Many Florida families discover their home insurance is underinsured at the worst possible time, usually after a storm. And it can sneak up even in a year of good news. There’s an encouraging headline for homeowners this season: after several years of steep increases, home and auto rates are leveling off. But there’s a quieter story underneath. The cost to actually rebuild your home keeps climbing, and if your policy limits haven’t kept pace, your coverage may no longer reflect what it would take to rebuild today.

In the Tampa Bay area, midsummer also means the most active stretch of hurricane season is just ahead. That makes the next few weeks a sensible window to sit down, look at your coverage, and ask a few questions while there’s still time to make changes, long before a storm is ever in the forecast.

If your home is underinsured, your policy’s dwelling limit may cap a claim payout below what rebuilding actually costs, leaving you to cover the difference out of pocket. Depending on the policy, falling well below your home’s replacement value may also affect how certain claims are settled. The gap typically stays invisible until a major claim is filed, which is why reviewing your dwelling limit regularly, and especially before storm season, matters

Insurance is easy to put off until the moment you need it, and by then your options narrow quickly. Most carriers will not let you add or change coverage once a named storm is approaching, and new policies often come with a waiting period before they take effect. July sits in a useful spot on the calendar: the heaviest weather is still in front of us, any summer projects that changed your home’s value are fresh, and you have room to make adjustments calmly rather than under pressure. The National Hurricane Center and Ready.gov are good places to track conditions and build a household plan alongside your coverage review.

After years of difficult renewals, the pricing picture shifted meaningfully this past year.

• Homeowners rate increases averaged 8.3%, down sharply from 13.5% the year before.
• Auto rate increases averaged just 3.7%, a steep drop from 9.7% a year earlier.

According to a recent AM Best report, rate changes for both lines have moved back toward pre-pandemic levels. Calmer claims trends, stronger insurer results, and relief from landfalling hurricanes all played a part. For many households, that means the runaway increases of recent years have eased.

If you’ve been bracing for another double-digit jump at renewal, that’s a welcome change, and a reason to review your coverage now while the conversation isn’t dominated by price.

Steadier premiums don’t mean rebuilding has gotten cheaper. It hasn’t.

The latest Verisk 360Value reconstruction cost analysis found that total U.S. reconstruction costs rose 3.6% over the past year, and residential rebuilding costs went up in every state. While material prices have cooled, labor remains the pressure point: skilled trades like masons, carpenters, and HVAC technicians are in short supply and commanding higher wages. In storm-prone markets, that demand spikes even higher after a major weather event, when many homeowners are repairing at once.

The takeaway is simple: the dollar figure it would take to rebuild your home keeps inching upward, year after year. A coverage limit that fit a few years ago may now fall short of today’s rebuilding reality, and the gap tends to be widest right when a community is recovering from a storm.

“After more than 85 years in St. Petersburg, we’ve seen how quickly rebuilding costs can move,” said Mark Berset, CEO of Comegys Insurance Agency. “The limit that fit when you bought your home may not reflect what it would take to rebuild it today. That’s a conversation worth having in July, not the week a storm has a name.”

This is where many families get surprised. A lot of policies are written on a replacement cost basis, meaning the carrier generally pays to rebuild with materials of similar kind and quality. But if your dwelling limit hasn’t been updated to reflect rising construction costs, that limit can cap your claim payout below what rebuilding actually costs.

Your coverage may be lagging if:

• Your dwelling limit hasn’t been reviewed in two or more years.
• You’ve renovated, finished a space, or upgraded kitchens or baths.
• You’re still relying on the limit from when you first bought the home.
• You’re not sure whether you carry extended replacement cost coverage.

For unbiased background on how replacement cost coverage works, the Insurance Information Institute offers helpful consumer guides. The hard part is that this gap often stays hidden until a claim is filed, exactly when it matters most.

Here’s something many Florida homeowners learn the hard way: a standard homeowners policy typically does not cover flood damage. Rising water from heavy summer rain, storm surge, or an overflowing waterway generally falls outside what most home policies pay for. Flood coverage is separate, available through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood carrier.

You don’t have to live on the coast or sit in a high-risk flood zone for this to matter. A meaningful share of flood claims come from properties outside mapped high-risk areas, and a single afternoon of intense rain can be enough to cause damage. There’s also typically a waiting period before a new flood policy takes effect, which is exactly why midsummer, not the week a storm forms, is the time to ask about it. FloodSmart.gov is a useful place to understand how flood coverage works and what it generally costs.

Many Florida home policies carry a separate hurricane or windstorm deductible, and it often works differently from your standard deductible. Rather than a flat dollar amount, it’s frequently a percentage of your home’s insured value, which can mean several thousand dollars out of pocket before coverage begins.

It’s worth knowing your own figure now, while you can plan for it, rather than discovering it in the middle of a claim. If the number is larger than you expected, that’s a good reason to talk through how the deductible fits your savings and your budget, and whether a different structure suits your situation.

If a storm damages your home, you’ll be asked to document what was lost, and that’s far simpler to do before anything happens than from memory afterward. A short walk-through video on your phone, opening closets, cabinets, and drawers, takes about fifteen minutes and creates a clear record of your belongings.

Save it somewhere off-site, such as cloud storage, so the record survives even if your devices don’t, and keep copies of receipts for big-ticket items alongside it. It’s a small July task that can make a stressful time considerably more manageable.

Summer puts more on the road and on the water: road trips, new teen drivers, boats and personal watercraft. It’s a natural moment to confirm your auto coverage reflects how you’re actually driving this season, and to ask whether a boat or watercraft is covered the way you assume. With auto rates easing, reviewing these alongside your home can also be worth a look.

The current mix of steadier premiums, still-rising rebuild costs, and an active weather season opens a useful window to review your coverage. A few simple steps:

1. Pull out your declarations page and locate your dwelling limit (Coverage A) and your hurricane deductible.
2. Ask whether that limit reflects today’s rebuilding costs, not the price you paid for the home.
3. Confirm whether you carry flood coverage, and how long a new policy would take to begin.
4. Review your replacement cost coverage and whether an inflation guard endorsement or extended replacement cost makes sense for you.
5. Record a home inventory and store it off-site before the busiest part of the season.
6. Look at home and auto together. With rates easing, it’s a reasonable moment to review both and see where things stand.

You don’t have to sort through all of this on your own. As an independent agency that has served the St. Petersburg area for more than 85 years, Comegys works with a wide range of carriers to find coverage suited to your home’s real rebuilding cost, the realities of storm season, and your budget, and we’ll point out any gaps so you can decide what fits your needs.

➤ Request a coverage review and we’ll walk through your limits, your hurricane deductible, and whether flood coverage belongs in the picture before the season peaks.

➤ Get a home and auto quote and see what the steadier rate environment could mean for you.

A short conversation now could save you a great deal later in the season.