Florida's share of nationwide homeowners insurance lawsuits dropped from 79% in 2020 to 41% in 2025, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation's (OIR) July 2026 Property Insurance Stability Report. Over the same period, the state's share of national homeowners claims fell from roughly 9% to under 5%. The OIR attributed the shift to litigation reforms passed by the Florida Legislature in 2022 and 2023.
The report, published twice yearly, tracks litigation practices, premium trends, market profitability, and reinsurance conditions across Florida's residential property insurance market. The OIR said 21 new companies have been approved to write residential property policies in Florida since the reforms took effect.
Personal residential lawsuit filings against property insurers fell 23% in 2024 and 25% in 2025. A further 25% decline was recorded in the first five months of 2026 against the same period a year earlier. Average defense cost and containment expenses per claim dropped from $947.38 in 2022 to $720 in 2025.
Of 456,200 claims closed in 2025, 53,413 were litigated, a rate of about 12%. Average loss adjustment expenses on litigated claims were $15,257, against $2,044 on non-litigated claims.
South Florida carried the highest concentration: Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties recorded a 27.27% litigated claims rate, compared with 8.16% in all other counties.
Lisa Miller, a former Florida deputy insurance commissioner and disaster insurance consultant, credited the 2023 repeal of the state's one-way attorney fee statutes.
"The legislative reforms, among other things, eliminated the guaranteed one-way attorney fees for plaintiffs that provided a gross incentive to sue, with fees in some cases that were five or six times greater than the claim amount itself," Miller said. "We've all been paying for the excessive and often frivolous litigation that resulted."
Miller said only about 8% of the average litigated claim dollar reaches the homeowner. "Most of the rest of the money goes to the lawyers," she said. Those costs are factored into carriers' defense and containment expenses and into premium pricing.
The OIR's 30-day average rate request for homeowners policies stood at -6.9% as of the July report. Since 2024, 44 insurers filed for rate decreases and 48 filed for 0% changes. Average homeowners premiums with wind coverage fell in 51 of Florida's 67 counties, with the statewide average at $3,757.
Florida's domestic property insurers posted a pooled combined ratio of 83% in 2025, the lowest in more than a decade. Windstorm and hail claims carried the highest litigation rate of any peril at 16.44%. Total indemnity paid across all 2025 closed claims reached $10 billion, with $1.7 billion in loss adjustment expenses.
Citizens Property Insurance Corporation reported 293,465 policies in force as of June 5, down from roughly 1.2 million at year-end 2022. Preliminary 2026 reinsurance data showed nearly half of insurers experiencing risk-adjusted pricing reductions of 15% to 25%.
