Florida Shooters Network

neonnight34609 wrote:what i meant by "once a rental always a rental" is that MOST renters dont care. the house will USUALLY get trashed and patched up between renters. i figured a "sinkhole" house was the way to go buy them CHEAP, property taxes are HALF because they are sink holed . its always gonna be worth what i payed for it even if i sold it to a "sink hole" repair company. right now they are making me money and i feel good about it.

Thanks. I was wondering about a technicality. What you say is true according to my wife. She has a house in Lakeland she rented out for about 10 years and says there are two kinds of tenants: one keeps your house nice but doesn't pay the rent; the other pays the rent but trashes your house. We stopped renting it about 3 years ago after the last tenant moved out, at which time my wife found out what "Mopar blue" looks like; there was a smear of it on the dining room wall and the carpets were consistent with engine work. We gutted and renovated everything from roof to floors with the intention of having a place there in case her parents need us but will likely put it up for sale when the market comes back a bit. No more renting out. Anyway, thanks for the info.

poloboy821 wrote:

Onree wrote:Very interesting. My luck, I'd return from work to find all my belongings at the bottom of a watery hole.

Renters insurance is a must if you are a renter. Shit i wish i would come home and find half my shit under water. Cash in on my 50k worth of insurance and buy new stuff

I can only image that sink hole coverage is as outrageous for renters as it is for home owners.

even if you drop your sink hole coverage your still covered for catastrophic so if you do come home to a hole with your house in it your covered no matter what

Foreclosures have been all but "ON HOLD" for the last year+ because the banks were waiting to see what the foreclosure settlement between the big 5 banks and the Obama Administration looked like. Now that that has settled the talking heads / experts on TV say that ALL the banks will start ramping up foreclosures and you could see millions of homes hitting the market every year for the next 5 or 6 years.

That kind of supply dumped on the market annually is going to knock home values and for sale prices even lower. You're going to be seeing more and more homes for sale and prices will start to slip. Most "buyers" are holding of making purchases because most indications are that the proverbial bottom of the housing market is still a few years away.

But be ready because there are great bargains popping up out there that investors will jump all over if individuals don't.

Ditto for the 2 preceding psts. Total sinkhole coverage is outrageous because of technical problems that make it impossible to say subsidence damage isn't cause by sinkholes. So the insurance companies got ripped off. Catastrophic damage is something else and very obvious so its cheap and usually just a part of the policy.

And yes, prices are going to drop more.

this makes me giggle

jjk308 wrote:So the insurance companies got ripped off.

jjk308 wrote:Ditto for the 2 preceding psts. Total sinkhole coverage is outrageous because of technical problems that make it impossible to say subsidence damage isn't cause by sinkholes. So the insurance companies got ripped off. Catastrophic damage is something else and very obvious so its cheap and usually just a part of the policy.

And yes, prices are going to drop more.

On the flip side the insurance companies lobbied for and got a new law that screws people with actual sinkhole damage (like me). Instead of just denying claims and using evidence to show that a home didn't have sinkhole damage if it wound up in the tort stage they instead put a law in place that says that even if you have a sinkhole "too bad, so sad" to the home owner unless the house completely collapses. Now why should the insurance company have to pay if there is a sinkhole but the house hasn't collapsed? Because the contract that both parties, willingly and with out pressure or reservations, entered into clearly states "repair and replace". If you have a home that does sit on a sinkhole and therefore has damage (else wise you would not be making a claim) the home owner at best will lose 2/3rds of the value of the home, even if the structure is grouted and pinned. That loss of value will never be recovered. This is not the case when a home is repaired due to fire or hurricane damage for example. So because the insurance companies did not want to live up to their side of the contract homeowners got bent over and butt hammered with out the benefit of lube or the courtesy of a reach around. The homeowners are now stuck in their homes due to never being able to sell the home at a price that will even satisfy the mortgage. No I am not talking about the re-fis that were done for 150% or the ARMs that people entered into. I'm talking about the regular old fixed rate mortgage with out all the pitfalls. The insurance industry constantly cries wolf. They complain about the costs of hurricanes while posting great profits and using those excuses to raise our rates and dump customers. At the same time they play a card game so that XYZ Insurance Company sets up a Florida only division while the other 49 states are covered by the main XYZ Insurance Company. That's how they claim Poor Richard. They complain about the costs of medical malpractice insurance rates due to "frivolous lawsuits". Yet when under oath before the state senate they confirm that there really isn't an issue with that and that Florida is one of their most profitable states. They just keep raising the rates.

So I have no sympathy for the insurance companies and the bullshit that they pull.

did you make a claim prior to the "new law" if so then your still under the old law with your old policy.. IF you didnt and you made a claim after the "new law" did your insurance company contact you and send you a new policy stating what the "new law" is ? i totally agree with that you wrote but i hope that you know your rights and didnt just take their word for it.

