EP #4: Exploring Florida Home Safety with Debbie Iten

Ever wondered how to make your home safer while potentially lowering your insurance costs? Join us on Real Life with Lee as we sit down with Debbie Iten from the Iten Agency in Davie, Florida. Discover Debbie’s deep-rooted connections to South Florida, her journey from Miami to Broward County, and how her family's insurance agency transformed from a Nationwide captive agency to an independent one in 2007. Debbie also opens up about her family’s passion for horses and shares some delightful anecdotes about her mischievous miniature donkey, Gypsy.

In this episode, we delve into the My Safe Florida Home program and its benefits for homeowners looking to enhance the safety and efficiency of their properties. Learn about the crucial role of wind mitigation inspections and how simple upgrades can earn you significant insurance credits. We further explore the historical challenges faced by South Florida, from the catastrophic 1928 hurricane to a recent warehouse fire, emphasizing the need for proper emergency response training. Finally, Debbie sheds light on the Invest program, which educates high school students about the insurance industry and its career opportunities. This episode is packed with valuable insights into South Florida's real estate, insurance, and educational initiatives.

For more information visit https://leealoni.com/ or give me a call (754) 244-3352.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

welcome to real life with lee. Powered by leolone south florida real estate at g and e realty group, the show where lee and her guests talk about everything south florida 24 7 365, and why you should make it your home, sweet home. Lee is a realtor, a South Florida resident since the age of five, devoted wife and mom and a dedicated community volunteer. Now, without further ado, here's your host, leigh Ohlone.

Lee Aloni: 0:41

Hello everyone, Hello, hello, hello. I am Lea Loney, your hostess for Real Life with Lea in South Florida, 24-7, 365. And this is the show you come to when you want to learn all about the real stuff, the real juicy stuff, the real fun stuff and the real real stuff in South Florida. And the real real stuff in South Florida. I'm a realtor and our family owned a real estate company by the name of G&E Realty Group in the heart of Davie, and I also talk about not just real estate. I talk about and discuss and learn and share about the people that live in our wonderful South Florida, all the cities and towns.

Lee Aloni: 1:24

And today, today, I am interviewing my friend and my peer and colleague, Debbie Iten, from the Iten Agency in Davie, Florida. I'd like to give you a big welcome, Hi Debbie. How are you? Hi Leigh, thank you for having me so happy you're here. Thank you for joining me. It's been a struggle. We're trying to put together our two schedules here. It's not so easy in the insurance and real estate world, so I'm really happy that we finally made it work today. Absolutely yes, Debbie. Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about Debbie Eiten first, before we talk about your company. I always like to learn about the people. The people are most important.

Debbie Iten: 2:10

Well, I'm born and raised in South Florida. Third generation. I was born and raised in Miami, the Norland area. My family all grew up in that area. My mom was born and raised down in the Grove area and my grandfather was chief of police of Dade County when it was actually Dade County Sheriff's Office years ago and we relocated to Broward County and I've been up in Broward since, probably since I was about in 11th grade. I won't count how many years ago that was, but been in Broward County since then and we live in Southwest ranches and I have three kids and have been buried to my husband now for 35 years and we have an ITIN insurance agency that we established back in 1992.

Lee Aloni: 2:54

Wonderful. So did you establish ITIN agency in 1992, or was it your parents, or what is the what's the whole story there?

Debbie Iten: 3:04

So back back in the day, my father-in-law worked for nationwide insurance. He was a captive agent for nationwide and my husband was working for him, and in 1992 he stepped out on his own and opened our own agency um, it's actually randall itin insurance agency and it's a dba of Aiton Agency and we've been doing it. We were with Nationwide until 2007 when Nationwide decided that they would move all of their captive agents to independent agent status, so that meant that we no longer just represented Nationwide, we represented every company that was out there, and so it's been a big change, but it's been really good. It gives us a lot more opportunity to help our clients and have more options for them.

Lee Aloni: 3:54

Yeah, I was going to say it really, you know, opened up the umbrella there, you have more things underneath your umbrella, more things to offer to your clients. That's great. And your grown, grown kids. They work at your agency now.

Debbie Iten: 4:07

Yes, two of my three, two of our three kids work in here my son, joe, who is 31 and he does the commercial insurance side of the business and he does some of the management and our IT. And then my daughter, lauren, who is going to be 28. She works on the personal line side of the agency and also does some management stuff. And I think if they had their druthers we would be out the front door and they would be just kind of running things on their own at this point in time. And our youngest daughter is not in the agency. She's just graduated from college and is deciding if she's going to go on for her master's or go into a veterinary medicine program right now.

Lee Aloni: 4:48

Wow, I do need to. I want to talk to you about that, not specifically about your daughter, but one of your passions, debbie, is horses and things of that nature. Can you expand upon that? Let us know, you know.

Debbie Iten: 5:03

Yeah, I grew up, when we grew up down in North Miami, my grandmother took me when I was a really little kid. There used to be a farm near us and I used to go on Saturdays. I can remember being very little and she would take us over there and I just got bit by the horse bug and my whole life had been around horses. I got my very first two horses when I turned 16. A family was getting a divorce and, um, we got a mom and a baby and that started my my path down it and my kids have always, uh, had horses and ridden and out in the ranches. We have a barn on the property so we have them out there and I have a one of my little favorites with my miniature donkey.

Lee Aloni: 5:42

So yeah, she's always telling me I gotta go take care of my, my ass. She has some kind of funny story about yes, she's the butt of all the jokes.

Debbie Iten: 5:56

Everybody wants to ask me how she is all the time.

Lee Aloni: 5:59

Yes, yes yes, yes, oh my gosh, what's, what's your, what's your ass's name?

Debbie Iten: 6:04

her name is. Her name is Gypsy and she's always getting into trouble. She gets into stuff. If if she finds a door that's cracked open on the house, she will actually let herself in the house. And yes, she knows where the fruit bowl is in the kitchen and she'll go try to find the fruit it's.

Lee Aloni: 6:25

Oh, you need to put her on social media. I see animals like that all the time. That would be so much fun.

Debbie Iten: 6:28

Oh my gosh it would, except for that there's. You know, my husband does not like the fact that she goes in the house like that. He has a heart attack every time she goes in. But he, he does leave the doors open too sometimes and and she gets in and he's like how did she get in? And I'm like, well, you left the door open this time who knows right?

Lee Aloni: 6:46

it's a mystery exactly, exactly so all right. So let's get back to insurance. Um, because this is really, really important in the state of Florida especially. We are in what I call hurricane season. You know June 1st to November 30th now, and floods. We had some rain here, we had a rain event a couple of weeks ago and can you just tell us? You know there are so many letters and on the map, you know what, what makes it. You know an area, what designates it as a flood area, a flood zone?

Debbie Iten: 7:25

So the ground level is zero. Every place in the state of Florida has a flood zone assigned to it. So every place in Florida, pretty much every place anywhere, is susceptible to flood. Florida is, you know, low lands pretty much all over the state and the flood zones vary. They're usually letters A, a, h, v, c, x, b depends. It could be A1 through A30. It could be A1 through A30. It just has those translate to how far above or below sea level that you are. It's above sea level, far enough. X flood zone means that you can get a preferred flood rate.

Debbie Iten: 8:09

When you're in an X zone, most of the banks don't require you to have flood insurance. They figure that you're far enough above sea level that you're not really going to get flooded, which is normally true. But there is always the rain event. There is always the time the water management district might not get the canals down fast enough. We could have tidal surge after hurricane andrew down in dade county. We had huge tidal surge all down in Palmetto Bay, saga Bay, all that area down there had flooding come way, way in and it's pretty much at that point. It's all bets off. You know you're you're in an area that could flood it. It just could happen. You know, depends on which way a hurricane comes in, as to what, what tidal surge that we're going to get and where it's going to go. But a lot of people do not carry flood insurance if the quote unquote bank does not require it in an X flood zone.

Lee Aloni: 9:05

Yeah, but I think you were the one that told me if you're a letter X, you still have a letter in the game and it is unpredictable. How much does it cost? Just a ballpark figure. What does it cost per year to have flood insurance? Is it really breaking the bank here?

Debbie Iten: 9:22

Well flood insurance used to be if you got a preferred flood insurance policy in an X zone, meaning you didn't have to have it, but you chose to carry it anyway. We used to run maybe two to $300 a year. But because of all of the floods that have been happening and it's impacted all around the country as to who you know where the flood rates are set, so you, they've all increased and now there are surcharges on it if it's not your primary home, but average homes in like an Aah flood zone are running anywhere between, say, 12 1500 a year. There's homes that were built over, like, say, east near hollywood.

Debbie Iten: 10:06

We'll use hollywood as an example because everybody knows it floods over in that area, they're what's called negatively rated, which means that the houses were built and they're considered below flood zone. So when you're, when you have a negative elevation, meaning that they've checked the lowest floor in your house, that makes the insurance even more expensive. I mean we have, we have clients in the Keys where their flood insurance is 17, 18, $20,000 a year for their flood insurance.

Lee Aloni: 10:38

Wow, okay, so 1500 or less sounds like a bargain compared to that.

Lee Aloni: 10:43

And your average house. It might be 500 or something you know, just off the top of my head, but I think it's better to be safe than sorry, and 500 or up to a thousand, whatever a year, is way better than all the damage that could potentially happen in a rain event, in a flood event. So, ok, that's all I'm going to say about that. You hear that, I think letter X, it's still in the game. Be smart and just get it. You know what you spend money worse ways. Spend the money the right way to be safe, ok. And as a realtor, I advise my clients to do that too. You know I can't make you do it, but you know I think it's wise. I do. All right. So there's another thing, speaking about real estate four points and wind mitigation inspections. These are the bane of the existence. Yes, make or break a deal here, and you know everyone wants to be safe. We do so. What are the four points in the four points inspection? What are those four? The acronym.

Debbie Iten: 11:48

So the four points on the four point inspection that they look at is your roof your plumbing, your electrical and your AC.

Debbie Iten: 11:56

Basically, what they're looking for on your roof.

Debbie Iten: 11:58

Is the aging condition of the roof right? Is there? Is there cupping on the shingles, meaning that the shingles have, like, rolled up because they're old and they're, they've lost the granules off of them and they're curling up? Is there missing shingles? Are there cracked tiles? Is there any leaks that are showing? That's what they're looking for on the roof. They also want to see, at least per citizens, at least five years, most of the useful life left. Most of the homeowners insurance carriers are looking at you know, a lot longer than that. If you've got a roof that's, you know, pushing 14 to 15 years old, you're, you're probably going to have some problems with it.

Debbie Iten: 12:40

The electrical they're looking for. There's some electrical boxes that they used to put in that are fire hazards. They're looking at those to see which box you actually happen to have. If you have to change an electrical box on a house, it could cost you $1,500 to $2,000. I know that you've dealt with some of those recently. They're also looking. They're looking for double taps and that you have the correct amperage for the house. Double taps means that you have two wires going into one breaker and that's another issue that could be a fire hazard. Right, right, um, your plumbing. They're looking to make sure that all of your lines supply lines are good. Um, your supply line coming from your washing machine is good that you don't have the accordion looking piping under the sinks, that your valves are not corroded.

Lee Aloni: 13:30

Um they're probably looking for pipes and poly pipes. Yes, poly pipe poly pipes yeah, bad experience with that. Yeah, some of my clients.

Debbie Iten: 13:42

So, yeah, it's really important to uh find out before you know exactly, exactly and those are the things you know. Those are the main things. The air conditioner they're looking for the life of that. They're also looking at the age of the water heater, because these are things that you know. If there's a problem with it and you know you're gonna have a fire, you're gonna have a flood in the house, and those are the things that the insurance company looks at.

Debbie Iten: 14:07

And you know, we educate Realtors. We do, you know, talks with Realtors, we do meetings for Realtors so that you, as as a realtor, if you're going in with a buyer and or a seller, you kind of know some of the things to look for. That can you know you can get it fixed ahead of time. You know, if you're selling a house down here in south florida spending two thousand dollars to fix a um electrical box, get it done and over with because it's going to be a problem for the buyer. Um, it's, it's going to be a problem for the buyer, it's going to be a point of contention. So if you get some of this stuff taken care of ahead of time, it's always helpful.

