Florida property policies carry two deductibles. One is a flat dollar amount for everyday losses. The other is usually a percentage of your dwelling limit and applies only to hurricanes, which means on a $600,000 dwelling limit a 2 percent hurricane deductible is $12,000 before the carrier pays anything.

Which one applies is not a judgment call. It is set by a definition and a date range.

What triggers the hurricane deductible

Florida defines hurricane coverage as coverage for loss or damage caused by the peril of windstorm during a hurricane, and the term includes ensuing damage to the interior of a building, or to property inside a building, caused by rain, snow, sleet, hail, sand or dust if the direct force of the windstorm first damages the building, causing an opening through which those elements enter and cause damage.

The window is defined too, and it is wider than the storm. Hurricane coverage begins at the time a hurricane warning is issued for any part of Florida by the National Hurricane Center, and ends 72 hours following the termination of the last hurricane watch or hurricane warning issued for any part of Florida.

Read that carefully: "any part of Florida," not your part. If a warning is up for the Panhandle, the hurricane occurrence window is open statewide, and wind damage at your property during that window is a hurricane loss. That single sentence decides which deductible applies more often than any argument about the damage itself.

The two facts that decide your claim

Was the loss caused by the peril of windstorm? Not water rising from the ground, which is flood. Not a tree failing on a still day. Wind.
Did it occur inside the statutory hurricane window? Between the issuance of a hurricane warning for any part of Florida and 72 hours after the last watch or warning for any part of Florida is terminated.

Both yes means the hurricane deductible. Either no means the all-other-perils deductible, which is almost always dramatically smaller. Establishing the timing of the damage is therefore worth real money, and it is exactly the kind of thing that is hard to prove months later and easy to prove with dated documentation on the day.

The calendar-year rule people get wrong

The Florida hurricane deductible is not a fresh bill for every storm. The statute applies the deductible on a calendar-year basis, to all covered hurricane losses that occur during the calendar year under policies from the same insurer or insurer group. Where a later hurricane hits in the same calendar year, the insurer may apply a deductible to that subsequent hurricane which is the greater of the remaining amount of the hurricane deductible or the amount of the deductible that applies to perils other than a hurricane.

In practice: in a two-storm year, you are not paying the full percentage twice, but you are not paying nothing on the second storm either. And it resets on January 1, which is why a September storm and a following-year storm are two separate full deductibles even if they are five months apart.

What your policy has to offer you

For personal lines residential property insurance, Florida requires insurers to offer alternative hurricane deductible amounts of $500, 2 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent of the policy dwelling limits, unless the percentage amount would be less than $500. The same statute requires the policy to display, in boldfaced 18-point type, that it contains a separate deductible for hurricane losses which may result in high out-of-pocket expenses.

If you have never consciously chosen a hurricane deductible, you have one anyway. It is on your declarations page, and the difference between 2 percent and 10 percent on a Florida home is tens of thousands of dollars in a bad year.

Where the fight actually happens

Two disputes come up over and over, and neither is really about the deductible percentage.

Wind versus flood. A single property can have wind-driven rain through a roof opening and storm surge through the ground floor. One is typically covered by the property policy, the other by flood insurance. Carriers under pressure assign as much as possible to the excluded peril. Separating them is a documentation exercise.
Scope pushed below the deductible. If the carrier prices your loss at just under the hurricane deductible, you receive nothing and it looks like a coverage outcome. It is not. It is a scope outcome, and a complete scope frequently moves the number across the line.

That second one is why a below-deductible letter deserves the same scrutiny as a denial. See what to do after a hurricane claim denial.

The Keys and the coastal strip

Percentage deductibles bite hardest where dwelling limits are highest and storms are most frequent, which is the reason claims in Key West, Marathon and Key Largo so often turn on whether the scope clears the hurricane deductible at all.

Bring us your declarations page and the dates. Working out which deductible applies, and whether your scope clears it, takes one conversation. See hurricane claims for how we document storm losses.

Your policy is the contract, and forms vary by carrier. The provisions described here come from the standard Homeowners 3 Special Form that most Florida homeowners policies are built on. Read your own declarations page and policy form, or send them to us and we will read them with you.

Sources

Related Hurricane Claim Resources

Hurricane Claims Hurricane Ian Claims Florida Flooding Claims

Hurricane vs All-Other-Perils Deductibles