Florida Homeowners Are Trying to Offload Their Damaged Properties

Florida has more damaged properties up for sale than any other state in the country, according to data available on Zillow, revealing that homeowners in the Sunshine State are eager to unburden themselves from homes whose repairs could cost them greatly.

As of Thursday morning, there were a total of 202,545 properties listed on Zillow (including all types of properties from single-family and multi-family homes, to condos and lots of land) by agents in Florida. Of these, 963 were described as having some damage.

The number of damaged properties for sale was much higher than in states like California, New York and Texas. California had a total of 73,317 properties listed for sale on Zillow on Thursday morning, 38 of which were damaged. New York had 20 damaged properties up for sale for a total of 42,885, while Texas had 95 for a total of 176,756 properties for sale on Zillow.

Under Florida law, sellers are required to disclose any known defects or damages that could affect the property’s value. All three other states have similar requirements, with Texas obliging sellers to give written notice of all the defects in the property to the buyer. In New York, sellers must disclose any damage to the property before the purchasing contract is signed.

While Florida has more properties for sale in general compared to other states like California and Texas, because of its great number of vacation homes on the market, the numbers of damaged properties for sale were still proportionately bigger than in the other two states.

This is due to a combination of two factors: the vulnerability of Florida to extreme weather events like hurricanes and flooding and the ongoing insurance crisis in the state, which has brought premiums in the state to be among the highest in the nation.

Last year saw Hurricane Idalia make landfall in Florida as a high-end Category 3 storm in late August, leaving a path of destruction along its way. Mike Carballa, the Pasco county administrator, estimated then that between 4,000 to 6,000 local homes had been damaged by Idalia—for a total of $9.36 billion in insured property damages.

April and November 2023 saw record rainfall in respectively Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach County, with hundreds of homes reportedly suffering major damages.

Previous data from Redfin have shown that Floridians are willing to sell off their homes in the aftermath of extreme weather events. Months after Hurricane Ian—which destroyed an estimated 5,000 homes and damaged 30,000 more in September 2022—sales bounced back in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, as homeowners looked into moving to safer areas of the state.

The increasing vulnerability to extreme weather events of homes in parts of Florida, exacerbated by climate change, is bringing the cost of coverage up, making insurance unaffordable for many—especially as major private insurers have pulled up from the state in recent months, leaving residents with limited options.

Talking to Newsweek on a previous occasion, Florida Realtors chief economist Brad O’Connor said that, “for some people, [higher premiums] have changed their calculus in terms of affordability,” driving them to sell despite a high mortgage rates environment.

“We don’t have great data on exactly how much insurance rates are increasing in different parts of the state, but, anecdotally, we’ve received lots of complaints of pretty substantial increases. So I’m sure that’s something that’s going on and might be motivating some buyers or seller owners to list their properties,” he said.

Recent reporting from Newsweek showed that the Sunshine State recently had more “motivated” sellers than anywhere else in the country, with homeowners and agents willing to accept lower offers for their properties if that meant offloading them quickly.