[Ken Coury]

Great breakdown, Gustan and Max — the mortgage side of this is covered well. Let me add the insurance timing piece, because it’s the one that quietly derails closings when it gets left too late.

Start shopping during the inspection period, not after it. Most buyers treat insurance as a closing-week errand. The problem: the carrier does its own inspection too, and if it comes back with conditions — roof age, for example — you want time to deal with that, not a surprise a week before closing.

A practical sequence that works:

1. During the inspection period — get quotes and bind the policy. Binding early locks in coverage while there’s still time to fix issues.
2. Well before closing — confirm the lender has proof of coverage (the declarations page). Lenders can’t close without it, and “the agent is sending it” is not a status you want to discover on closing week.
3. Don’t switch carriers mid-process without telling the lender. A new quote means new paperwork, a new proof of coverage, and a new timeline — all of which can push closing.

One more thing buyers miss: getting a quote is not the same as being covered. Until the policy is bound and the lender has proof, the insurance box is still unchecked.

Get the insurance timeline right and it’s one less thing that can move a closing date.

— Ken

[Ken Coury]

Great questions, Elmoustahyi.

The #1 mistake: shopping the premium while ignoring the deductible structure.

Two quotes can show nearly the same annual premium and be completely different products. The classic trap is the separate wind or hail deductible — in coastal states it’s often 2% to 5% of the dwelling coverage, not a flat dollar amount. On a $400,000 home, a 5% wind deductible means $20,000 out of pocket before insurance pays a dime on a hurricane claim. Buyers see the lower premium, feel smart, and have no idea what they actually bought until the worst day of their homeownership.

So the budget number looks right and the protection is hollow. That’s worse than overpaying.

The question to ask the agent:

“Walk me through every deductible on this quote — including any separate wind, hail, or hurricane deductibles — and tell me exactly what I’d pay out of pocket on a typical claim.”

And a strong second question: “Is there anything about this property that could change my rate after your company’s inspection?” That one surfaces the conditional-bind risk before it becomes a surprise letter.

Ask those two, and the number going into your calculator gets a whole lot more real.

— Ken Coury, Coury Insurance Group

[Ken Coury]

Elmoustahyi, great thread — and Danny and Gustan nailed the big picture. Let me add the insurance agent’s side of this, because there’s a detail that trips up buyers even when they do everything else right.

The insurance number buyers plug into these calculators is usually wrong.

Most buyers either guess, use the seller’s current premium, or take the first quote they get. All three are unreliable:

The seller’s premium means nothing to you. New buyer, new policy, new underwriting. The carrier re-rates everything — roof age, the property’s claims history, updates, even distance to the nearest fire station. It’s common for the new quote to come back much higher than what the seller was paying.

One quote is not the market. Quotes across carriers for the same house can vary dramatically — sometimes by hundreds a month. If your “true cost” math is built on a single quote, it’s built on sand.

Online estimates are the weakest input. Directional at best. Which is why a calculator like yours that takes the buyer’s own numbers is the right approach, Elmoustahyi — the whole game is making sure the number going in is real.

And the timing matters as much as the number. Get the insurance quote during the inspection period — when you still have leverage and options — not the week before closing when you’re locked in and just need a declarations page for the lender. A surprising quote with 30 days left is a budgeting problem. A surprising quote with 5 days left is a closing problem.

One more thing worth underscoring: the escrow shock doesn’t end at purchase. Premiums get re-rated every renewal. On a fixed-rate mortgage the P&I never moves — but if the premium jumps at renewal, the servicer recalculates escrow and the monthly payment jumps with it. Buyers who budgeted to the penny on day one feel it in year two. Shopping the renewal instead of auto-renewing is the simplest defense.

None of this is an argument against buying — it’s an argument for putting a real, properly shopped insurance quote into the math before the math matters.

— Ken Coury, Coury Insurance Group

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by  Ken Coury.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by  admin.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by  admin.

[Ken Coury]

Great breakdown, Gustan — the Fannie vs. Freddie C5 distinction is the part most people miss.

One angle from the insurance side that belongs in this conversation: the carrier does its own inspection too.

When a buyer binds a homeowners policy on a house like this, most carriers order an exterior inspection (photos, sometimes a physical walk-around) within the first 30–60 days. A deck with rotten supports, a failing ledger board, or missing railings can come back as a conditional bind — “we’ll insure you, but fix the deck in 60 days” — or in tougher cases, a straight declination.

Two things buyers usually don’t expect:

1. The surprise letter after closing. The loan closes fine, then 45 days later the carrier sends a “repair it or we’ll non-renew” notice. Now the buyer is scrambling for a contractor with the clock ticking. This is exactly why the insurance conversation should start early in the process, not the week before closing.

2. The liability piece. If someone gets hurt on a deck the buyer knew was unsafe, that’s a premises liability claim — and if the condition wasn’t disclosed on the insurance application, it can become a misrepresentation issue on top of it.

And on the pre-closing repair scenario you mentioned: if the buyer pays for deck work before owning the home, verify the contractor’s liability coverage and make sure everyone understands whose policy responds if someone gets hurt on site. The seller still owns the property at that point.

