The Federal Emergency Management Agency has unveiled its price increase updates.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Risk Rating 2.0 flood insurance calculation method caused an uproar among advocates and critics who said that homeowners were destined to send prices skyrocketing for thousands of property owners.
Homeowners in low-elevation coastal locations would be particularly affected, said critics.
FEMA has now released data that reveals where prices will be increasing and decreasing, based on county and ZIP codes. The Miami Herald conducted an analysis of the new data and determined that flood insurance prices will be skyrocketing by an average of 342 percent in an East Coast region known as Hell Gate.
The parts of the state in which ZIP codes will be facing the highest premiums will be the Key Biscayne part of Miami. Its rates will be as high as $7,000 per year on average, according to the Herald’s analysis.
The majority of Southeastern US ZIP codes will see some flood insurance rate increases.
In the northwestern part of the state, such as Pensacola, there will be a doubling of the average premium, from having been $639 per year rising to $1,293 per year.
That said, Florida is far from alone in terms of jumping premiums based on the latest FEMA changes to rates. For instance, in Louisiana, southwest of New Orleans in a place called Houma, the average premium will rise from $982 per year to $3,511.
Moreover, it isn’t only coastal areas affected by striking increases. In Albany Kentucky, an area that has experienced historic flooding across the last several years, prices will be headed through the roof from an average of $741 to an average of $4,597 per year, according to the data released by FEMA.
That said, Risk Rating 2.0 will also be lowering the premiums for other regions, based on the highly criticized flooding maps used by FEMA, in addition to other factors such as elevation, the distance of a home to a body of water, rainfall levels, and the cost of rebuilding. For instance, in one ZIP code of St. Petersburg, Florida, over 80 percent of the policies will be seeing a reduction in their rates.
