Lots of good points in this article.

SAN FRANCISCO – Aug. 19, 2010 – According to Trulia.com’s American Dream survey on attitudes toward homeownership, 27 percent of renters do not plan to buy a home – ever. Of those renters who do plan to purchase someday, 68 percent said it would be more than two years before they do.

“Large numbers of people delaying their plans to buy a home, or not planning to buy at all, could have an enormous domino delaying effect on economic recovery in the U.S.,” says Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia. “Renters converting into buyers are crucial to turning around the housing slump, but the current economic crisis is causing people to become very hesitant to get off the fence and buy a home.”

According to the study, many Americans still maintain a core belief in the inherent value of owning a home: 72 percent believe homeownership is part of their American Dream. While it’s a decline from 77 percent six months ago, it shows that the American Dream of homeownership is still alive.

Nearly one in five Americans (19 percent) said that their attitude toward homeownership has grown more negative over the last six months; however, more Americans – 23 percent – said that their attitude toward owning a home has grown more positive in the same time frame.

Tipping factors: From renter to buyer in one year

Seventy-nine percent of renters who plan to buy homes one day said something could inspire them to buy a home within the next 12 months. The changes in circumstance most frequently cited as the “tipping factors” were: being able to save enough money for a downpayment, getting a new job, getting a promotion/raise, and interest rates staying low or getting even lower.

The McMansion Era is over

According to the survey, Americans are also veering away from the “McMansions” that grew popular before the recession. Adults who might buy a house displayed a preference for smaller homes, with only 9 percent saying their ideal home size is more than 3,200 square feet – the same number of who said they’d like their home to be between 800 and 1,400 square feet. Fifty-five percent of Americans would prefer a home between 1,401 and 2,600 square feet.

Harris Interactive conducted this July 2010 survey online within the United States via its QuickQuery online omnibus service on behalf of Trulia between July 22-26, 2010, among 2,055 U.S. adults aged 18 years and older. The sample included 1,345 homeowners and 663 renters. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

© 2010 Florida Realtors®

A new report from the National Association Of Realtors® (NAR) – Social Benefits of Homeownership and Stable Housing – explores the impact and positive social outcomes that result from homeownership.

According to NAR’s study, homeowners are more active in communities, benefit from improved education opportunities, and report higher levels of self-esteem and happiness compared to renters.

“Homeownership is in investment in your future – home is where we make memories, build our lives and feel comfortable and secure,” says NAR President Vicki Cox Golder. “Owning a home has long-standing government support in this country because homeownership benefits individuals and families, strengthens our communities and is integral to our nation’s economy.”

NAR’s study identifies research from government, industry and academia that looked at the relationship between homeownership and stable communities. Homeowners move far less frequently than renters, and therefore are embedded into the same neighborhood and community for a longer amount of time. This allows for social cohesion, ultimately resulting in social benefits and stronger communities.

“Realtors care as much about keeping families in their homes as they do about helping them find the home of their dreams,” said Golder. “Social benefits do not arise solely from ownership, but also from greater housing stability and social ties associated with less frequent moves among homeowners.”

Several research studies cited in the NAR report found that homeownership has a significant impact on educational achievement. The decision by teenage students to stay in school is higher for those raised by homeowners compared to renters. Access to economic and educational opportunities is also more prevalent in neighborhoods with high rates of homeownership. Furthermore, studies have shown that changing schools frequently due to moving negatively impacts a child’s educational outcome.

Civic participation is another social benefit resulting from homeownership and stable housing. Homeowners are more politically active and more likely to vote in local elections compared to renters. In addition, homeowners have a higher membership in voluntary organizations.

“The research shows that homeowners report higher self-esteem and happiness than renters, resulting in better overall health, both physically and psychologically,” says Golder.

When it comes to property, homeowners have more invested both financially and emotionally. Property crimes affect homeowners directly, but nonviolent property crimes can impact the property values of an entire neighborhood. Therefore, homeowners are more motivated to deter crime by forming and implementing voluntary crime-prevention programs. In addition, it’s easier for homeowners to recognize perpetrators in stable neighborhoods because of extensive social ties. Unstable neighborhoods often display social disorganization, which can lead to higher levels of crime.

Along with protecting their home and neighborhood from crime, homeowners spend more time and money maintaining their home than renters. Neighbors also influence other homeowners to improve their property, resulting in a better overall quality of the community.

“Homeownership certainly contributes to positive social outcomes, but those outcomes are truly a result of stable housing communities,” says Golder. “With strong social ties and a cohesive community, homeowners can enjoy not only the long-term financial benefit of owning a home, but also a more satisfying life – which is what’s really at the heart of the American Dream.”

© 2010 Florida Realtors®

WASHINGTON – Aug. 16, 2010 – Fannie Mae launched a new website to help consumers understand their options when facing foreclosure and the possible loss of their home. Called KnowYourOptions.com, it outlines the choices available to homeowners struggling to make mortgage payments, and provides guidance on how they can contact and work with their mortgage company to find a back-up plan.

KnowYourOptions.com provides information in both English and Spanish. Features include:

• Interactive Options Finder helps homeowners identify options.

• Calculators help borrowers understand how many of the options would work in their situation, including calculations about refinance, repayment, forbearance, and modification.

• Videos feature real homeowners discussing how they received help; others feature housing counselors giving advice.

• Forms – including a financial checklist and contact log – to help borrowers prepare for a meeting with their mortgage company or housing counselor.

• Information on refinancing, repayment plans, forbearance, modifications and Deed-for-Lease.

• Out-of-the-box alternatives, including short sales and deeds-in-lieu for homeowners who recognize that they can no longer afford their mortgages, but want to avoid a foreclosure on their credit history

More info: www.KnowYourOptions.com.

© 2010 Florida Realtors®

The amount of scholarly research conducted by university faculty members and subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals is widely used to compare academic quality between institutions. And according to one such ranking, the real estate program in the Florida State University College of Business (FSU) is among the very best in the world.

An article published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics – an academic journal for scholarly papers on real estate finance – places FSU’s real estate program at No. 2 in the world based on the number of research published in three core academic real-estate journals from 1973 to 2008. That represents a jump from the No. 26 spot that the program held in a previous ranking.

Only the University of Connecticut ranked ahead of Florida State. The University of Florida and the University of California-Berkeley held the No. 3 and 4 spots.

“The caliber of research in the real estate program is of the highest quality,” said Caryn L. Beck-Dudley, dean of the College of Business. “These rankings reflect an immense effort from the internationally acclaimed faculty and a dedication by private donors to enhance our program.”

This year, U.S. News & World Report ranked the undergraduate portion of the program No. 9 among public institutions in the United States, and No. 12 among both public and private institutions.

© 2010 Florida Realtors®