Over one in three flood policyholders in New Jersey will be impacted by changes taking effect tomorrow.
A huge number of residents of New Jersey, including homeowners insurance customers who are still recovering from the damage left behind from Hurricane Sandy, are going to be impacted by the massive changes to the federal flood coverage program that will be going into effect tomorrow.
It is predicted that one in every three flood policyholders in New Jersey will feel these changes.
Although the primary home insurance policies, themselves, won’t be directly impacted, it is the ones that are owned for secondary homes, summer homes, cottages, and houses that have experienced chronic flooding (as well as businesses in the same situation) that will be seeing sharp increases in their rates starting first thing tomorrow. This could mean that the premiums will be driven up by more than $10,000 per year, for many people.
This homeowners insurance shift will impact all policyholders across the U.S. though N.J property owners will be hit hardest.
The residents of the state will be feeling it in a disproportionate way compared to other homeowners insurance customers across the country, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s data analysis as conducted by the Press of Atlantic City.
Within this state, the policyholders will be experiencing the largest hikes in their coverages, according to the analysis. Over 1,600 primary homeowners insurance customers in Atlantic City, for example, as well as over 1,000 residing in Little Egg Harbor Township are going to be impacted by this change. Among the 10 towns that are located in the state, that have the residents who will be most heavily affected, 7 are located in South Jersey.
That said, this still isn’t the state where homeowners insurance customers will be hit the hardest in the country. Florida currently holds the top spot for feeling the pain that will be occurring tomorrow for homeowners insurance customers whose flood coverage will be spiking, in terms of the number of residents that will be affected. In Florida, 13 percent (268,000) of all policies will be affected. New Jersey has the second place spot, at 88,000 policies (representing 37 percent of the total flood coverage in the state).