Lee Aloni: 14:42

Yeah, it truly is. When you go to sell your house, take care of the roof if you have to, if you're going to live there another five years and the roof, you know. If you can do it, and there are so many programs out there now that you can, you know, finance it, or you get a grant or what have you, and when you go to sell the house, you can just pay it off. So it's not something that you're, you know, you're tied to.

Debbie Iten: 15:02

So, um, Governor DeSantis signed back into. They put legislation through and he signed back into this year for the my Safe Florida Home program to be funded additionally, which is really great. And the first the priority is going with our older residents, which is really good because you know you can upgrade a lot of homes. You know, when we talk about the wind mitigation in a minute, a lot of homes will have, for instance, glass block in a bathroom. That was like a popular thing back in the late 80s and 90s where you put glass block in a bathroom or in a wall. Well, a lot of times people don't put a shutter over that and glass block is not impact resistant. So it's always like one of those things that everything else qualifies on the house for the wind mitigation, except for the glass block.

Debbie Iten: 15:51

This program. You could go and get shutters put over it or replace it and the program will offer funds towards you doing that. It helps with the roof as well. It's a really good program and I'm really glad they brought it back and funded it, because a lot of people have said it yeah, Okay, so the wind mit?

Lee Aloni: 16:09

what's? What's the story with the wind mitigation inspections?

Debbie Iten: 16:13

So the wind mitigation inspection is to give you credits. It's checking to see how the roof is strapped down to the house. It could be toenails, it could be clips, it could be single wraps, it could be double wraps, depending on which one it is depends on how many credits you get and how much off of your insurance. There's a secondary water resistance credit, that's if you have a secondary water barrier that's underneath your shingles or your metal or your tile roof not everybody does it.

Debbie Iten: 16:43

It's a little bit more money to have it done. It's not a big deal if you don't have it. It's not a huge credit. But the thing that they're looking at is um, they're looking at the nail patterns to make sure that you have the upgraded nails when you have a roof redone and see that every window and door opening so any entry and exit doors of any kind to the house, including the garage door, and any window opening, whether it be glass block or a window, is covered or has a to code door or window, meaning it's to current impact and wind resistant codes and those all give you credits off of your insurance and you know there's times when we see huge credits coming back on those because you've got everything done.

Lee Aloni: 17:26

Yeah, and you know it doesn't necessarily have to break your your deal. You know a real estate transaction, the person can buy the house because you know it doesn't necessarily have to break your your deal. You know a real estate transaction, the person can buy the house because you know they're as is contracts in the state of Florida, most of them, if not all and you can go ahead and buy it and then, a couple of months down the road, after you've replaced the garage door or what have you, you can get the credit. You know they'll, they'll, they'll change, yeah, you'll adjust the insurance cost. So it's, it's not necessarily a complete deal breaker, so that that is the light at the end of the tunnel. There, you know, you can get in the house that you want to get into. Just, you know, have to maneuver a little bit but it is doable, yeah some of some of the companies will allow.

Debbie Iten: 18:07

It's neither kind of an. It's called an a1 discount, meaning that every opening to the house is correctly covered with current to code right doors and windows, or you can possibly get an a2 or an a3, meaning that maybe the garage door isn't done, or a side entry door to the garage isn't done but everything else is done and there are a few companies that will give you partial credit for that. And, like you said, if everything's done but the garage door which is like a very common occurrence now, you know two to four thousand dollars after you get in the house to replace the garage door. You just get your wind mitigation updated and you are good to go. We can apply the credit midterm and then they'll print the credit out for you and you keep getting it and the credits are usually enough to pay to cover that cost in a year or two.

Lee Aloni: 18:55

Yeah, it's well worth doing. Definitely, definitely, okay. So we've covered all of these insurance-y things. Now we're going to get into some fun stuff. Any fun insurance stories you want to share with us? Deb?

Debbie Iten: 19:12

So I have two stories for you.

Debbie Iten: 19:14

Um years ago my grandparents lived up in more haven, which is up off of us 27, up near lake okachobee, and we would go up there and visit them on the weekends and we actually lived up there for a couple of years and one of my friends that I made when I was up there I met her grandparents at a parade that they had and I noticed that both of her grandparents, on the inside of their arms, had a lot of scarring on their arms and her grandmother had said the parade had to do with something up there.

