Hendrickson Insurance
Hendrickson Insurance
Hendrickson Insurance in Sarasota writes second home, seasonal and vacation home insurance for households whose primary home is somewhere else, and for Florida families who own more than one house. It is one piece of the high net worth insurance in Florida program: the Florida house on the right form with a carrier that writes seasonal occupancy, NFIP flood kept primary with excess above it, the hurricane deductible you can actually fund from another state, and the umbrella checked so the new house does not open a gap under it. One schedule, every property, one agent.
Second home insurance in Florida is a homeowners policy written for a house the owner occupies part of the year: the carrier prices the months it sits empty, asks who checks on it and whether water and alarm systems report, and sets wind, flood and theft terms accordingly. Three Florida rules decide most of the premium. A house that costs $700,000 or more to rebuild cannot use Citizens, so it is a private-market placement; the hurricane deductible is a percentage of the dwelling limit that the owner must fund from out of state; and the National Flood Insurance Program stops at $250,000 and charges a $250 annual surcharge on any home that is not a primary residence. Hendrickson Insurance places the Florida house, coordinates it with the primary-home carrier and the umbrella in the other state, and keeps every property on one schedule. Send the declarations pages and the inspection, and Dennis comes back with the placement.
Seasonal, secondary and vacant are three different rate classes. A home the owner uses more than a few months a year prices as a secondary residence; a home used two weeks a year and otherwise empty prices as seasonal; a home with no one in it for sixty days or more can trip the vacancy conditions in the policy itself. The application has to say which one it is.
A caretaker, a property manager or a neighbor with a key who walks the house on a schedule is an underwriting credit on a seasonal home and sometimes a condition of the policy. Carriers ask for the name and the frequency.
A burst supply line in an empty house runs for weeks. Private-client carriers price a central-station fire and burglar alarm and an automatic water shutoff with leak sensors, and some require the shutoff above a certain value. It is the cheapest discount on a seasonal home.
A second home rented to others for part of the year is a different policy. Short-term rental use changes the liability, the contents coverage and sometimes the carrier. Say so on the application; an undisclosed rental is the easiest claim for a carrier to deny.
Most homeowners forms reduce or remove coverage for vandalism, theft and certain water losses once a home has been vacant beyond the period stated in the policy. A seasonal home that is furnished and maintained is usually unoccupied, not vacant; the distinction is in the wording and it is worth reading before the first summer.
Shutters have to be closed by someone. A named storm plan, written down, with the person who deploys the protection and the person who inspects after, is what a coastal underwriter wants to see on a home whose owner is in New England in September.
Citizens is not the plan. A home with a dwelling replacement cost of $700,000 or more is not eligible for Citizens at all (s. 627.351(6)(a)3), and a Citizens policyholder with a private offer within 20 percent of the Citizens premium is pushed out at renewal (s. 627.351(6)(c)5). Below that line, a second home in Citizens must now carry flood insurance to stay eligible: since January 1, 2026 for any dwelling replacement cost of $400,000 or more, and for every Citizens home from January 1, 2027 (s. 627.351(6)(aa)). Most Gulf Coast second homes worth insuring are private-market placements from the start.
The hurricane deductible is funded from out of state. Florida law sets the deductible menu as a percentage of the dwelling limit: $500, 2, 5 and 10 percent on most homes, with a 3 percent option allowed between $1,000,000 and $3,000,000 and no 2 percent required at $3,000,000 and up (s. 627.701(3)). It applies once per calendar year across all hurricanes (s. 627.701(5)(a)). On a $1,500,000 second home a 5 percent deductible is $75,000 the week after a storm, paid from another state while a contractor you have never met gives you a number over the phone. Pick the deductible you could wire that week.
Flood costs more on a second home. The National Flood Insurance Program pays at most $250,000 on the building and $100,000 on contents (FloodSmart), so a waterfront second home needs excess flood insurance above it. And federal law adds a $250 annual surcharge to every NFIP policy on a building that is not the insured’s primary residence, against $25 on a primary residence; the NFIP verifies primary residence with a driver license or similar document, and charges the $250 when it is not provided (NFIP bulletin W-15017). Budget for it; it is not premium and it does not count toward the rate-increase caps.
