Quoll

Free for buyers. quollhomes.com

Search homes for sale and see what they'll actually cost to own — mortgage, insurance, taxes, and utilities — with 10-year projections reflecting the climate risks driving costs in each market.

08/13/2026

Before you buy into any community with shared structures: ask how the HOA's insurance is funded, how healthy its reserves are, and what happens if that math stops working.

08/07/2026

Insurance in the riskiest parts of the country is getting more expensive and harder to keep at the same time — and most people don't realize that combination is a mortgage risk until it's already their problem.

Here's how it plays out. If a homeowner's policy lapses and there's nothing to replace it, their lender can step in and buy coverage that protects the lender's stake in the home, not the homeowner's. And when a premium jumps fast enough, the next buyer for that home is often not a family at all — it's an investor or a company, and they usually get a better insurance rate than the family they're replacing.

Then there's California. In the state's highest-risk wildfire ZIP codes, insurers are already paying out more in claims than they're collecting in premium at today's prices. That has a real effect: it slows down how much a home's value grows for whoever owns it next.

None of this shows up on a listing page.

If you're house hunting in a high-risk area, it's worth checking what a specific home actually costs to insure, not just what the area typically runs. Every listing on Quoll Homes shows that cost clearly, before you make an offer, not after. → quollhomes.com

08/05/2026

Insurers in California's highest-risk wildfire ZIP codes are paying out more in claims than they collect in premium. That's not a number that stays contained to an insurance bill.

Coverage gets harder to find. Premiums climb for whoever's left. And home values in these areas are still going up — just more slowly than they would be otherwise.

Here's what that actually looks like on a real home. → quollhomes.com

Study: Benjamin J. Keys and Philip Mulder, "Property Insurance and Disaster Risk: New Evidence from Mortgage Escrow Data," NBER Working Paper No. 32579 — http://www.nber.org/papers/w32579

08/03/2026

It's always worth asking whether something is too good to be true.

Insurance premium increases can hit fast enough to put a home out of reach almost overnight — research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Rice University, and NYU, following millions of mortgages, found sudden spikes are a real driver of people relocating, not just falling behind on payments. The buyers who often step in are corporate ones. Holding enough properties to spread risk across a portfolio, they typically get charged less to insure these homes than the individual owners who had them before.

An unusually affordable home in a high-risk area is worth an insurance quote on that specific property before it's worth an offer.

07/30/2026

Most people don't hear about this until they're already living it, so here's the sequence, plainly:

Your private homeowners insurance lapses, or the insurer decides not to renew it. In most states, your backup option is a FAIR Plan — an insurer of last resort — but it often costs more and covers less than a standard policy. In states without one, the fallback is typically the surplus lines market, which comes with its own higher costs and fewer protections. Either way, if that backup is out of reach, or doesn't meet what your mortgage requires, your lender steps in and buys a policy for you.

That's called force-placed insurance, and it can cost anywhere from 1.5 to 10 times what a normal policy would — while protecting only the lender's financial stake in the home, not your belongings or your equity.

This isn't rare or hypothetical. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac updated their guidance in 2024, pushing lenders to force-place insurance more quickly whenever coverage lapses or falls short.

At every step in this chain, the cost goes up and the protection goes down. That's exactly the kind of thing we think buyers deserve to see before they're in it, not after. → quollhomes.com

07/28/2026

Homeowners insurance in the riskiest parts of the country isn't just getting more expensive — it's getting harder to keep at all. Nonrenewal rates in the highest-risk ZIP codes have more than doubled since 2018, according to the U.S. Treasury's Federal Insurance Office.

Here's where it stops being just an insurance story. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that every $500 increase in a homeowner's annual premium raises the odds of falling behind on their mortgage by 20 percent. In 2022 alone, rising premiums pushed an estimated 31,000 mortgages into delinquency — not because anyone lost a job or overspent, just because their insurance bill grew past what their budget could absorb.

The Fed's own projection: at the current pace, that adds up to roughly 203,000 more mortgages falling behind every year by 2055.

A home's insurance bill used to be one of the more predictable costs of owning it. Increasingly, it's one of the biggest risks. → quollhomes.com

07/24/2026

Lehigh Acres, FL is having a moment — a WSJ piece this week (July 23, 2026) names it a rare affordability win for buyers fleeing Miami and Orlando's prices.

The article notes this isn't the community's first boom built on being the cheap option: platted out of ranchland in the 1950s with minimal infrastructure, a boom in the 2000s on easy credit, then one of the harder busts of the 2007–2010 subprime crash.

That history raises another important question: is the price advantage holding — or is neither market actually as strong as it was before 2022?

We pulled Lee County's own market data to check.

If you're one of the buyers making this move: is it still the deal it looks like on paper?

Article: "This Boomtown Is a Magnet for Florida's Priced-Out Home Buyers" - WSJ

07/22/2026

Foreclosures are creeping back up. Almost 228,000 filings in the first half of this year — up 21% from last year, and getting close to where things stood before the pandemic. Short sales, where a homeowner sells for less than they owe just to avoid foreclosure, are up too.

ATTOM points to general financial strain — job loss, life circumstances, etc. But it's also a reminder of something we're tracking closely: the price you pay for a home and the cost of keeping it are two different numbers. The second one moves — sometimes a lot — long after closing day. Idaho and Georgia saw the steepest increases this year; Florida still has the highest overall rate in the country.

If you're buying, it's worth seeing that full picture before you sign, not after. → quollhomes.com

Sources: ATTOM, Realtor.com

07/16/2026

A nonprofit spends its days burning down houses on purpose. Here's why that's actually good news for homeowners.

Researchers found that wildfire doesn't spread house to house because of the fire itself — it spreads because of embers slipping through vents, siding that ignites too easily, and things like fences or patio furniture acting as a bridge from one home to the next.

Clear those "connective fuels" within five feet of your house and use ember-resistant materials, and a community is twice as likely to survive a major fire intact.
Insurers already know this. Some California carriers now guarantee coverage for homes that meet fire-hardening certifications. Your neighbor's landscaping choices — and yours — are already priced into your premium.

Your risk isn't just your house. It's the five feet around it, and the five feet around the house next door.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/16/climate/wildfire-researchers-south-carolina-house-burning.html

07/13/2026

Every insurer of last resort has a catastrophe behind it.

In December 2021, the Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the suburbs between Boulder and Denver — not the remote mountains, the suburbs. It cost insurers more than $2 billion and erased an estimated 15–20 years of profit in a single event.

What happened next has happened before. Insurers repriced the whole state, not just the burn zones. Premiums in some Boulder County communities have climbed 150–300% since. And in 2025, Colorado launched a FAIR Plan — a state-authorized insurer of last resort — the first new one in America in 34 years.
Texas did the same after Hurricane Celia in 1970. Hawaii did it after Kilauea's lava flows. Florida did it four months after Hurricane Andrew bankrupted 16 insurance companies.

States don't create insurers of last resort when the private market is working. If you're buying a home anywhere, your state's FAIR Plan tells a story worth knowing: when it was created, why, and how fast it's growing.

See what any listing actually costs at quollhomes.com

Address

New York, NY

Website

https://www.getquoll.com/, http://quollhomes.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Quoll posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Featured

Amazing Homes For Sale & Rent In Riverdale, N
360 West 125th Street, Suite #11

Want your business to be the top-listed Realtor/realty Service in New York?