The 10% to 15% rate increases on your Florida home insurance probably won't surprise you when they show up on your bill later this year. But you will be surprised if you lose discounts that cause your Florida home insurance to skyrocket.

Presently, Florida homeowners like you get the benefit of wind mitigation discounts for multiple home features that help make your home more resistant to hurricanes. Home insurance companies are required to give you this discount under Florida law and a specific formula must be used to calculate it. It includes discounts for home features like the roof shape, system for removing water, roof to wall attachment methods, and whether your home has hurricane shutters among other things.

Home insurance consumers in Florida have enjoyed these discounts which can be up to 50% of the wind premium on a home. However, homeowners sometimes are disappointed with those discounts as well. One homeowner who was showcased in the St. Petersburg Times spent $5,225 for hurricane shutters and to reinforce the garage door on his Spring Hill, Florida home. He was very upset to find out that his $5,225 investment would only give him a discount of $16.11! Other homeowners in Florida have saved a lot more.

Started in 2002 along with improvements to the Florida building code, these wind mitigation discounts were an important step in the process to deliver lower Florida home insurance rates to those with homes less likely to sustain serious damage in a Florida hurricane. The State of Florida doubled those discounts in 2006 to give some rate relief after the big hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005.

At the moment with the approach of the 2010 Florida legislative session, home insurance companies are asking legislatures to reduce some of those discounts. In some areas the companies might have a point. To begin with, these does appear to be some fraud connected with those discounts. This fraud can be the result of homeowners misrepresentations and also due to errors in the findings from the home inspection. In any event it could lead to homes being granted discounts they aren't entitled to. Florida home insurance companies also point out that doubling these discounts in 2006 was more about currying favor with voters rather than coming up with a scientific way to calculate mitigation discounts based on how your home would actually perform during a hurricane.

Some companies are ordering and paying for new mitigation inspections to get a more accurate picture of the home hardening mitigation steps that have been performed on your home. If a re-inspection on your home produces discrepancies, you might lose some of your discounts and face a massive increase in your Florida homeowners insurance premiums.

As a homeowner, if these discounts were reduced, you would take a major hit on the cost of your Florida home insurance. And this would occur during one of the poorest economies of our lifetime. For some homeowners in Florida, losing or reducing those mitigation discounts would result in a massive increase in premium costs.

This is a critical development that all Florida homeowners should be following. Even slight changes to the mitigation discounts could cause massive increases in Florida home insurance premiums that will make the rate increases already approved look like small change!

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About Author
Michael Letcher is a Fortune 500 executive and a licensed CPA. Florida consumers use his on-line buyers guide to find affordable Fort Lauderdale home insurance. Use his free newsletter to find the secrets to affordable Broward County home insurance at: => http://www.homeinsurancebuyers.org