A buyer under contract on a one-story home in a gated Osprey community, closing in December 2026, asked Hendrickson Insurance for quotes on the Florida house. The primary home was in another state, with its own carrier, a $4,000,000 personal umbrella, and three autos. The Florida house was clean: built in 1989, just over 4,000 square feet, concrete tile roof replaced in 2014 with the permit, hip geometry, sealed deck, secondary water resistance, electrical and HVAC updated in 2021, FEMA Zone X, used as a secondary residence. Replacement cost ran at about $1.49 million.
Thirteen HO3 quotes came back, from $13,286 to $62,135 a year, with twelve more carriers declining or capping out. The spread on the same clean file is the first lesson of a Florida second home: which carrier quotes it matters more than any discount. The second lesson was opening protection. The inspection called the windows "a combination of impact and non," which the Florida mitigation form rates as none. Re-run with every opening rated, and nothing else changed, the best quote fell from $13,286 to $10,501, about 21 percent, while six carriers did not move at all. The owner’s plan became replacing the handful of unrated windows and the pool doors, re-inspecting, and re-quoting. The full table is on the high net worth page.
The umbrella gap nobody would have seen. The out-of-state carrier’s $4,000,000 umbrella required $300,000 of personal liability on every home underneath it. The Florida quoting platform defaulted the new house to $100,000. Left alone, the umbrella would have had a gap over the Osprey house the day it closed. That is why the second home is never quoted alone here: the umbrella, the primary home and the autos in the other state are read first, and the Florida policy is built to fit under them. Details that could identify the household have been changed or left out; the numbers are as quoted on September 30, 2026.
Most carriers that write a primary home in Massachusetts, New York, Illinois or Ohio will not write a coastal Florida house, and most Florida carriers will not write the house up north. A household with two or three homes usually has two or three carriers, which is fine, as long as one person holds the whole schedule. Hendrickson Insurance keeps one list of every property with its replacement cost, its carrier, its liability limit, its deductible and its renewal date, and reads the umbrella’s underlying requirements against every line on it. The private-client carriers (Chubb, PURE, Vault, AIG Private Client, Berkley One, Cincinnati) will often write all of the homes on one account when the household qualifies, which is the cleanest structure: one underwriter, one renewal date, one claims desk, and the umbrella written by the same carrier so the attachment points are never in doubt.
Where the household does not want to move the primary home, the Florida house is placed on its own and the umbrella is checked for three things: that the Florida liability limit meets the umbrella’s floor, that the umbrella carrier will list a property in another state, and that the autos kept in Florida are on a Florida policy with uninsured motorist carried. Florida does not require other drivers to carry bodily injury liability, which makes that last item more important here than at home.
Dennis reads every application himself and responds the same business day in most cases, always within 48 hours. If the house is not a fit for the markets he has, he says so on the first call.
Dennis Hendrickson is the owner of Hendrickson Insurance in Sarasota, Florida, licensed general lines agent, FL License E095547, and the only person who touches your file. Sources used on this page: Florida Statute 627.351 (Citizens eligibility and flood requirement); Florida Statute 627.701 (hurricane deductibles); Florida Statute 627.7011 (roof age); FloodSmart, what is covered; NFIP bulletin W-15017 (HFIAA surcharge). Last reviewed October 22, 2026.
Call or text 941-957-2796, or send the declarations pages. Dennis answers the same business day in most cases.
Dennis Hendrickson changed a New Jersey state tennis rule at 17 and played four years of Division I tennis at UNC Charlotte. Today he writes both the commercial and the personal insurance for Gulf Coast owners himself, and he works a renewal or a claim the way he played: nothing conceded, no point given away.
When you apply, he answers. Every application goes straight to Dennis. He reads it himself and responds the same business day in most cases, always within 48 hours.
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