HES wrote:

jjk308 wrote:Ditto for the 2 preceding psts. Total sinkhole coverage is outrageous because of technical problems that make it impossible to say subsidence damage isn't cause by sinkholes. So the insurance companies got ripped off. Catastrophic damage is something else and very obvious so its cheap and usually just a part of the policy.

And yes, prices are going to drop more.

On the flip side the insurance companies lobbied for and got a new law that screws people with actual sinkhole damage (like me). Instead of just denying claims and using evidence to show that a home didn't have sinkhole damage if it wound up in the tort stage they instead put a law in place that says that even if you have a sinkhole "too bad, so sad" to the home owner unless the house completely collapses. Now why should the insurance company have to pay if there is a sinkhole but the house hasn't collapsed? Because the contract that both parties, willingly and with out pressure or reservations, entered into clearly states "repair and replace". If you have a home that does sit on a sinkhole and therefore has damage (else wise you would not be making a claim) the home owner at best will lose 2/3rds of the value of the home, even if the structure is grouted and pinned. That loss of value will never be recovered. This is not the case when a home is repaired due to fire or hurricane damage for example. So because the insurance companies did not want to live up to their side of the contract homeowners got bent over and butt hammered with out the benefit of lube or the courtesy of a reach around. The homeowners are now stuck in their homes due to never being able to sell the home at a price that will even satisfy the mortgage. No I am not talking about the re-fis that were done for 150% or the ARMs that people entered into. I'm talking about the regular old fixed rate mortgage with out all the pitfalls. The insurance industry constantly cries wolf. They complain about the costs of hurricanes while posting great profits and using those excuses to raise our rates and dump customers. At the same time they play a card game so that XYZ Insurance Company sets up a Florida only division while the other 49 states are covered by the main XYZ Insurance Company. That's how they claim Poor Richard. They complain about the costs of medical malpractice insurance rates due to "frivolous lawsuits". Yet when under oath before the state senate they confirm that there really isn't an issue with that and that Florida is one of their most profitable states. They just keep raising the rates.

So I have no sympathy for the insurance companies and the bullshit that they pull.

neonnight34609 wrote:did you make a claim prior to the "new law" if so then your still under the old law with your old policy.. IF you didnt and you made a claim after the "new law" did your insurance company contact you and send you a new policy stating what the "new law" is ? i totally agree with that you wrote but i hope that you know your rights and didnt just take their word for it.

I filed my claim about a 18 months before the legislation passed. The insurance company agreed that there was a sink hole extending 40' below my house. Things were proceeding a pace for a settlement until about a year before the legislation passed. Then things came to a grinding halt. Why? Because they had a jackass legislator who was on their dole who they knew would introduce the bill they crafted. They knew that had enough legislators in the pocket before the session even started to know that the bill would pass. In fact it was eerily similar to the open carry debacle. So our insurance companies all did the same thing that all the insurance companies started to do...offered a pittance for only repairing and did their best to drag out the process. Folks like me had a choice, accept or fight. We chose to fight to get them to live up to their end of the contract. We lawyered up, fought the good fight, and still got slammed. The legislation passed. Our insurance company laughed and offered a bit more. The arbiter decided on a bit more than that (structural). The judge decided on his amount for the cosmetics. No where near the legal definition of repair and replace, no where near to satisfying the contractual terms. So here we sit, in a house that was bought in 2002 for $215,000. We didn't do any thing stupid, played by the rules, made our payments faithfully. Now it's probably worth at best $70,000 despite the repairs we did. We will never get out of this house, regardless of the current condition of the housing market. So hopefully you'll understand why I have no patience for the cries of "Oh we have to protect the insurance companies" and "We're going broke". They are balled faced lies and are simply strawmen for more profits at the expense of the customers. There is fraud a plenty, being perpetuated by the insurance companies.

Sinkhole Law changes - Tampa Bay Times:

Highlights of the new insurance law

Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday signed SB 408 into law. Among other things, the law:

• Allows insurance companies to limit sinkhole coverage to primary structures.

• Allows insurance companies to increase rates by up to 15 percent to cover reinsurance costs.

• Shortens the window for filing windstorm and hurricane claims from five years to three years after a storm hits.

• Allows insurance companies to hold back replacement value payments on home damage until after repairs have been made.


No big deal for legitimate sinkhole claims and the last is the biggest, requiring repairs before paying instead of just letting you walk off with the money. My guess is that the insurance companies are getting very hardnosed about non-catastrophic sinkhole claims, the lawyers who flocked to the previous easy money in handling sinkhole claims often don't have the ability to fight for their clients, and the sinkhole repair companies are still ripping people off.

