Why should the people in Florida - especially the renters here have to pay a Sales Tax increase of about 2.5%?
Question:
It seems to me that if they afford to live in these expensive homes they should be able to afford to pay for their insurance themselves!
No one helps me pay for my Auto Insurance that is through the roof here in this Insurance Company controlled State!
This is BS!
Answer:
OK, here's a little lesson about renters - they pay ALL of the property owner's expenses for the property they rent! Yep, you pay for the insurance, the property taxes, and the mortgage, so when your LANDLORD'S expenses go up, your rent goes up!!
Second newsflash - RENTERS HAVE HURRICANE CLAIMS! Yep, sometimes YOUR STUFF is damaged in a hurricane! If the place you live in is damage, you have to go live somewhere else, this is ADDITIONAL LIVING EXPENSE! And if you're a renter and don't have renters insurance, then 1. you're likely violating your lease and 2. You're not being financially responsible for yourself!!
And if you think your car insurance is bad in Florida . . . move to New Jersey. NJ has the highest auto insurance rates in the US, because the auto insurance industry is controlled by the GOVERNMENT.
And the direct answer to your question - because homeowners insurance rates have risen so drastically and fast in Florida for the past few years (what was $2,000 a year five years ago is now closer to $7,000 a year for a MODEST house) FL homeowners are NOT able to afford the premiums, and insurance companies STILL aren't wanting to write new business.
This means, people are being FORCED by the mortgage and insurance rates, to sell their houses in DROVES. THIS means, real estate prices are falling, in some cases lower than the mortgage balance on the houses . . .
To sum up, Florida is looking at a HUGE real estate bust coming up in the next year or so, which will shrivel up the FL economy for all the people living there. There will be lots of bankruptcies and lots and lots of vacant properties - and not many buyers.
The politicians are trying to do something to save the Florida economy. Too bad they don't realize, increased taxes never helps.
There are other states to live in
I think that is unfair to families living in rented homes. Do you have more info on the subject. dgon1329@yahoo.com
You are living there and using their resources, why shouldn't you contribute? Who pays for the rebuilding of the roads you drive on when destroyed by hurricanes? Almost all cities have sales tax add ons to pay for different projects - arenas, new school buildings, race tracks. I don't like football so why should I pay the tax increase in my city. My child goes to private schools so why should I have to pay taxes for public schools. Well you may not use the government money for your hurricane insurance but I bet that some day you will use a government resource for something that I paid taxes on and will never use. That is life. What comes around goes around. It is called paying it forward.
That's like me, being single and childless, asking why my taxes are being used to pay for schools.
You don't have to like it; it's just the way it is.
Incidentally, renters DO have hurricane claims, too. Although the amounts of the loss are typically smaller for the renters themselves, that doesn't mean that the owners of the rental property don't have claims. And pretty hefty ones.
Sure, you could argue that's not your problem. But one way or another, you're going to pay for that increase, whether it's an increase in rent to cover the extra costs for the owners, or a tax increase.
Just like in my original example... though I may not have children, there is certainly some value provided to me by the fact that we're educating the next generation.
The value to you, in this case, is protection from a rent increase (likely of astronomical proportions.)
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