If wind mitigation and stronger homes are the paths to reducing insurance claims and bringing down premiums in hurricane-prone areas, as a growing number of industry experts believe, then homeowners, builders and insurers may want to take a look at some homes going up in the Florida Panhandle.

They are not the pricey, igloo-shaped "windproof" homes found in some beach areas, but are designed to be affordable, with gables and a roomy front porch like most conventional houses.

These new breed of homes have been built with reinforced concrete walls, heavier roof decking, more fasteners per foot, impact-resistant windows and doors anchored directly to the concrete, as well as standing-seam metal roofs designed to withstand hurricane-force winds, according to Insurance Journal.

And the construction work is frequently and thoroughly inspected, more than what municipal building departments and state mitigation plans can offer, many contractor and inspectors have learned.

"I won't say they're hurricane-proof — but hurricane-resistant," said Darius Grimes, president of Disaster-Smart, a Pensacola, Fla., firm that audits and inspects homes built to the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety's famously stout FORTIFIED building standards.

At one of the strengthened homes nearing completion in Pensacola, the exterior walls are thicker than most wood-frame structure walls. Its construction is sort of the reverse of the better-known technique that uses insulated concrete forms (ICF), which provides polystyrene foam blocks as forms for poured concrete.

The new system, made by ConcreWallUSA, now known as Fortified Structural Solutions and based in nearby Panama City, Fla., has a polystyrene core with steel remesh, a grid of wires welded together to act as a reinforcement and sprayed-on concrete on both sides.

The approach is so new that some insurance carriers are still scratching their heads over just how to classify it.

"Every carrier I talked to said to go ahead and write it as a masonry structure, and we may have to figure something out later," said Suzanne Pollard Spann, CEO of Legacy Insurance Brokers in Pensacola.

Despite some unfamiliarity with the new wall system, insurance carriers do appear willing to provide significant premium discounts for the property, she noted.

For instance, the Spring Street home near downtown Pensacola is about 1,500 sq. ft. and valued at about $400,000; the average quoted annual premium is around $1,600, Spann said.

Comparable-sized homes in the neighborhood, built with conventional wood framing and shingle roofs, she said, have seen homeowners premiums as high as $7,000 a year.

Besides wind-resistance, the ConcreWall system also offers excellent fire resistance, triggering further premium credits on homeowner policies, according to Grimes.

‘Model for All Home Builders Associations'

The idea of building rock-solid homes at an affordable price in a place that regularly sees its share of destructive hurricanes is largely the brainchild of the Home Builders Association (HBA) of west Florida.

Spann served on its board in 2023 when the project began.

"This is my pet project because of what it can mean for our industry," she said.

The Pensacola's home's builder is Amir Fooladi with ParsCo Construction, who was president of the local HBA in 2023. The structure is one of the first homes in Florida to be built with the ConcreWall system.

Fooladi, Spann and the HBA worked with city officials and with the local Habitat for Humanity to launch the home-building project and at least two others like it, according to Insurance Journal.

To date, more than 40 local and national companies have donated funds, labor and/or materials for the building site. Once completed and sold to a Habitat family, any profits will go back to the HBA of West Florida.

"I feel like this can be a model for all home builders associations," Fooladi said.

Part of the reason behind building the concrete homes is to get an idea of the costs and challenges involved in constructing houses to a stronger standard, Grimes said.

But Fooladi said it is difficult to gauge the exact cost since so much material has been donated.

According to estimates from the National Association of Home Builders, Reddit and HomeGuide.com, concrete-walled structures can cost up to $250 per sq. ft. to build — roughly 50 percent more than conventional homes.

Advocates for the use of concrete walls in home construction note that the higher build cost will pay for itself in the form of lower insurance premiums, reduced cooling expenses and reduced repair costs.

FORTIFIED Building Standards Are Tougher Than State's

It is not just the structural concrete that makes these types of houses so strong, Fooladi and Grimes explained, but the building also must meet the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) FORTIFIED standards, which often require more wind-resistant material and building techniques than Florida's own vaunted building codes.

While most building codes require roof-decking nails to be placed every 6 in., the FORTIFIED certification requires nails every 4 in., Grimes said.

The biggest difference, however, is that FORTIFIED-approved homes must be inspected more thoroughly and more often, then reinspected years later, he said.

"Building codes are only as good as the local inspector," said Carl Schneider, a Gulf Coast insurance agent who is familiar with the Florida Panhandle and Alabama markets. "FORTIFIED homes are way above the Florida building codes on that."

He pointed to a recent study by the Alabama Department of Insurance and the University of Alabama's Center for Risk and Insurance Research that found FORTIFIED-built homes fared significantly better in Hurricane Sally, which hit southern Alabama and northwest Florida in 2020. Insurance company payouts would have been about 75 percent less if all impacted homes in two coastal Alabama counties had been built to the more stringent standards, the study found.

According to Insurance Journal, the FORTIFIED approach is spreading nationwide, and it is about to become a little tougher for some contractors.

Starting Nov. 1, FORTIFIED-certified roofing contractors must install all IBHS-approved homes, the institute announced. That means the roofer must complete the IBHS training courses and follow a rigorous protocol when installing roofs and roof decking.