I've seen a few homes with "sinkhole" damage. Back in Virginia we would have called it settlement cracks. This has been a major abuse of the system by most everyone concerned and the people who are going to suffer are those with serious, legitimate damage. As for the "morality" there doesn't seem to be much, certainly not on the side of the insurance companies. We're sitting in a mortgage free house, paid off with the proceeds of a suit against our car insurance company because they tried to rip us off on an uninsured motorist claim.

my question is HOW ARE THEY BEING FIXED? and do i get to pick what company fixes my house? grout is not a "fix" its a patch. i would have no problem with my house being fixed if it was under pined and fixed right.

jjk308 wrote:Sinkhole Law changes - Tampa Bay Times:

Highlights of the new insurance law

Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday signed SB 408 into law. Among other things, the law:

• Allows insurance companies to limit sinkhole coverage to primary structures.

• Allows insurance companies to increase rates by up to 15 percent to cover reinsurance costs.

• Shortens the window for filing windstorm and hurricane claims from five years to three years after a storm hits.

• Allows insurance companies to hold back replacement value payments on home damage until after repairs have been made.


No big deal for legitimate sinkhole claims and the last is the biggest, requiring repairs before paying instead of just letting you walk off with the money. My guess is that the insurance companies are getting very hardnosed about non-catastrophic sinkhole claims, the lawyers who flocked to the previous easy money in handling sinkhole claims often don't have the ability to fight for their clients, and the sinkhole repair companies are still ripping people off.

I've seen a few homes with "sinkhole" damage. Back in Virginia we would have called it settlement cracks. This has been a major abuse of the system by most everyone concerned and the people who are going to suffer are those with serious, legitimate damage. As for the "morality" there doesn't seem to be much, certainly not on the side of the insurance companies. We're sitting in a mortgage free house, paid off with the proceeds of a suit against our car insurance company because they tried to rip us off on an uninsured motorist claim.

It is a big deal for legitimate sinkhole claims because you can have a sinkhole under your house, your house can have damage (in my case major cracks over 1/4" wide, windows & doors that wouldn't operate, variations in the slab, etc..) and it is still inhabitable. What the article doesn't state is that the only way that a home owner can make a claim for a sinkhole is if the county condemns the house as being unsafe. See what I wrote about the terms of the contract that both parties willingly entered into with full knowledge. Look at what I posted about the legal definition of "repair and replace." The insurance companies wanted out of that with their existing policies. They got it. I just wish we had as much luck as you had. Sorry you had to endure that to begin with.

neonnight34609 wrote:my question is HOW ARE THEY BEING FIXED? and do i get to pick what company fixes my house? grout is not a "fix" its a patch. i would have no problem with my house being fixed if it was under pined and fixed right.

Depends. We chose to pin instead of grout. Even that doesn't come with a life time warranty. At 10 years though it is better than grouting. My experience, and based on what I read at part of my ordeal is that you do have the choice as to which method you use to re-mediate the problem. This is no different than if you had to get your car repaired. You do not have to use the company of their choice. Even if the engineering study suggests grouting (as ours did) you can still chose to go with pinning. What matters is the professional engineers report that states the structure has been stabilized and the immediate problem has been re-mediated.

HES wrote:[ The insurance companies wanted out of that with their existing policies. They got it. I just wish we had as much luck as you had. Sorry you had to endure that to begin with.

Insurance policies only run for a year anyway. We just got non-renewed by Castle Key, the Allstate subsidiary, which is trying to reduce its windstorm exposure. No biggie, since we didn't marry that insurance company and can easily find another. And at least it was more honest than State Farm raising its rates to the point of insanity.

As for collecting, the trauma was the accident, when a driver with minimal insurance ran into my wife, no fault of our insurance company. Our idiot insurance company then claimed the accident wasn't covered, because of prior injuries from other accidents. But they'd insured us for THOSE accidents, and kept us as policyholders with their full knowledge. What they didn't consider was that the lawyer we were using was a "Bad Faith" expert, and he jumped on them like a lion on an antelope and tore them a new one.

supertones31 wrote:

Onree wrote:Do you notify the renters about the possible/current sinkhole?

If not, does that expose you to risk in the case of someone getting injured due to a sinkhole opening up?

I'm sure if you do a contract it's in the paperwork somewhere, if they don't read it, it's on them! And anyways, that's what you have insurance for!

Also, I'm sure someone who is renting is more concerned w/ "What! a 3/2 for $750, deal!" not "Oh, what's the catch?" If they were intelligent they wouldn't be renters. Just my 2 cents.

Ummm...yeah... I don't know how much awareness you have of the world's current economic situation or even that of the United States. Re-read the first post. The man's house was just auctioned at foreclosure. There are many, many others on this forum facing the same predicament. You imply that it would have been more intelligent to buy a house in the last 5-7 years? Let me hazard a guess: You are in Real Estate? I've got news for you. Unless you are paying cash, you don't "own" a house- you are just making monthly rental payments to a bank instead of a private party. Try not making those payments for about 4 months and see how much you really "own". And you signed a non-negotiable 15 or 30 year lease. In a deteriorating market. While the neighborhood and surrounding areas are in flux all around you. That would have been really intelligent. I feel so silly for having dodged all that joy by selling my house and renting since 2006.