It’s been a long time since I took my agents exam, but if you look at your policy under exclusions you will find a phrase that goes along the lines of water, whether driven by wind or not.
Water is a named exclusion, one of the few in the policy, on your house.
Still sucks to be canceled.
Update: I took **Zakalwe’**s advice and called the OIR. They weren’t able to help that much, as they were practically flooded themselves with complaints/issues with State Farm.
However, I wrote a strongly worded letter (copied to the OIR, BBB, my elected representatives, and pretty much everyone else I could think of) and State Farm offered to pony up half the repair costs. We took the deal.
About a month and a half later State Farm decided to cancel all homeowners’ policies in Florida. The state government is currently looking into revoking their auto insurance charter.
And hanging some executives?
Hanging is considered cruel and unusual punishment even in Florida. More likely they’ll just be forced to live in homes covered by their own homeowners’ insurance policies.
Hopefully with broken air conditioners.
Damn, I can be mean.
Woew. I was reading and I could have sworn this thread sounded familiar. Then I saw my own ancient post. 
RNATB, who did you end up going with? We went with a company called Homewise through a Nationwide rep. Our premium is nearly half of our old Allstate premium, which is nice, but I have to admit that dumping our Allstate auto policies was the icing on the cake.
Tower Hill for homeowners’ insurance… Nationwide for auto.
How expensive is homeowner’s insurance in Florida? It’s got to be ungodly.
From what I’ve heard, policies being written right now are roughly twice as expensive as they were before the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season (Charley, Frances, etc.) I wasn’t a homeowner then, so I can neither confirm or deny.
In '04 we were paying $800 a year. In '08 we were paying $2200, but it was going up to $2800. Our new premium is $1300. The people on the coast are the ones that are getting killed. The same house in Palm Beach County would probably be near ten grand. Here in Orlando, we experienced weak Cat. 2/strong Cat. 1 winds with Charley, and that’s about as bad as it can get. Most damage was to mobile homes, roofs, and pool screens, rather than the total destruction seen on the coast, where it was a Cat. 4 at landfall.
During the height of the hurricane flooding, there was a lot of press stating that “windborne flooding” should have been covered. They denied all those claims, too. They are our homeowners insurance, but we don’t live in a flood zone. I heard Allstate did pretty much the same thing in the hurricane areas.
Nor do we.
bump
So we found a chunk of plaster on the floor of the garage today. Above it was a spot of wet drywall. At first I thought we might have a leaking water line in the attic since there is a vertical pipe leading up from the water heater into the area.
No such luck. Our roof is leaking, and probably has been since we took possession of the house. Oh, and two months ago our air conditioning unit, which was “good for another 5 years” per the home inspector, died. $5 grand for a new one (both the inside and outside units had to be replaced).
The entire roof (all the shingles, at least) will need to be replaced. The plywood under the shingles is rotting away.
So, looks like we’re going to sue the home inspector, since we’ve now had three major problems he failed to properly advise us of. We were able to pay to repair the first two issues out of pocket ($11k, total, although we wound up getting a $1500 settlement from State Farm).
Any advice?
I swear to God this whole story was part of a Carl Hiaasen novel.
Get a lawyer, sue, find out if your inspector has insurance to cover a claim, in no particular order?
Isn’t this new situation going to be made awful sticky due to the previous situation of a hurricane that did damage to your house?
Won’t the inspector just say that everything was fine when he looked at it, musta been the hurricane?
No. It was a tropical storm, rather than a hurricane, and winds were relatively mild; and according to the contractor, the damage is at least two or three years old.
Even if you get something, often times they are only liable for the fee you piad for the inspection.
According to the terms of the contract, that’s my understanding - but I would have assumed that the inspection company cannot disclaim negligence just by putting it in the contract.