Florida homeowners are getting squeezed as insurers hike premiums and deny claims, even as they post record profits nationwide. Florida’s average annual home insurance premium hit $8,292 in 2025, an 18% jump in a single year and still the highest in the country, with new Insurify analysis projecting rates will keep climbing toward $8,486 by the end of 2026. The homeowners’ insurance crisis is disrupting the state’s housing market, impacting renters and affordable housing.
Insurance companies are passing the costs and risks associated with climate change onto policyholders, while continuing to underwrite and invest in the same polluters responsible for the crisis. In 2023, Florida Republicans enacted a “tort reform” law backed by the insurance lobby and Gov. DeSantis that made it significantly harder for policyholders to sue insurers over denied or underpaid claims. It didn’t work: in 2024, 14 Florida property insurers closed more than half of the claims filed by homeowners without paying a penny, and Floridians are being forced to sue their insurers at a higher rate than ever. 143 lawsuits per 1,000 claims closed without payment in 2025, more than ten times the rate in the rest of the country.
Roughly one in five Florida homeowners has no home insurance at all, and the state now leads the nation in foreclosures, with Tampa posting the worst rate of any major U.S. metro. One of industry’s more powerful lobby arms, the American Property & Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA), recently cited an erroneous decrease in the increase in Florida. In reality, few if any consumers are experiencing real relief while policyholders now face higher risks and more obstacles to hold insurers accountable.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are cutting the very federal tools meant to help Floridians prepare for and recover from the storms driving these costs. Twenty-two staffers at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, who worked on improving hurricane forecasting, were fired due to Trump’s cuts, and the administration has moved to gut HUD’s disaster recovery office that helped fund rebuilding after Hurricane Milton.
Floridians Are Paying More, Getting Less While Home Insurers Profit
Fact: Florida is still the most expensive home insurance market in the country, with consumers in Collier County now paying over $10,000 annually for coverage, a 25% spike over last year.
Fact: Skyrocking insurance premiums are driving up total homeownership costs and undermining the housing market, with homeowners in nearly one-third of states paying more in monthly insurance premiums than property taxes, including in Florida where it comprises 9.2% of monthly household costs.
Fact: Florida led the nation in foreclosures in 2025, with Tampa posting the worst foreclosure rate among major U.S. metros and maintained the highest foreclosure rate over the first six-months of 2026, with nearly 27,500 occurring as insurance costs consume a growing share of household budgets.
Fact: There is an estimated $2.7 trillion gap between insurance coverage and potential climate change related damages, with Florida identified as the highest risk state in the nation.
Fact: Property and casualty insurers made an unprecedented $405 billion in profit over the last three years nationally, even as they raised prices for Florida families and pushed for laws to avoid paying claims.
Fact: Florida’s average home insurance premium hit $8,292 in 2025, an 18% increase in a single year and the highest in the nation, roughly 181% above the national average.
Fact: Roughly one in five Florida homeowners has no home insurance at all, with Florida’s metro areas of Lakeland and Cape Coral leading the nation with the highest growth rate of uninsured homes.
Fact: After Florida’s 2023 tort reform law, 14 property insurers closed more than half of homeowner claims with zero payment in 2024, and nine more closed between 40% and 50% of claims without paying anything.
Fact: Florida homeowners filed 143 lawsuits per 1,000 claims closed without payment in 2025, up from 129 in 2024 and 124 in 2022, before tort reform took effect, a litigation rate more than ten times higher than the rest of the country.
Fact: Following Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Florida insurers closed 27.7% of the 436,000 claims filed from the two storms without any payment, and more than 49,000 claims were denied outright.
Fact: Minority homeowners nationwide are disproportionately at risk of having no insurance, with respective uninsured rates of 14% and 11%, compared to 6% of white homeowners, and Hispanic and Black Floridians made up 26.5% and 14.5% of the state’s population as of 2020.
Fact: Insurance companies typically charged Hispanic homeowners 30% more and Black homeowners 16% more for identical home insurance policies. Homeowners in predominantly Hispanic areas in Florida pay on average 58% or $5,014 more annually for the same coverage as those in white communities.
Fact: Florida Republican lawmakers and regulators have forced homeowners off the state’s insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance, and on to the more costly private insurance market, forcing many to acquire unregulated surplus lines of insurance.
Fact: Trump’s tariffs were projected to increase home insurance costs in Florida by $464, the largest projected increase of any state in the country.
Congressional Republicans Are Making Florida’s Crisis Worse
Florida’s entire Republican House delegation voted for a March 2025 spending package that cut FEMA’s budget by nearly $300 million, and a majority of those same members had previously voted against a September 2024 bill that would have provided $20 billion to FEMA’s disaster relief fund, just weeks before Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Florida and sent premiums surging by 18%.
Republican Rep. Bryon Donalds (FL-19) recently dismissed a common-sense proposal to help lower risks and costs for Floridians getting hammered by skyrocketing home insurance premiums, all but admitting he stands with big insurers and will not fight for consumers. Donalds has taken over $100,000 in campaign cash from the property and casualty insurance sector over his political career. Donalds has actively made risks and costs increase for Floridians by voting to get FEMA, NOAA and weather forecasting, and has stood silent as Trump’s tariff taxes have driven up costs. Donalds’s deficient price comparison home insurance proposal will not lower costs, provide accountability, defend consumers, nor protect homes, small businesses, and private property from worsening severe weather.
Miami-area Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) is Florida’s only member on the House subcommittee that oversees the insurance industry, yet she has held no hearings on the home insurance affordability crisis while taking thousands of dollars from property insurers’ PACs, including the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.
Florida House Republicans have collectively accepted nearly $2 million from the oil and gas industry, whose products drive the climate change intensifying Florida’s hurricanes, and four members have accepted nearly $20,000 from the PACs or employees of major property insurers, according to UAF’s analysis of the delegation’s voting record. Every Florida Republican also voted for legislation reversing the entirety of the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
Solutions Exist to Lower Costs and Protect Florida Homeowners
Congress needs to stop making this crisis worse for their constituents. They should:
- Put their constituents first and rein in egregious home insurance profits;
- Restore full funding to NOAA’s weather forecasting and research programs;
- Release the FEMA disaster reimbursements and mitigation grants already owed to states;
- Reinstate programs, like BRIC, that help communities prepare before storms hit;
- Fully fund and fix the National Flood Insurance Program;
- Prevent insurers from using credit scores in premium pricing;
- Hold polluters accountable for climate-driven risks and damage;
- Require insurers to provide full disclosure, including profit margins and investments, alongside rate hike requests;
- Regulate and require transparency for new home insurance surplus lines of insurance;
- Require more national data transparency to allow state lawmakers and regulators to address market inefficiencies and gaps across states; and
- Finally, at the very least, Florida residents should expect their federal lawmakers to hold hearings on insurers’ pattern of delay, deny, and defend practices harming policyholders.
Unlocking America’s Future released a full report on Florida’s crisis in April 2026, and the state’s Republican delegation has still failed to act. A coalition of congressional Democrats has launched an investigation into insurers’ use of credit scores and private investments, and Oklahoma is taking insurers to court over the industry’s fraudulent practices. Numerous solutions exist to help lower risks and costs for Florida families if politicians and regulators choose to act.
For questions or to connect with an insurance expert, ratings analyst, policymaker, or impacted homeowner, please email jayson@focalpointstrategygroup.com.
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