None of this kills the deal — it just means the insurance quote and the property condition need to be looked at together, early.

— Ken Coury, Coury Insurance Group

[Ken Coury]

Bailey, thanks for posting this — and Stella and George, thank you both. Between the Save Our Homes breakdown, the senior exemption and AGI point, and the loss-mitigation steps, the tax and servicer sides are covered better than I could cover them.

I’m an insurance agent, so let me add the one piece I can speak to from inside the policy: how an $800 premium becomes $2,500 at the first renewal on new construction.

That first $800 was probably never a real market rate for the finished home. Initial policies on new construction are often bound from the builder’s estimated figures, sometimes with a new-home credit that phases out after the first term. At renewal, the carrier re-prices the actual completed home — finished replacement cost, roof and construction details, and current Florida rate filings. The homeowner experiences it as a 3x increase; from the carrier’s side, it’s the first honest price. Which is exactly why Stella’s pre-closing stress test idea matters — this shock was predictable at origination, just not disclosed in those terms.

Two practical warnings from the agent side, because timing matters for this couple:

1. Don’t let the policy lapse while shopping. If coverage lapses, the servicer force-places insurance — it typically costs more, protects the lender’s interest far more than the family’s, and makes a bad escrow situation worse.

2. Sequence any switch carefully. Bind the new policy before canceling the old one, and tell the servicer a change is coming, so the escrow re-analysis doesn’t stack the old shortage and the new premium into the same few payments.

George’s shopping list (FMAP, the state’s CHOICES tool, Citizens) is the right starting point — an independent agent can run all of it in one pass and verify the wind mitigation credits are actually on the policy, which is the most commonly missed discount I see in Florida.

Cases like this are why the estimate conversation at closing matters so much for fixed-income buyers. Appreciate this group for taking it seriously.

— Ken Coury, Coury Insurance Group

[Ken Coury]

Thank you, Ollie — you nailed the part that matters most. Speed helps, but it’s the expertise behind it: the mortgagee clause, the start date, the deductible and replacement cost — small details, and any one of them can stall a closing if they’re wrong. And you’re right that the lowest-priced policy isn’t always the right one; it has to meet the lender’s requirements and actually protect the homeowner, or the savings aren’t savings. Appreciate you adding this here.

— Ken

[Ken Coury]

Great point, Ollie — and the insurance side of it explains why this happens.

At pre-approval, the file often carries the seller’s prior premium or a generic estimate. The actual premium isn’t set until the carrier does its own inspection and underwriting — roof age, rebuild cost, claims history, location — and if it lands higher, the monthly payment rises and DTI tightens. For borrowers already near their limit, exactly the FHA/VA/USDA/conventional group you named, there’s no cushion left. That’s how a file that qualified on paper gets squeezed late.

The other version of the same problem shows up in year two: renewal increases get recalculated into escrow, and the payment jumps after closing. Same root cause — the premium was treated as a fixed number when it never was.

On your taxes question, I’d frame it this way: property taxes are set and visible at pre-approval, so they rarely surprise anyone. Insurance is the moving part, and that’s what makes it the hurdle in the files where it bites. The fix is the boring one — get the quote and bind early, during the inspection period, so the real number is in the file before DTI is final, not discovered at closing week.

For the LOs here — are you having to re-run DTI more often once the real premium lands?

— Ken

[Ken Coury]

Great addition, Julio — thank you. Your proportion example makes the key point better than the headline alone: the 10% is an average, not anyone’s actual number. Your percentage depends on both sides of the fraction — your premium and your payment — which is why two neighbors with similar homes can see very different shares. And the PMI distinction is worth repeating, because borrowers do mix those two up. Appreciate you adding the benchmarks here.

— Ken

[Ken Coury]

Elmoustahyi, appreciate that — and great questions.

On transparency: my honest take is slowly, but don’t hold your breath for the quote pages to fix it on their own. A quote page’s job is to get you to the monthly number — that’s what sells. The deductible structure is where policies actually differ, and it’s the part that takes the most reading to understand, so it stays one click deeper than the price. Comparison tools are getting better at surfacing it, and buyers are asking sharper questions than they used to, which pushes carriers in the right direction. But for now, the burden is still on the buyer — or their agent — to ask: “show me every deductible, in dollars, not just percentages.”

On the calculator — a few things that would make the insurance section genuinely useful for agents like me:

1. Split the insurance number in two: the premium AND the deductible structure. A single insurance estimate hides the trap you just named. If there’s a separate wind or hail deductible, show it as a percentage and the dollar amount it means on that home’s coverage.

2. Flag that the first quote isn’t final. A line like “this quote can change after the carrier’s inspection” would save buyers from the surprise letter after closing.

3. Separate purchase price from rebuild cost. Buyers assume insurance tracks what they paid; it actually tracks what it costs to rebuild. A small explainer there would clear up a lot of confusion.

4. Let users compare two quotes by deductible, not just premium. Two identical premiums with different deductible structures are different products — your calculator could show that in one glance.

That’s the stuff that would make a buyer walk into an agent’s office already asking the right questions — which is exactly what you want.