Severe weather has some snowbirds leaving Florida, others battening down the hatches

When Julie Riddell and her husband, Gerry, bought their Fort Myers, Fla., vacation property in 2009, it didn’t cross their mind that they might be buying in a hurricane-prone area.

“But for at least eight years, we’ve been seeing a lot more action and more frequency (of storms),” the Toronto resident said.

Riddell’s Florida property, situated inland, has been a winter getaway and spot for family vacations for years.

While she loves heading down south, Riddell said the cost of insurance premiums have drastically gone up over the years, almost quadrupling since they first bought the property as severe storms threaten communities in coastal regions.

Cleanup efforts are continuing on Florida’s west coast after two hurricanes made landfall in recent weeks.

However, it appears Canadian snowbirds are divided on whether they want to stay or rethink their decision to own property in the state as worsening weather and surging property costs become a bigger fact of life.

For Riddell, these issues haven’t yet persuaded her to sell.

She said her Florida neighbours are like her “second family.”

“I see more people when I’m in Florida in the winter than I do here (in Toronto),” Riddell said.

She added, “In Toronto, it’s like, I see my neighbour when he puts out the garbage and then that’s it.”

The Riddells have however had to make investments to secure their property against severe weather, such as by maintaining hurricane shutters.

“I’ll have to spend more money making sure … we have the defences in place for another catastrophic (event),” Julie said.

“I’m going to dig in like a lot of Floridians do,” she added.

“We’re not leaving.”

Hurricane seasons are getting more intense as oceans get warmer. When Helene plowed through Florida roughly two weeks ago, it was the seventh Category 4 or stronger storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in eight years. That’s more than triple the average annual rate of such monster landfalls in the U.S. since 1950, according to a data analysis by The Associated Press.

Two years ago, Hurricane Ian caused about $60 billion in insured damages in Florida, where many communities and local businesses are still recovering from the destruction.

Martin Kinal, a Mississauga, Ont., resident, sold his Venice, Fla., vacation home earlier this year. Though his property is more inland and less susceptible to floods, he had a close encounter with Hurricane Ian.

“Ian was the last one and while our home and city sustained very little wind damage … we did have water reach our front doorstep,” Kinal said in an email.

“One more step and it would have been inside our home.”

Kinal said one of his Florida neighbours decided to move to Arizona the following year because they realized “sooner or later, one will hit our area.”

“We decided to sell in May this year due to costs associated with keeping a vacation home in Florida,” he said. “Since the pandemic hit, cost of everything seems to double.”

As the frequency of storms hitting the coast of Florida increases, some insurance companies have significantly hiked premiums, limited their policy offerings or pulled out of the region all together.

Nine insurers have been declared insolvent or merged into other companies in Florida since 2021. Average annual property insurance premiums jumped 42 per cent last year to $6,000 in Florida, compared with a national average in the U.S. of $1,700, an AP analysis said.

Kris Rossignoli, a cross-border financial planner at Cardinal Point, said owning a second home in Florida requires thinking about more than whether you can afford to buy and pay the mortgage.

“It’s now, ‘Can I afford the price of the home plus all of the additional insurance that comes with the home, and especially flood insurance,” he said.

Upkeep of vacation homes is also getting more expensive because of the rising price of building materials and property caretakers, as well as more frequent maintenance, Rossignoli said

“A lot of Canadians couldn’t go down … to prepare their (Florida) homes for this storm,” he said. “You either have to have really good neighbours or you hire third-party services to do that.”

While that’s stretching the financial equation of owning a second home, Rossignoli said it still seems viable when compared with the cost of long-term rentals in Florida.

Ontario resident Ray Ferris, who owns a property in Treasure Island, Fla., says he’s concerned about what he will find when he heads south this winter. But he adds that he’s eager to get down there and help the city rebuild.

Ferris and his wife spend two to three months a year at their vacation condo, which they bought in 2021, to escape the gloomy northern winters.

For the rest of the year, they rent it out, but the latest storms could impact that.

Ferris said renting out the condo helps keep up with condo fees, ongoing maintenance and insurance but he’s now worried he won’t be able to find renters.

“We’re now concerned that nobody is going to vacation on Treasure Island, if it is in fact a ghost town,” he said.

Ferris said he has “second-guessed” his decision to buy a condo on the beach on the Gulf of Mexico when tracking storms but isn’t convinced that it’s time to sell.

“It’s almost a fact of life you have to accept if you’re going to live on the water,” he said.

Meanwhile, for Riddell, selling her vacation property will have to meet a high bar.

“If I see a cow flying and my house (is) up in the sky, it’s time to move,” she said.

With files from The Associated Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2024.