Storms Be Damned, Florida Keeps Building in High-Risk Areas [View all]

Driving through the mess left behind by the twin hurricanes that slammed Florida, it doesn’t take long to pass a construction site for another batch of new homes. Among them is La Linda Estates, which is being built in a high-risk flood zone on a barrier island near where Milton made landfall.

Florida built 77,000 new properties in high-risk flood areas since 2019, the most in the nation, according to an analysis by climate-modeling firm First Street Foundation for The Wall Street Journal.

The building binge is putting the real-estate industry, and the banks that finance it, on a collision course with insurers.

The new construction is one reason insurance bills for Milton and Helene are expected to be between $40 billion and $75 billion, according to ratings firm Morningstar DBRS. Big payouts from natural disasters are driving insurers to raise raises and pull back on coverage.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/florida-flood-zones-development-0593cdb9?st=gmyEjt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink