Quick Read – The retiree who paid off the house to lock in low costs in retirement is now watching property insurance behave like a second mortgage. – Suze Orman has lived this.
On her podcast, she described her own Florida condo insurance jumping from about $5,000 a year to $28,000 a year. – The retiree who paid off the house to lock in low costs in retirement is now watching property insurance behave like a second mortgage
A 68-year-old single homeowner in coastal Florida, sitting on a $620,000 paid-off home, opened the 2026 renewal and saw the annual premium climb from roughly $4,200 in 2020 to over $14,200 this year. The mortgage is gone. The insurance bill is the new mortgage.
Suze Orman has lived this. On her podcast, she described her own Florida condo insurance jumping from about $5,000 a year to $28,000 a year, asking listeners point-blank whether Social Security could absorb that. Clark Howard has been blunter, calling the Florida insurance market “brutal” and saying that as an insurer, he wouldn’t write policies there either.