Financing and Insurance

Palm Beach Post Letters to the Editor:

Marvin Biver's letter (If insurance costs too much, build a dome home) of June 2nd caused me to write. My husband and I have spent the last three years building a hurricane proof concrete dome home in Stuart. (www.safeharbordome.com) We have created a beautiful disaster resistant structure. We survived all the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes without any damage to our concrete dome. Domes are designed to withstand tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, termites, earthquakes, lightening, and have been tested for nuclear blast, due to their design, shape and construction materials (concrete and steel). Another benefit is the incredible energy efficiency. Any disaster resistant home needs to be high and dry, it won't protect you from flooding and storm surge near the ocean, like damage from Katrina.

Our 3000 square foot home is considered "superior" construction, but it is extremely difficult to find financing and insurance. I canvassed 30 different insurance companies before locating one last year to write a policy required by our preexisting mortgage (we built the dome on land on which we already had a home). The premiums are extremely high without considering the hurricane proof design and construction. We have been notified that we have been non-renewed, the company is leaving Florida. There seems to be no incentive from the insurance industry to build better buildings.

In regard to financing, we bankrolled the original construction ourselves, and sought re-financing to add landscaping, and amenities to complement the original construction. We recently started a quest to refi to add a garage of the same construction, but have been met with resistance to our type of home. We are constantly bombarded by pre-qualified mortgage offers, but when actually talking with the agents and describing the structure, they say "we can't do dome mortgages". I have personally called over 30 banks, and the problem is there are no comparables in our area. The nearest dome is in Pensacola and then the next are in Charleston, SC and Asheville, NC.

We built the dome ourselves only because we had skills to accomplish the task, there are many specialized facets of the construction process, but the interior uses traditional building techniques. Our shell (50' diameter by 25' tall) was built for around $150,000, and you finish out according to your own budget and taste. There are only about a half a dozen full time builders working in the US at this time, we are bringing in a team from Colorado to build our 40' dome garage in late June.

The law of supply and demand will bring more contractors educated in this type of structure only when people are tired of rebuilding their homes and rooftops. When engineers and architects embrace the technology it will become more appealing to the taste of the general public. As for the near future, until more domes like ours exist, people will have to finance their own construction as owner/builders and search for insurance from boutique companies they'll probably never need to use.

Deborah Razete-Elkins & Billy Elkins

June 3, 2006