Average home insurance premiums in Florida rose 1.5% during the first eight months of 2025 — an improvement over previous years but not the reduction cost-burdened policyholders have been waiting for since reforms were enacted in 2022 and 2023.

Will prices ever drop? Insurance insiders are divided on the prospect.

Experts interviewed for this report agree that the potential for significant cost reductions depends on what happens to reinsurance costs — the insurance that insurers buy — as well as competition among a growing list of carriers, rebuilding cost inflation, and whether Mother Nature will prevent major storms from hitting the state in the coming years.

According to a South Florida Sun Sentinel analysis of data released monthly by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the average cost of insuring a single-family home rose from $3,691 in January to $3,747 in August.

Of the 84 companies that provided data over the eight months, average premiums for policyholders decreased in only 17 of them:

They are: American Security (-25.2%), Clear Blue (-15%), Trusted Resource Underwriters Exchange (-10.7%), Trident Reciprocal Exchange (-8.5%), Centauri Specialty (-5.4%), Safe Harbor (-5.3%), US Coastal Property & Casualty (-4.8%), ASI Preferred (-3.7%), Monarch National (-2.5%), Florida Family. (-2.1%), Security First (-2.0%), Federal (-1.8%), Protection First (-1.6%), Edison (-0.9%), Olympus (-0.9%), Ovation (-0.5%), and Nearby (-0.1%).

Average insurance premiums rose by more than 10% for customers of 15 companies, and from 2% to 9.8% for policyholders of 40 companies.

These averages are derived from the Bureau’s monthly residential market share reports, which report data that more than 90 state-regulated property and casualty insurance companies are required by law to offer. Data from surplus airlines, which are not regulated by the Bureau, are not included.

Average costs were calculated by dividing total premiums by the number of policyholders reported by each company. Statewide averages are determined by dividing the total of all premiums by the total number of policyholders.

Of course, average costs vary greatly depending on where homes are located.

According to state data last updated in May, premiums in inland counties in the northern parts of the state, such as Sumter ($2,062) and Marion ($2,210), tend to be below average while coastal and southern counties, including Broward ($6,077), Miami-Dade ($5,836), and Palm Beach ($6,327), exceed average. and Monroe ($7,488) are the statewide average due to perceived vulnerability to hurricanes, litigation risks, and high real estate costs.

Insurance costs in Central Florida counties like Orange ($3,422), Seminole ($3,371) and Hillsborough ($3,369) tend to be closer to the state average.

The 1.5% cost increase through August is evidence that premiums in Florida have stabilized compared with previous years dating back to 2022, when the state Legislature enacted a series of reforms aimed at reducing the costs of so-called frivolous claims and lawsuits that insurers said threaten the survival of the state’s private insurance market.

These threats stem in large part from skyrocketing reinsurance costs in 2022 and questions about whether all Florida-based insurers will be able to withstand the increases. Reinsurers said they raised their costs because lawsuits and delayed claims ultimately doubled the costs some insurers initially expected from 2017’s Hurricane Irma.

At the end of June 2022, Florida’s average insurance premium was $2,798 — up from $1,951 when Hurricane Irma hit in 2017.

Average premiums rose 33.9% over the three years after 2022, with annual increases falling from 17.3% to 4.1% over the 12 months following June 2024.

A Sun Sentinel analysis of January-July data also showed:

— Private condominium insurance premiums rose an average of 1.3% between January and August, from $1,756 to $1,779.

-Costs for dwelling/fire coverage, a cheaper, less comprehensive form of insurance that is growing faster than full homeowners coverage, increased 2.3% on average, from $2,659 to $2,722.

– The average costs charged for single-family homeowners coverage by the 50 companies that insure more than 10,000 of those policies also rose 1.5%, from $3,611 to $3,664.

– Premiums charged by companies involved in the Citizens Property Insurance Corp. eviction increased. State-owned since 2023 by an average of 0.03%, rising by just $1 from $3,795 to $3,796.

