It may be peak hurricane season, but homeowners and real estate professionals in Florida are feeling far more confident this year when it comes to all the possible weather-related what ifs that could result in a homeowner’s insurance claim.
“The Florida insurance industry sits at its strongest financial position in more than a decade,” said Mark Friedlander, the senior director of media relations at the Insurance Information Institute. “A few years ago we were worried that the next storm could be the one to put all the carriers out of business. This is great news for consumers because they don’t need to worry about their insurance company being in financial strain or be concerned that if a hurricane strikes that their claim may not be paid.”
This confidence and optimism stems from the influx of new and returning homeowners’ insurance carriers to the state after several years away. In 2022, at least eight insurance carriers in the state liquidated.
“The market essentially shut down in that moment,” Emily Ernst, a Tampa-based division service leader at World Insurance Associates, said. “Carriers weren’t taking new clients and the underwriting became so strict that it was impossible for someone to be placed into a new product.”
Citizens fills the void
The void created by the lack of private carriers was then filled by Citizens, the state’s insurer of last resort. At the height of the state’s homeowners’ insurance challenges in 2023 Citizens held roughly 1.4 million policies, representing 15% of the market.
“If your backstop insurer is your largest market, you know there’s something not right — something has clearly gone wrong,” Friedlander said.
As of July 2026, Citizens said it had roughly 278,000 policies, down roughly 80% from the 2023 peak. This reduction comes as nearly 20 insurance companies entered or reentered the state over the past few years.
“I don’t think anybody predicted they would be down more than a million policies and be able to move all that risk to the private market in such a short period,” Friedlander said. “It’s incredible. Now Citizens is truly just that backstop for where the risk can’t be placed in the private market and that’s exactly what it should be.”
In addition to providing consumers with more options, the influx of carriers has also led to significant improvements in the insurance premiums homeowners are having to pay.
“We would have conversations with consumers where we had to tell them that their rate went up 200%, but we had no one else to place their policy with,” Ernst said. “People were being priced out of the marketplace. They simply couldn’t afford the insurance on the house, no matter how low the price started to become on that property. It wasn’t worth it.”
While things are improving, experts say inflationary pressures driving up the cost of rebuilding will prevent premiums from dropping all the way back down.
“We’re never going to go back to 2019 where you could get things for $1,000, but we’re not living in the space we were in 2023 where the average premium was $7,800,” Ernst said. “Most of this is coming from inflation and the cost of complying with building codes that have come as a result of some of the storms we have had over the past six years.”
The regulatory reforms
Insurance experts attribute this influx, and the lower rates it has helped create, to regulatory reforms the state enacted beginning in 2022 and continued through 2023.
In May 2022, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 2-D, which tightened rules around assignment-of-benefits claims, attorney-fee multipliers and roof-related claims, while also providing $2 billion in temporary reinsurance support and $150 million for home-hardening grants. This bill was then backed up in December 2022 by the passage of Senate Bill 2-A, which eliminated one-way attorney fees for property-insurance lawsuits, restricting post-loss assignment of benefits, creating the Florida Optional Reinsurance Assistance program and making significant changes to Citizens Property Insurance.
Other bills passed in 2023 made further changes to insurance-related litigation and attorney-fee rules and strengthened insurer accountability and consumer protections.
“In 2020, Florida accounted for 79% of all property claim lawsuits, so basically four out of five property claim lawsuits were filed in Florida, but only an average 10% of the claims were filed in the state,” Friedlander said. “Last year, it was down to 41% of the property claim lawsuits, which is still high, but a major improvement.”
Experts say the number of claims lawsuits was as high as it was because policy holders or third-party operators, such as roofers, that the policyholder signed their policy over to, could file a lawsuit regarding their claim. Even if the court only awarded the policy $1 more than the insurance carrier was willing to payout, the insurer was held liable for all of the policyholders’ legal fees.
“Between 2015 and 2022, 90% of all the money that carriers paid out, they paid to attorneys,” said Ryan Papy, the president of Keyes Insurance, part of the Florida-based brokerage The Keyes Company. “The legislation changed ending the one-way attorney fees and now insurers can make money again.”
An easier path to closing
When it comes to assisting prospective homebuyers in the market, agents in Florida said the legislative reforms and the more inviting environment they have created for homeowners’ insurers have lessened the challenges many buyers face when figuring out if the house they want is in their budget.
“There was a time when it was crazy,” said Claire Gogan, the leader of the Southwest Florida-based The Gogan Team, which is brokered by eXp Realty. “Insurance was causing major issues with our contracts.”
Now, insurance professionals say the market looks a lot different.
“Before someone would buy a home and there was maybe one option or two. Now we’re getting back long lists of quotes,” Erica Ostrander, the vice president of markets and franchise success of We Insure, said. “We can actually give consumers choices, which is nice.”
While the market has improved and Gogan said she feels insurers in her area are loosening up more and more, she and her team are continuing to employ many of the process adjustments they made at the height of the insurance crisis.
“We’ve educated ourselves to understand what’s going to be required now and we work to overcome those challenges before they present themselves,” Gogan said. “For example, as soon as we get an inspection report, we send it right to the insurance agent, sometimes we even do this before they make an offer, and we always ask the seller for their flood policy and their declaration page.”
“Sometimes the difference between getting a listing under contract or getting a buyer to move forward is just understanding the quotes and policies,” she added.
Buyer beware
While the increase in the number of insurance carriers serving the Florida market and lower insurance premiums are certainly reasons to celebrate, Gina Clausen Lozier, Florida-based policyholder property insurance attorney, warns that consumers should be very aware of what their policy does and does not cover.
“There’s more participation in the market right now, but if you look at the actual product itself, you’re getting a lot less than you would have gotten five or six years ago,” Clausen Lozier said. “There’s been a really big erosion in consumer rights and in the ability to hold the insurance companies accountable.”
When considering insurance quotes, Clausen Lozier said agents and consumers should closely examine their policy to figure out what it does and does not cover.
“If the price feels too good to be true, it’s absolutely going to be too good to be true,” she said.