Florida News That Impacts You – January 16th, 2024
Bottom Line: Your daily recap of the biggest news from around the state that impacts you in South Florida.
- There’s another sign that the reforms passed through the previous two state legislative sessions have begun to work. A Sun Sentinel analysis shows a 13% decline in property insurance lawsuits with Florida’s top insurers year-over-year, including a decline of 19.5% from the peak two years ago. The decline figures to be even larger this year, as there was a rush of litigation filed at the beginning of last year to beat the timetable to file lawsuits prior to reforms taking effect. Florida accounted for 76% of all property insurance lawsuits despite accounting for only 8% of in force policies at the peak of litigation abuses within the state. Related...
- The emergence and reemergence of property insurers into Florida during the second half of 2023 pushed hundreds of thousands of Floridians off of Citizens, the state’s insurer of last resort, back over to private insurers. There will be much more of the same this year. A new estimate from the Insurance Information Insitute suggests an additional 600,000 Floridians with Citizen's policies will be moved to private insurers this year. After peaking with just under 1.5 million policies last year, Citizens ended the year with 1.1 million active policies.
- Temperatures will be well above the seasonal norms today by 7 to 11 degrees with highs in the upper 70’s to low 80’s throughout the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast in advance of another cold front which is expected to make its way into our area later tonight along with some additional rain on the front end of the system.
- Gas prices fell through the weekend. The average price statewide for regular unleaded is $3.07 per gallon - 8 cents lower than a week ago. In Palm Beach County the average price is $3.29 per gallon, in Martin the average is $3.21 and in Indian River County the average is $3.07 per gallon.