The lowest rate of increase nationwide

Meanwhile, state officials and insurance leaders continue to tout requests to lower or not change rates in newsletters declaring victory over the cost crisis.

On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis told the American Property & Casualty Insurance Association in Orlando that state insurance regulators had received 59 requests to reduce rates and 87 requests to increase rates to zero. Florida’s insurance commissioner said 18 new companies have registered with the state to compete in the market.

Mark Friedlander, senior director of media relations at the industry-funded Insurance Information Institute, called the lower increases a win for consumers.

“The rate hike trend remains very positive as most residential insurance companies in Florida this year either filed for rate cuts or fixed rates,” Friedlander said. “For the second year in a row, we expect Florida to rank first in the U.S. with the lowest average rate increase as well as the lowest average premium increase.”

But these lower average price increases come after years of abnormally high interest rates in Realtor.com’s jurisdiction scheduled for September Being among the four with the highest home insurance costs in the country.

Lower rates do not necessarily reduce costs to policyholders if evaluated in light of inflated property values.

Friedlander says Florida’s continued rise in insurance costs, while the lowest in years, stems from inflation-driven increases in construction costs that prompt insurers to increase home replacement costs. Higher replacement costs could offset lower prices and lead to higher insurance premiums, he said.

Anthony Lopez, CEO of Miami-based plaintiff’s firm Your Insurance Attorney, said it’s too early to call a 1.5% increase “premium relief.”

“If 67 out of 84 companies continue to raise rates during this period, it indicates that the reforms are stabilizing the market for insurers — not necessarily for homeowners,” Lopez said. “A slowdown in rate hikes is a good sign, but the average policyholder is still paying more, and most haven’t seen a dime in actual savings. The easing won’t be real until we see more companies competing for business and cutting premiums across the board.”

Another Miami-based attorney, Juman Martin PA managing partner Joe Ligman, said he has “several homeowner clients who have had significant insurance premium increases over the last three years. South Florida is the worst.”

Reinsurance drives the bus

Don Matz, CEO of Orange Insurance Exchange, says costs could come down if reinsurance costs continue to decline and if Florida can avoid a “continuous string of disasters.”

Reinsurance rates, which some insurance executives estimate eat up as much as half of every premium dollar, “peaked several years ago and have been slowly declining since then as reinsurers report positive underwriting results,” Matz wrote. “How much they go down will be the biggest driver of how much Florida real estate prices go down.”

“Since interest rates are based on weighted past losses moving forward, with each new ‘good’ year of experience replacing an old ‘bad’ year of experience, rates should fall,” he added.

Bernie Birnbaum, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Economic Justice, which studies insurance affordability issues, says he doubts costs will fall unless reinsurance costs continue to fall or the state imposes restrictions on companies that transfer premium dollars to affiliated third parties while continuing to report “little or no profit” on their underwriting side.

“Premiums will not decline because risks continue to increase and there is no effort to force insurers to provide coverage more efficiently or prevent excess profits,” he says.

Some say the cuts are too early to predict

But Stacy Giulianti, chief legal officer for Peninsula Florida, says it’s still too early to predict what will happen to insurance premiums over the coming months and years. He noted that recent rate cut requests, including a roughly 9.9% cut for his company’s elite and preferred policies, have not yet shown up in the state’s data because they will be reflected in renewals and new policies written over the next year.

Kerry Rowland, senior vice president at Monarch National Insurance, agreed with Giulianti’s view that it is too early to know whether insurance costs have fallen as much as they could.

Additionally, “losses have decreased in number and intensity. Severe convective storm events” — which include damaging tornadoes, hail and straight-line winds that have battered North Florida communities in recent years — “are where carriers have seen fraud and litigation costs skyrocket. This year has seen far fewer severe convective storm events than in previous years,” Rowland said. But one year does not constitute a trend.

“If this trend continues over several years, then yes, consumers should expect additional declines. But they won’t necessarily see that next year.”

Ron Hurtebes covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071 or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.