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Hurricane Laura Property Damage in U.S. May Reach $12 Billion

Hurricane Laura Property Damage in U.S. May Reach $12 Billion

Hurricane Laura, the most intense storm to hit the northwestern Gulf Coast since 1856, will result in as much as $12 billion in damage to real estate, CoreLogic Inc. estimated.

Insured wind and storm surge losses for residential and commercial properties in Louisiana and Texas will total $8 billion to $12 billion, according to a statement Friday. Home mortgage delinquencies -- already above the national average rate in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Beaumont, Texas -- will increase, CoreLogic said.

While it was a ferocious storm, its center struck a more sparsely populated area of the Louisiana and Texas coast as it approached with 150-mile-an-hour winds.

“There is never a good place for a hurricane to make landfall,” Curtis McDonald, meteorologist and senior product manager of CoreLogic, said in the statement. “But this was the best possible outcome because it spared the major population centers of Houston and New Orleans.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.