Key Takeaways
- Florida homeowners now pay an average of $8,292 per year for insurance, up 18% from 2024 and 75% from 2021 — if your renewal is coming up, expect another increase regardless of your claims history.
- The state’s litigation reforms stabilized the market and helped reduce Citizens’ policy count from 1.4 million to 395,000, but they don’t affect the reinsurance cost structure that drives most of Florida’s premium increases.
- Nearly one in five Florida home units is now uninsured — if you’re considering dropping coverage because of cost, price the risk of a major claim against the forced-placement premium your lender will charge instead.
- If you’re still with Citizens, the 8.7% rate cut effective June 1 is real, but Citizens’ ongoing depopulation effort means you may be moved to a private carrier in the second half of 2026 — watch your mail.
Florida homeowners are spending 4.4% of their mean household income on insurance premiums in 2024. That’s the highest share of any state in the country, according to a report released May 25-26, 2026, by the Coalition for an Insurable Future, a national nonprofit that tracks insurance affordability. It’s not an outlier year. It’s the new baseline.
The headline number from the report: Florida premiums rose 75% between 2021 and 2025. The national average rose 38% over the same period. Florida’s increase was almost exactly double the rest of the country’s, and the gap isn’t closing.
The Florida average annual homeowners insurance premium hit $8,292 in 2025, according to Insurify data cited in the report. That’s up 18% from 2024 alone. A homeowner who paid $7,027 last year is now paying $8,292, $1,265 more per year, before any changes to their coverage or claims history.
Almost 20% of Florida home units are now uninsured. When nearly one in five homes goes bare, the premium spiral has already done its damage. Those owners aren’t beating the market; they’re exposed to catastrophic loss with no recovery path.
Why Florida’s Rate Problem Isn’t a Florida Problem
The Coalition’s report identifies two structural drivers that don’t have a Florida-specific fix: climate change and reinsurance costs. Carolyn Kousky, the Coalition’s executive director and a contributing economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, described climate change as the “much bigger problem” for insurance pricing. Six hurricanes made landfall in Florida between 2022 and 2024. Hurricane Ian alone produced approximately $60 billion in insured losses in 2022.
Reinsurance is where the cost multiplication happens. Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute put it plainly: 40 cents of every premium dollar in Florida goes to pay reinsurance. The Coalition report found reinsurance costs increased 72% over the last decade nationally. In Florida, where the catastrophe exposure is concentrated, carriers pay more to reinsure, and that cost passes through directly to policyholders whether or not they file a single claim.
Here’s what that 40-cent figure means in practice. When a carrier files a rate increase with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the reinsurance cost is a real, auditable line item in the filing. Carriers don’t get to make it up. When reinsurance markets reprice after a major storm season, every primary carrier writing in Florida gets a renewal quote from their reinsurer that reflects the new reality, and that quote lands before the primary carrier’s next rate filing cycle. The rate increase you see on your renewal letter is, in large part, the reinsurer’s cost being redistributed across the policyholder base. I’ve reviewed enough rate filings to know that when a carrier says “catastrophe loss costs,” they often mean “our reinsurance treaty got more expensive.” The consumer facing that renewal letter has no way to see the difference.
What the Reforms Did and Didn’t Do
Florida passed significant insurance market reforms starting in 2022, targeting litigation abuse. Former Florida deputy insurance commissioner Lisa Miller cited the data before reforms took effect: Florida accounted for roughly 80% of the nation’s homeowners insurance lawsuits despite representing a fraction of the U.S. housing market. The reforms made it harder to sue carriers over claims and eliminated one-way attorney fee provisions that had fueled frivolous litigation.
The Florida OIR, under Commissioner Mike Yaworsky, approved 20 new private insurers to enter the state following the reforms. According to the OIR, approximately $850 million in new capital has entered the Florida property insurance market since the reforms passed. Citizens Property Insurance, the state-backed insurer of last resort, shed about a million policies: it peaked at roughly 1.4 million in October 2023 and now sits at approximately 395,000. Citizens is also implementing an 8.7% rate cut effective June 1, 2026, per the OIR.
That’s real progress on the litigation and market stability side. It’s not real progress on the reinsurance and climate side, because no state law changes the math that reinsurers run when they look at Florida’s hurricane exposure. The Coalition report projects continued steep increases driven primarily by extreme weather events. The reforms addressed a cost driver that was real but secondary. The cost driver that isn’t addressed, catastrophe risk repricing, is the one that will keep your renewal letter moving upward.
The Florida OIR has not signaled any new regulatory mechanism to address reinsurance cost pass-through, and none is likely given that reinsurance pricing is set in global markets outside any single state regulator’s reach.
What Florida Homeowners Should Do Now
If you’re with Citizens, the 8.7% rate cut effective June 1 is meaningful. But Citizens is a mechanism of last resort, not a long-term home. The depopulation effort is ongoing, and you may be moved to a private carrier in the second half of 2026. Watch your mail closely.
If you’re with one of the 20 new private carriers that entered post-reform, ask your agent specifically about their reinsurance structure. Small carriers that entered Florida to capitalize on market opportunity may carry reinsurance treaties that reprice aggressively after a single bad storm season. Capitalization and treaty terms vary significantly across those 20 entrants.
The 20% uninsured figure is a warning, not a strategy. If you’re considering dropping coverage because premiums hit $8,000-plus, weigh that against what a major roof claim or total loss looks like uninsured. Homeowners with a mortgage generally can’t drop coverage anyway; lenders will force-place a policy at rates worse than what you’re trying to avoid.
Compare homeowners insurance quotes before your next renewal date. The best homeowners insurance options in Florida vary significantly by carrier, zip code, and construction type, and a competitive quote from a newer market entrant may undercut your current carrier’s renewal price, at least in the near term.
The Coalition report’s core finding isn’t that Florida’s market is broken. It’s that the tools used to fix the litigation problem can’t fix the climate problem. Those require different levers, and only one of them is improving.
