Citizens Property Insurance Falls Below 300,000 Policies, a 25-Year Low

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state-backed carrier created to cover Floridians who cannot find coverage in the private market, held 293,465 policies in force as of June 5, its lowest count in 25 years. The figure represents a decline of roughly 79 percent from the corporation's October 2023 peak of about 1.42 million policies, and it marks the most concrete evidence yet that Florida's property insurance market has moved out of the crisis phase that defined 2022 and 2023.

How the policy count collapsed

The reduction is the product of a deliberate program. Under Florida's depopulation framework, private insurers approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation submit takeout offers for blocks of Citizens policies. Policyholders who receive a takeout offer within a defined price band are required to accept it and leave Citizens, unless the private offer exceeds the Citizens premium by more than 20 percent, in which case the policyholder may decline and remain.

In 2025 alone, the depopulation program transferred more than 546,000 policies from Citizens to approved private carriers. Citizens had been projected to end 2025 at roughly 385,000 policies. The June figure of 293,465 indicates that the trend continued through the first half of 2026.

The underlying driver is that private carriers are willing to write Florida risk again. That willingness follows a series of legislative changes enacted between 2021 and 2023 that restructured litigation economics in property claims, including the elimination of one-way attorney fee awards and the curtailment of assignment of benefits arrangements. Insurers had cited those two features as the primary reason Florida generated a disproportionate share of national property claims litigation.

Rates are falling, from a high base

Citizens implemented rate reductions in 2026 under rates approved by the Office of Insurance Regulation. Homeowners multiperil policyholders saw an average decrease of 8.8 percent and homeowners wind-only policyholders an average decrease of 5.5 percent. The new rates took effect July 1 for new policies and apply to existing policies at renewal.

The underlying recommendation, submitted in December, called for a statewide average decrease of 2.6 percent across personal lines, with three of every five Citizens policyholders receiving an average premium reduction of 11.5 percent, or about $359. More than 330,000 policyholders across all 67 counties saw decreases, and more than 150,000 of those received reductions of 10 percent or greater.

Those two sets of figures describe different things and are easy to conflate. The 2.6 percent statewide average covers all personal lines including condominium unit owner and renter policies. The 8.8 percent figure applies specifically to the homeowners multiperil line. Both are averages, and individual policyholder outcomes vary substantially by county, by construction type, by roof age and by wind mitigation features.

Reductions of this size do not undo the increases of the preceding years. Florida homeowners continue to pay among the highest property insurance premiums in the nation, and the state's average premium remains a multiple of the national average.

What a smaller Citizens means for the state

The policy count matters beyond the individual policyholder because of how Citizens is financed. If Citizens' claims from a catastrophic storm exceed its surplus and reinsurance, Florida law permits the corporation to levy assessments. Those assessments fall first on Citizens policyholders and then, if necessary, on holders of most other property and casualty insurance policies statewide, including auto policies.

That structure means every insured Floridian carries contingent exposure to Citizens' balance sheet, whether or not they are a Citizens customer. A smaller book of business, and a smaller total insured value, reduces the probability that a single storm triggers assessments.

Citizens has also benefited from favorable reinsurance conditions. Reduced exposure combined with a softening global reinsurance market has improved the corporation's position when purchasing catastrophe protection, which further limits assessment risk.

The remaining book is not evenly distributed. Citizens' concentration is heaviest in coastal counties and in older housing stock, particularly in South Florida, the Keys and parts of the Gulf coast, where private capacity remains thinnest. Those are also the areas with the highest hurricane exposure per policy.

What it means for Florida homeowners

For current Citizens policyholders, the most immediate practical matter is the takeout process. When an approved private carrier submits an offer, the policyholder receives notice with a deadline to respond. Understanding the rule is essential: if the private offer is within 20 percent of the Citizens renewal premium, the policyholder is moved to the private carrier and Citizens coverage ends. If the offer exceeds that threshold, the policyholder may decline and stay with Citizens.

Homeowners evaluating a takeout offer should compare coverage terms and not only premium. Private policies may differ from Citizens forms on deductibles, on roof coverage schedules, on ordinance-and-law coverage limits and on flood exclusions. Carrier financial strength ratings are also worth reviewing, since several Florida carriers have become insolvent in the past decade.

Flood remains separate. Standard homeowners policies, including Citizens policies, exclude flood damage. Florida law now requires Citizens personal lines residential policyholders to carry flood coverage, phased in by coverage level, regardless of whether the property sits in a designated high-risk flood zone.

