The policy that expires in September

Hi again — there's a date on the calendar that almost nobody is talking about, and it lands in the middle of hurricane season.

Congress has to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program by 11:59 p.m. on September 30, and that's under sixty days out. If it doesn't, FEMA stops selling and renewing policies. Coverage already in force stays good to its expiration date, plus a thirty-day grace period, so nobody loses what they've paid for. But if your renewal date lands in the gap, you're not renewing.

This has happened before, and it's been fixed at the last minute before, sometimes by a matter of days — an extension is widely expected to ride along with the 2027 appropriations bill. I'm not going to predict it. I'd rather it stopped being able to matter to me.

Pull up your declarations page and find the renewal date. If it falls anywhere near October, call your agent this month and ask two things: what your options are if the program is dark on your renewal date, and whether anything can be done ahead of it. Your carrier's answer is the one that governs, and it's a five-minute call in August instead of a problem in October.

If you're buying, two things are worth knowing before you panic about a closing. An insurer can assign the seller's existing NFIP policy to the buyer just by substituting names, so coverage on that property carries straight through a lapse and no new policy has to be written. And in past lapses, regulators haven't handled the purchase requirement the same way — some have suspended it, some haven't — which leaves each lender to decide whether it'll still lend in a flood zone. So the risk isn't that closings become impossible — it's that they become your lender's judgment call. Ask your lender and your title company where they'd land, now rather than in October. That answer is better to have in August than in escrow.

One thing worth knowing while you're on the phone: private flood insurance isn't affected by any of this. It's a separate market, and for a lot of Florida rentals it prices competitively against NFIP anyway. Our guide to flood insurance for Florida rentals walks the comparison, including where private coverage is actually the better buy.

While we're on the season: Colorado State updated its forecast on August 5 and held it exactly where it was — nine named storms, four hurricanes, one major, against a 1991–2020 average of roughly fourteen, seven and three. They're now, in their own words, extremely confident of a strong El Niño through the peak of the season, and El Niño is what tears storms apart before they organize. So that's a well below-average season on paper.

It's also not a reason to skip anything, and CSU says so themselves: it only takes one landfall to make a season active. August through October still carries most of the risk no matter what the seasonal number says.

Set the flood call aside for a second — there's a decision this month that outlasts any single storm season.

If you have leases coming up for renewal this fall, the decision you make in August is the one that sets your next twelve months — and the mistake I see most often is treating renewal as a rent question when it's really a vacancy question. A tenant who renews at flat rent costs you nothing. A tenant who leaves over a sixty-dollar increase costs you turnover, make-ready, and however many weeks the unit sits. With asking rents flat to slightly negative across most of the ZIPs we track, that math rarely favors the increase.

The practical version: start the renewal conversation sixty to ninety days out, not thirty. Know what a comparable unit is actually leasing for — not asking, leasing — before you name a number. And if you're going to raise, raise for a reason you can say out loud. Our lease renewal strategy guide has the full framework, including how to structure the offer so the tenant has a reason to sign early.

A few more worth your time. In Zillow's June reading, released in late July, more than half of Orlando and Tampa rental listings carried a concession — which sounds like a reason to cut your rent and mostly isn't — we ran the arithmetic on a concession against a permanent cut. If you're thinking about requiring renters insurance in your lease, here's what Florida actually lets you compel and the one designation most landlords get wrong. And if you own a condo, the financing rules changed on August 3 in a way that affects who can buy your unit — worth ten minutes if you're holding one.

One phone call to your agent about a renewal date, and one honest look at what your fall leases should actually do. Neither takes an afternoon.

— The True North Team