Debbie Iten: 19:48

And the grandmother had said you know how long have you been in Florida? And started talking to me and she showed me her arms and she said back in the 1920s there was a hurricane that came through and around Lake Ochoaubi. Now there's a huge dike around the lake and they've actually recently the Corps of Engineers has reinforced it, made it thicker and made it a little taller. But the reason that that dike is there is back in 1928, there was a hurricane that came through and it created almost like a tidal wave on Lake Okeechobee, came across Lake Okeechobee and flooded the entire area, all the little towns around it and her grandparents were newly engaged.

Debbie Iten: 20:25

Their house got flooded and they clung on to two palm trees, the say I think they're on to two palm trees, the say I think they're the sable palm trees and it cut up their arms because they were on them for hours and hours Holding on to them at two trees right next to each other, and when they were, like I said, they had just gotten engaged and they were very young when it happened, and so, after that storm that created them, the Corps of Engineers came in and started building that wall around the lake. Because of what happened because it's so shallow that you know the way that it came across it was really rough, it was, it was. It was a bad situation that that happened. Back then a lot of people lost everything and um, yeah so, but we we have a client that we've had from insured for many, many years and they are in the food space and they have a gigantic frozen warehouse and there was a small fire over one of the freezers it actually one of the units was overheating and it melted a light and the light dripped down onto the insulation and the paper on the insulation started smoldering.

Debbie Iten: 21:33

I'm not going to say what fire department, but the fire department came in to put the fire out because they thought it was a big fire and they opened doors to the where, to the cold storage warehouse, and all of the products started defrosting and they had to fight with the fire department to shut the doors because basically, the fire was out, it was just smoldering a little bit, it wasn't a big area and all the product in the warehouse was defrosting and it ended up costing the client millions and millions dollars in lost product. They ended up having to lose all the product and, um, it was not having proper training at the fire department and actually the fire departments went back there and actually trained on how to handle a situation in the cold storage facility like that. Because of what happened, I think it was. I think they lost eight million dollars in product over the fact that the doors were were left open, and it was.

Debbie Iten: 22:30

It was like I said, it was a training situation and the fire department has since, um, you know, had two or three different groups come out to train there to understand how that, if this ever happens again in a cold storage facility, which we have a lot of them yeah, you know how to handle it in a fire, we run across some very crazy things, but the client actually was telling the fire department this is how you need to handle this situation and close the doors and stop trying to run it that way. Yeah, it was really something. It was. I believe it was Father's Day weekend and my husband and my son were on site for the whole time that they were there and back the next day, and it was crazy. It was a crazy time, well that will never happen again.

Debbie Iten: 23:15

No, no, they've been trained now, thankfully, and so the fire department, you know I mean. Everything's a learning opportunity. Every situation you come across, for anybody, there's always a learning opportunity. Every situation you come across for anybody is always, there's always a learning opportunity.

Lee Aloni: 23:27

so For sure for sure, yeah. So I wanted to ask you one other thing. I know that you you're involved with a lot of boards and things for insurance and you also are active in the community and you help out in schools, not just educating realtors. Can you expand upon that a little bit, where you've taught in the past and you know, or are you going to continue doing that in the coming year or so?

Debbie Iten: 23:52

So yeah, there is a program there's. It's on a local level, a state level and a national level and it's called Invest and it's teaches the kids. It's actually geared towards seniors, but juniors and seniors take the class. They usually take it through the Academy of Finance in the school or through DECA or DCT. They have part of their program that they teach in. School touches upon insurance, but it's a. It's an eight, eight classes that we go into the schools and we teach it.

Debbie Iten: 24:23

And it talks about how insurance started over in London with Lloyd's of London. Yeah, we show them the kids at the building and talk about how it used to be this little tiny cafe and how when the ships were coming across years and years ago and they had a load of goods that they were sending across, how everybody would give a little bit and insure that's how it started is they would insure these loads and if it made it over, they kept the money and if the ship sank along the way, the money that those guys invested went to the person who owned the ship and that's how insurance started. And then we talked to them about all the different kinds of insurance, because there's so many different kinds of insurance, and the opportunities for them to get into the insurance field and we've taught our program is in Broward county. It's through independent insurance agents of Broward county and we've taught it, archbishop McCarthy.

