By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
Florida Senate Republican Blaise Ingoglia says he’s contemplating filing legislation next year that would provide tax exemptions for homeowners who modernize their homes to make them more resistant to storms.
Speaking during the 2024 Florida Chamber of Commerce’s annual insurance conference in Orlando last week, the incoming chair of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee proposed providing a 15-to-20-year tax freeze on homes built in the mid-1990s and earlier if homeowners retrofit to meet elevation and wind code standards.
“If we can get those older homes to be more resilient, it will save local governments a lot of money,” Ingoglia said, according to Newsweek. “And the most important thing, from the homeowners’ perspective, they will have a home that is now resilient, that they don’t have to pay a ton of money for insurance premiums.”
As of the writing of this piece, Ingoglia had yet to file any legislation for the 2025 session, which starts on March 4.
Insurance crisis
Florida lawmakers have passed a variety of reforms in the past few years to address the property insurance crisis, and Ingoglia says they’ve made a difference.
“Homeowners’ insurance has definitely bent the cost curve back down, and I would argue that if it wasn’t for those reforms, we would have continued to see increases in insurance prices,” he said in Tallahassee. “Things still need to be done, but a lot of this is also education and the fact that a lot of people’s insurance premiums have gone up because their cost replacements on their homes have gone up.”
He elaborated.
“When you have homes that pre-COVID were $200,000 that are now $400,000, it’s only natural that your insurance premiums are going to go up. Our job is to make sure that the insurance companies are being held accountable. (That) they’re not overcharging, they’re doing what they’re contractually supposed to be doing, and at the same time get all of the waste, fraud, and abuse out of the system so homeowners can expect the lowest rates possible.”
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Banner photo: U.S. Airmen assigned to the Florida Air National Guard clear roads in Keaton Beach after the landfall of Hurricane Helene on Sept. 27. (Staff Sgt. Jacob Hancock/The National Guard, CC BY 2.0, via flickr).
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