The Town of Miami Lakes reported the Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), (an organization with the primary mission of providing advisory insurance underwriting and rating information to insurers), has completed its analysis of the town’s building codes and the efforts put forth to properly enforce those codes.
The town’s residential codes were rated class 3 for 1- and 2-family dwellings, and a class 2 for all other construction, an improvement from last year.
“The ISO’s recent rating of our town’s building codes and enforcement activities clearly reflect the town’s commitment to provide quality services to our residents,” said Mayor Wayne Slaton. “I commend our Building Department for their work that helped improve the rating from last year.”
ISO is an independent statistical, rating, and advisory organization that serves the property/casualty insurance industry and then assigns a Building Code Effectiveness Classification (BCEC) from 1 to 10 (Class 1 represents exemplary commitment to building-code enforcement.) The concept behind the BCEC system is simple – municipalities with well-enforced, up-to-date codes demonstrate better loss experience, and their citizens’ insurance rates can reflect that.
While there is no requirement that insurers use the rating, individual insurers may use different credits or different effective dates, the ISO program will apply credits to new construction within the town that have been issued a Certificate of Occupancy in the year 2013 and forward; and as a result, residents may see a reduction in their property insurance rates.
“The ISO rating is a significant achievement for the town. Lowering the insurance prices will not just assist our residents, but attract future development and businesses to the town,” said Councilmember Nelson Rodriguez.
“This supplemental rating is complementary to the one used by FEMA for Flood Insurance, where the town current has one of the lowest floor insurance costs in South Florida based on their Community Rating System. These designations are a great reflection of the outstanding work of the town’s Building Department and just one more reason why Miami Lakes is the best place to live and do business.
Following are the current ratings for Miami-Dade County and neighboring communities to Miami Lakes (the first number is the residential rating and the second number is the commercial rating):
Miami-Dade County 4/4
Hialeah 3/3
Miami Gardens 4/4
Miami Lakes 3/2