Debbie Iten: 25:22

We have a really big program up at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. They are a big program. They've been statewide, locally and nationally. They always win a lot of money at that school and scholarships. We've done Cooper City High School. We've done oh my goodness Pompano Beach, deerfield Beach, flanagan High School, wowagan high school, wow. So yeah, a lot of schools, a lot of schools in broward county and we're open if there's any um teachers that are involved in that program. We give two 500 scholarships a year to each school that we're involved with and it's a great. It's a great time.

Debbie Iten: 26:01

Everybody always learns something and a lot of times the the kids there in the class. One of the first classes that we teach is auto insurance and most of the kids we tell them okay, when you, when you come into the class for this particular class, we want you to bring your your insurance information with you from your parents and we show them. A lot of those kids are not getting a good student discount, so so we show them where it is on the information they have, tell them to get a copy of the report card if they have a 3.0 or better and take it home. And we've gotten such feedback from the parents like they save a lot of money because their kids have a 3.0 GPA and it gives them about a 20 to 25% discount on their car insurance. For the kids, that's a great Florida grades up.

Lee Aloni: 26:48

That's right, I had to. As you know, I used to be a teacher and I'm all about education, and so you know it's the more you know, right, yeah, so I'm going to bring it back to South Florida. Can you tell me what is one of your favorite places to visit or things to do in South Florida? I always ask my guests that.

Debbie Iten: 27:11

So I love the Everglades. We don't get out as much in that area as we used to, but I love the Everglades. We used to go out into Flamingo a lot and go fishing back there. It's very kind of old Florida and peaceful, and spend a lot of time in the keys, on the water in the keys and I love it. It's you know part of being part of being in South Florida is being able to be out on the water wherever you're at and be enjoying the sunshine.

Lee Aloni: 27:37

Yeah, the sunshine, I really love that. Oh, that's great, I'm going to, I'm going to use that sunshine, nice. So, yeah, so this podcast, it goes all over the country. So I really, I really do like to share the fun shine with everyone across the state and beyond, because we have some so many wonderful places to visit in South Florida. The people are great, the food is great Seafood, you know, you can't go wrong down here, fresh, my family's in the Midwest and like we don't get the fish like you do. You know you're so lucky. So I appreciate a lot of things I know you do and um, I, I have to tell you I appreciate your friendship, your expertise so much. You know. You and I met at the davy cooper city chamber of commerce and I'm ever so grateful for that. Uh, and you know it's all about, um, learning from each other, helping each other with our businesses, uh, forming great relationships and, um, just all about real life. Real life with lee in south. I love it, I love it.

Debbie Iten: 28:38

It's a great, a great thing that you do, and I always appreciate being able to get information from you, because the real estate side we don't always know as much about, and it's it's great to have a partnership that you can and somebody that you can bounce things off of when you run into problems, and so we really appreciate you.

Lee Aloni: 28:54

Thank you, yes, and I you. So I think that's all the time we have for today. Debbie Iton, the Iton Agency. Thank you so much for joining me today here. I hope that our audience learned a lot today about insurance and if you haven't, please feel free to reach out to Debbie at Aiden Agency. What is your contact information?

Debbie Iten: 29:14

So our phone number at the office is 954-680-0360. Our agency is the agency, email is info at itenagencycom and our website is itenagencycom, so you can pick up the email from there or the phone numbers as well.

Lee Aloni: 29:32

Short and sweet, there you go, and I'm Leah Loney, south Florida Real Estate at our family owned G&E Realty Group in the heart of Davie, florida, and thank you so much for being with us here today. Have a great time in the sunshine state in South Florida. See you soon. Thank you, bye, bye. Thank you, deb.

Speaker 1: 30:00

Thanks for joining us on Real Life with Leigh. If you love the show and it's helped you in any way, please subscribe and leave us your comments. We're all about helping each other in the community and we're so appreciative of you. You're invited to share this episode on social media and with someone you know. Tune in next time to learn more about life in South Florida and Real Life with Leigh.