Summary
Home prices in Florida are dropping sharply, with Miami seeing a 12.4% decline, followed by Jacksonville (6.1%), Orlando (5.6%), and Tampa (5.5%).
This decline comes amid escalating climate risks and rising insurance costs, worsened by recent hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Florida’s insurance crisis—exacerbated by insurers leaving or going bankrupt—has made it increasingly difficult and expensive to insure homes, prompting some residents to sell flood-damaged properties “as is” to investors.
Despite these challenges, new construction continues in high-risk flood areas, heightening long-term vulnerabilities.
Ehhhh…
I mean, you can make houses that can handle hurricanes and flooding. They will cost more and may place some aesthetic constraints on the house, but it’s like fires or earthquakes or anything else; you can build to deal with it.
For flooding, you can elevate a house.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/203f772571cb48b1b8b50fdcc3272e2c
It looks like you can even modify an existing house, which I think is a little bonkers, but maybe it’s cheaper:
https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_elevating-your-house-chapter-5.pdf
You can also build buildings that will stand up to debris blown by high winds; heavier support, possibly concrete or steel frames.
I agree with the sentiment regarding, say, people who just keep rebuilding the same beach house after it gets wiped out by storms, but it is possible to have houses that can take rougher conditions. Just costs more.
EDIT: That being said, I would not personally want to move to Florida due to the humid and toasty summers and mosquitoes. Not my cup of tea.
But everyone’s got their own preferences.
That really only works though if everyone else is willing to spend that money and do it. You can bet Ron DeSantis won’t mandate it. In Galveston when one of the hurricanes hit, there was a picture of an entire part of town leveled except one house that was built for it. What happened? It still got condemned because the entire area was unlivable.
You can’t get flood insurance there, lol.
And good luck with regulations under a Trump presidency. Regulations cost money, and money belongs in the pockets of shareholders.
Now you just needs to elevate the roads and everything else you use in your daily life like supermarkets too.
Typical egocentric thinking, that as long as your house is OK, everything else doesn’t matter.
It’s this type of thinking that is the reason our country is so fucked.
“If climate change is so bad, I’ll just move somewhere else.” Yeah but what about all the billions of other people in affected areas?
“If you need an abortion, just fly to another state where it’s allowed.” Yeah but what about people that are too poor, in an abusive relationship, or need an abortion immediately?
“If we get rid of Obamacare, my insurance will be so much cheaper.” Yeah because they can immediately throw off anyone that actually relies on their insurance to stay alive.
The examples are literally endless. People vote like they’re the only person that exists and fuck everyone else. They’re the worst. And apparently there’s a whole lot of them.
Absolutely, USA has a very egocentric way of thinking. Probably in part because everybody is indoctrinated with individual freedom is more important than life. So sociopathy is celebrated as a virtue, because absolute lack of morality is freedom.
However more and more Americans are beginning to understand that there is also freedom in things like not having to worry about hospital bills. Which is freedom for the masses instead of freedom for the few that are rich.
They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should.