Homeowners Insurance in Fort Myers, Florida

The white sandy beaches of Fort Myers and nearby Sanibel Island make it easy to want a vacation to turn into a residence. It’s no surprise the city is a popular destination for retirees and tourists. 

The relaxed living of the city comes at a bit of a price, though, when you look at its homeowners insurance rates. The prime location on the Gulf of Mexico exposes the town to severe weather, which doesn’t bode well for premiums. Let’s take a good look at the cost of homeowners insurance in Fort Myers.

Home insurance in Fort Myers costs $1,382 yearly, although rates will vary based on location, home value, and more. You’ll likely pay more if you’re closer to the coast. 

Florida tends to have some of the highest homeowners insurance prices in the nation. The average in Fort Myers might be fairly low on the whole, as pictured in the following table, but averages don’t always tell the whole picture.

It can be hard to capture all aspects of a premium’s price point with an average. Some major factors that will cause your rate to vary include your home’s replacement cost, age, and wind mitigation features.

Your home’s value is integral to your premiums. Providers calculate it based on the cost to rebuild your house according to construction, labor, and materials expenses. This is called your home’s replacement cost. Larger, more extravagant houses will cost more to build and more to insure.

Insurance premiums on older homes in Fort Myers tend to be higher than those on newer homes. Older homes that aren’t up to the latest building codes and potentially lack wind mitigation features can suffer weather damage more easily. Additionally, older dwellings can have dated elements, such as roofing and piping, that are more prone to failure. As a result, insurers tend to charge higher premiums to older houses.

Citizens Insurance is one of the largest providers in the state, and it’s usually among the most affordable. According to the numbers above, it has some of the cheapest average premiums in Fort Myers. 

After unprecedented hurricanes hit Florida in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many insurers were either bankrupted by the number of claims filed or stopped writing new policies afterward due to the increased risk.

To remedy the resulting insurance issue, the Florida government founded Citizens, a non-profit “insurer of last resort” to cover homes in Florida that would prove to be unreasonably expensive to insure or entirely uninsurable. Private companies didn’t want to take on the risk in Florida, so the state government had to create a new option.

While it’s generally more affordable, Citizens has its coverage limitations. Since it’s state-funded and state-managed, policyholders with Citizens are at the mercy of state regulations. For example, if the company has a deficit, Florida law requires Citizens to make up the money, usually through assessments or rate hikes. Also, homes above a certain value aren’t eligible to acquire Citizens Insurance. 

Nevertheless, Citizens is prevalent in Fort Myers because many homes in the city are especially susceptible to weather-related risks we’ll discuss in-depth a little later on.

Several factors other than wind mitigation come into effect when looking for a homeowners policy. These include:

The effects of these factors, as well as other small-scale contributors, can make determining the cost of a typical premium tricky. Additionally, for those looking to buy in Fort Myers, there are a few other region-specific concerns that affect premiums there:

A standard homeowners insurance policy doesn’t cover flooding. This could be a concern to Fort Myers residents considering many areas of the city are located in federally designated flood zones. Florida always receives a lot of rainfall residents of southern Fort Myers reported nearly unprecedented levels of rain in recent years.

The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) creates flood maps for the United States that determine the flooding risk level of areas around the country. Much of the residential land along the Caloosahatchee River and areas around downtown Fort Myers are AE flood zones. Parts of southern Fort Myers are in AH flood zones.

Several areas of Lee County, including parts of Fort Myers Beach, are at risk of losing their FEMA flood insurance discounts. The decision hasn’t been finalized and could affect thousands of homeowners in the area who would lose their 25% discount on flood insurance.

Insurance costs more in high-risk areas. While a flood policy is optional with your home insurer, your mortgage lender might require you to get one if you live in an especially high-risk zone.

Yes, Fort Myers does experience sinkholes, but not very often. While Florida is the most sinkhole-prone state in the country, the northern and central parts of the state are where they’re most pervasive. The limestone under the earth that wears away and causes sinkholes isn’t as common under Fort Myers.

However, natural sinkholes are still a possibility and have happened in the area before. A standard homeowners policy doesn’t cover sinkholes. Earth movements are usually excluded in homeowners insurance because it focuses on the physical structures of a property. A physical structure can be given a replacement cost and insured for that amount. It would be difficult to assess the monetary value of land under someone’s house.

If your property is damaged by a sinkhole, it’s likely not covered unless you purchase optional sinkhole coverage or the damage is very severe. Florida is one of only a few states that require insurers to cover “catastrophic ground cover collapse.” 

For an earth movement, like a sinkhole, to be considered catastrophic ground cover collapse and necessitate coverage from an insurance company, it has to meet certain strict criteria. This includes making the home unlivable and being ordered to evacuate the home.

Fort Myers sits on the west coast of Florida, touching the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes love the warm waters and temperatures of the Gulf, so residents of Fort Myers must always be wary of hurricanes come hurricane season, like Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Homeowners insurance covers hurricane damage, but it comes at a bit of a price in Florida. The mere danger of severe weather hikes up premium prices, and homeowners must also pay a hurricane deductible, which is different than a standard homeowners insurance deductible when filing a hurricane damage claim.

A hurricane deductible is usually more costly since it’s typically based on a percentage of dwelling coverage. But, if you have to file multiple claims because your home was damaged more than once in a season, you only have to pay the hurricane deductible once.

Wind mitigation can help mightily in reducing rates. While there’s an upfront cost, the savings you’d experience in the long-term will likely make wind mitigation a worthy investment. This could involve updating your roof, windows and doors; to know where to start, you should have a wind mitigation inspection done by a certified inspector on your home.

Another way to save money is by comparing rates. Finding a plan that covers you at the right price can seem daunting, but Clovered tries to make it as intuitive as possible. Clovered’s online quote engine allows you to build an insurance policy that fits your life and compare the cost of this plan from several top providers. Clovered was built to help people make good decisions about insurance quickly and efficiently.