The risk that remains

The current market stability has not been tested by a major landfalling hurricane on a densely developed stretch of Florida coastline since the reforms took effect. Hurricanes Ian in 2022 and Milton in 2024 produced large losses under the prior legal framework. How the reformed litigation environment performs under a comparable event is the central unanswered question.

NOAA's May outlook called for a below-normal 2026 Atlantic season, with 8 to 14 named storms projected, and the National Hurricane Center's July 29 outlook showed no development expected in the following seven days. A quiet season would extend the stabilization. A major landfall would test it.

The National Flood Insurance Program adds a separate deadline. Its authorization expires September 30, 2026, and a lapse would halt the sale and renewal of federal flood policies, with significant consequences for Florida real estate closings.

How Florida got here

The trajectory from 1.42 million policies to under 300,000 is the product of a specific legislative sequence, and the sequence matters for judging whether the improvement is durable.

Florida's property insurance market deteriorated through the late 2010s and early 2020s for reasons that were only partly about hurricanes. The state generated a share of national property claims litigation wildly out of proportion to its share of claims. Two features of Florida law drove that: one-way attorney fee provisions, which required insurers to pay a prevailing policyholder's legal fees but not the reverse, and assignment of benefits arrangements, which allowed contractors to take over a policyholder's claim rights and pursue the insurer directly.

The combination created an economic structure in which litigating a disputed roof claim was frequently more profitable than settling it. Carriers responded by raising rates, tightening underwriting, non-renewing policies and, in several cases, becoming insolvent. Policyholders with nowhere else to go moved to Citizens, whose book of business ballooned.

The Legislature acted in a December 2022 special session and in subsequent sessions, eliminating one-way attorney fees in property cases, curtailing assignment of benefits, creating a reinsurance backstop and tightening the conditions under which Citizens policyholders may decline private takeout offers.

Litigation volume fell sharply after those changes. Carriers returned to the market. Rate filings turned from increases to decreases. The Citizens policy count began its decline.

What was traded away

A complete account requires acknowledging what policyholders gave up, because the reforms were not costless from the consumer side.

The elimination of one-way attorney fees means that a policyholder who believes a claim was wrongly denied or underpaid now bears their own legal costs in pursuing it. For a large claim, that may still be economically rational. For a modest claim, it frequently is not, which means some legitimate disputes now go unpursued.

Consumer advocates argued during the legislative debate that the reforms addressed litigation volume without distinguishing between abusive claims and meritorious ones, and that the effect would be to shift bargaining power decisively toward carriers. Insurers argued that the prior system had made Florida uninsurable at any sustainable price.

Both positions describe real phenomena. The measurable outcomes so far, falling rates and returning carriers, support the insurers' account of the market effect. The claims-handling experience of individual policyholders under the new framework is harder to measure and will not be fully visible until a major hurricane generates claim volume at scale.

Florida also tightened the mandatory flood coverage requirement for Citizens policyholders as part of the same policy push, which raised the total cost of a Citizens policy even as the wind premium fell.

What a takeout offer actually looks like

For the roughly 293,000 households still with Citizens, the takeout process is the mechanism most likely to affect them directly, and the rules reward attention.

When an approved private carrier submits a takeout offer, Citizens notifies the policyholder with a response deadline. The governing rule is the 20 percent threshold. If the private offer is within 20 percent of the Citizens renewal premium for comparable coverage, the policyholder is moved to the private carrier and Citizens coverage terminates. If the offer exceeds that threshold, the policyholder may decline and remain with Citizens.

Policyholders evaluating an offer should compare more than the premium figure. Deductibles, particularly the separate hurricane deductible, vary between policies. Roof coverage schedules, which pay actual cash value rather than replacement cost on older roofs, differ substantially between carriers. Ordinance and law coverage, which pays the additional cost of rebuilding to current code, is a frequent point of difference.

Carrier financial strength is the other consideration. Several Florida carriers have become insolvent over the past decade, and while the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association covers claims of insolvent carriers up to statutory limits, the process is slower than a claim against a solvent insurer.

Policyholders can review carrier ratings and complaint records through the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation and the Department of Financial Services, both of which publish consumer-facing tools.

What's next

Citizens publishes policy counts and financial data on a regular schedule, and its Board of Governors meets publicly through the year. The next depopulation takeout cycles will determine whether the policy count continues to fall or stabilizes near current levels.

The Office of Insurance Regulation continues to review private carrier rate filings, several of which have been filed with decreases. Those filings are public and are the best forward indicator of where premiums are heading.

The Florida Press will report on the next Citizens policy count release and on the outcome of the NFIP reauthorization deadline.