It’s Peak Hurricane Season, But 1 in 4 Homeowners Have Made No Hurricane Preparations

NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- With 2019's peak hurricane season (which starts in August and ends in October) underway, a new ValuePenguin.com survey has found that homeowner attitudes do not reflect the real risk of storm damage. While 77% of homeowners said that they felt prepared for hurricane season, nearly one in four homeowners haven't made any hurricane safety preparations.

More worryingly, the majority of surveyed homeowners severely underestimate the potential cost of hurricane and flood damage. When asked, over 50% of survey respondents estimated that the average home would require less than $10,000 in damage repairs after a hurricane or flood. Those estimates undershot the average claim amounts for wind and hail damage ($10,200) as well as for flood damage ($92,000).

Key Findings:

• Homeowners In High-Risk States Believe They're Prepared For Hurricanes, Despite Taking No Action: Homeowners from the riskiest coastal states demonstrated a lack of urgency in preparing to deal with the consequences of a hurricane. Of the over 500 homeowners surveyed in the 19 states most at risk for a hurricane, 77% "felt prepared" for the 2019 hurricane season. However, about 48% of these respondents also revealed that they had not yet started preparing for hurricane season, which lasts from June to November every year.
• Homeowners Believe Weather Professionals Exaggerate the Risk of Hurricanes: 43% of respondents who live in high risk states said that weather professionals exaggerate the risk of hurricanes, compared to the 30% of respondents who lived in the rest of the country. A further 56% of the surveyed homeowners said they were reluctant to evacuate their homes, and would only leave if evacuation were mandatory (as opposed to recommended). Most worryingly, 1 in 10 homeowners said they would not evacuate at all.
• Homeowners Grossly Underestimate The Frequency Of Hurricanes: As the peak of the 2019 hurricane season is underway, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) updated its forecast to predict five to nine hurricanes in the Atlantic before the end of November. Data shows the majority of hurricane seasons to date had an average of six hurricanes. Yet, nearly half of all survey respondents predicted that the United States would experience no more than three hurricanes in 2019.
• Homeowners Don't Realize How High The Cost of Hurricane Damages Can Get: When asked how much money they thought it would cost to repair the average home after a hurricane or flood, 52% of the surveyed homeowners guessed that the sum would be less than $10,000. This figure is several times smaller than the average claim filed during recent hurricanes - which ranged from $30,000 (Hurricane Irene) to over $100,000 (Hurricane Harvey). More worryingly, in high-risk states, 45% of homeowners said they didn't know how much hurricane-related insurance they would need in order to be protected against the financial fallout of a hurricane.

To understand homeowners attitudes towards the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season, ValuePenguin analysts commissioned Qualtrics to conduct an online survey of 1,050 homeowners in America, with the sample base proportioned to represent the general population of homeowners. The survey was fielded in early August 2019.

To view the full report, visit:  https://www.valuepenguin.com/hurricane-prone-homeowners-substitute-confidence-for-preparedness

About ValuePenguin.com: ValuePenguin.com, part of LendingTree (NASDAQ: TREE), is a personal finance website that conducts in-depth research and provides objective analysis to help guide consumers to the best financial decisions. ValuePenguin focuses on value, assessing whether the return of a particular decision is worth the cost or risk of that option, and how this stacks up with the other possible choices they may have. For more information, please visit www.valuepenguin.com, like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter @ValuePenguin.

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SOURCE ValuePenguin.com