Florida's property market turned. Most owners have not repriced.

For three years the working assumption in Florida was that property coverage would get harder and more expensive every renewal. That assumption is now wrong, and it is wrong by a wide margin.

Citizens Property Insurance — the state-backed insurer of last resort — peaked at roughly 1.41 million policies in October 2023. By March 2026 it was down to about 336,000, a reduction of some 76 percent, and it reached an all-time low of 278,662 policies in June 2026. It is no longer the largest property insurer in the state.

That book did not evaporate. It moved. The depopulation programme transferred more than 546,000 policies to private carriers during 2025, and over 585,000 in total across the year, taking roughly $235.6 billion of exposure off the state's balance sheet. Seventeen new insurance companies have entered the Florida market since the litigation reforms took effect.

Then the number that actually matters to an owner: Citizens received approval for its first rate decrease since 2015 — an average of about 8.7 percent for personal lines, effective 1 July 2026.

What this changes, practically

• A placement made in 2023 or 2024 is priced against a different market. If you bought coverage at the peak, you bought it when capacity was scarce and carriers were pricing for uncertainty. Capacity has returned. Pricing has followed. Nothing about that is automatic — no carrier writes to tell you the market softened.
• Being taken out of Citizens is not the same as being placed well. A depopulation offer moves you to a private carrier on that carrier's terms. Sometimes that is a better outcome than Citizens. Sometimes it is a thinner policy with a higher hurricane deductible, tighter roof provisions, or a carrier whose financial strength rating you have not looked at. The offer arrives with a deadline and very little context, and the default is that it happens to you.
• Seventeen new entrants is not seventeen good options for your risk. New capacity concentrates where the risk is easiest to price. A three-bedroom inland house has more choices than it did. A coastal property with a 1987 electrical panel, a wine cellar, or a valuation that a rating algorithm cannot handle still has a narrow market — and the algorithm will guess low on the replacement cost unless someone corrects it.

What we do about it

We treat a softening market as a reason to go back to market, not a reason to relax. That means pulling the current policy, re-deriving the replacement cost from something better than a square-footage multiplier, and approaching the markets that actually write your class of risk — rather than accepting the first renewal quote or the first takeout offer that lands.

Where a depopulation notice has arrived, we read the receiving carrier's policy against the one you have. Same limits is not the same coverage. Ordinance and law, water damage sub-limits, roof settlement basis and hurricane deductible are where the differences hide, and they are the differences that surface at claim time rather than at renewal.

If your last placement was made in the hard market, it is worth a conversation. The market moved. Your policy did not.