Which Florida Home Insurance Companies Are Still Writing in 2026?

The question this article answers is a different one than it would have been two years ago. In 2022 and 2023, the question was whether Florida homeowners insurance was available at all for certain properties. Farmers had exited. Several Florida-domiciled carriers had become insolvent. Citizens was absorbing policies the private market had abandoned and climbing toward 1.42 million policies at its October 2023 peak. That was the crisis. The 2026 question is more useful: given a market that has meaningfully stabilized, which carriers are actually writing, what do they write, and what does that mean specifically for a buyer purchasing a $2 million home in Jupiter or a $5 million condo in Brickell?

The answer splits cleanly into two markets that do not overlap: the mass-market admitted carrier segment for homes below roughly $1 million in replacement cost, and the private-client HNW carrier segment for everything above that threshold. Buyers evaluating Palm Beach, Jupiter, Naples, Stuart, and Miami are almost entirely in the second segment, which operates differently, is accessed differently, and has a completely different carrier set than the State Farm and Citizens ecosystem most Florida insurance guides describe.

What Changed After the 2022 and 2023 Tort Reform

Florida's legislature passed two rounds of property insurance reform in 2022 and 2023 that targeted the primary drivers of carrier exits: one-way attorney fee arrangements that made Florida property litigation profitable for plaintiffs' attorneys even on small claims, and assignment of benefits abuse that allowed contractors to file insurance claims directly without homeowner involvement. Both reforms have worked. Florida accounts for roughly 79% of US property insurance lawsuits nationally, and that share has begun to fall. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation reports that the 30-day average requested homeowners rate change fell from 21.8% in 2023 to approximately 0.8% in 2025. In 2026, the average homeowners rate increase across the state was roughly 1%, the smallest since 2019.

The market response has been concrete. More than a dozen new admitted carriers received FLOIR approval since January 2025 alone, per Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky's announcement. Citizens shed 546,000 policies in 2025 through approved depopulation rounds. Citizens' policy count peaked near 1.42 million in October 2023. By early 2026 it had fallen to roughly 336,000, a drop of about 76%. That decline is the clearest single signal that private market capacity has genuinely returned. The Florida Insurance Guaranty Association voted in February 2026 to end its 1% emergency assessment two years early, saving Florida policyholders an estimated $650 million through September 2028.

None of this means Florida insurance is cheap. The average Florida home insurance rate is $7,562 a year according to 2026 Insurance.com data, making it the most expensive state for home insurance in the nation. Coastal properties, oceanfront VE-zone properties, and properties with aging roofs or poor wind mitigation scores face rates materially above that average. The stabilization is real. The return to pre-2019 pricing is not happening. For a buyer purchasing in Palm Beach or Naples, the carrying cost analysis should assume elevated insurance costs as a permanent feature of the Florida coastal market, not a temporary anomaly.

Citizens: Still There, But No Longer the Default

Citizens Property Insurance Corporation is Florida's state-backed insurer of last resort, created to provide coverage when the private market will not. It carries a Demotech A financial strength rating and a statutory assessment backstop: if Citizens' reserves are insufficient to pay claims, it can levy assessments on all Florida policyholders and, in certain scenarios, on all Florida taxpayers. That backstop makes Citizens a real insurer in the sense that it pays claims. It does not make it the ideal insurer for a $4 million Palm Beach estate.

Citizens plans to lower its rates by 8.7% on average in spring 2026, its first rate decrease in a decade. That is meaningful for the roughly 336,000 policyholders who remain on Citizens because no private market alternative is available at or near the Citizens premium. Florida law requires that a Citizens policyholder accept a private market offer if any admitted carrier provides coverage within 20% of the Citizens renewal premium, so the declining Citizens rate also narrows the gap that keeps some policyholders locked in.

For HNW buyers in the markets on this platform, Citizens is rarely the relevant option. Citizens' coverage limits, larger named-storm deductibles, and water-damage sublimits are designed for the mass-market homeowner, not for a buyer whose property replacement cost exceeds $2 million. The more important question for that buyer is which private-client carrier fits, and that answer comes from a different conversation entirely.

The Mass-Market Admitted Carrier Landscape

For buyers whose Florida property falls below the HNW carrier threshold in replacement cost terms, the active admitted market in 2026 is broader than it was two years ago. For most Florida homeowners in 2026, the practical shortlist is State Farm Florida Insurance Company, Universal Property and Casualty, Tower Hill, Florida Peninsula, Heritage, Slide, Kin, HCI's Homeowners Choice and TypTap, and Citizens as the residual option.

State Farm Florida Insurance Company, the Florida-licensed subsidiary, continues to write new homeowners business in 2026, holding more than 640,000 Florida policies as of early 2025. South of Interstate 10, new writes are limited to homes built to IBHS Fortified Gold or to existing State Farm auto customers in select cases. State Farm is not broadly available for new coastal construction in South Florida, which limits its relevance for buyers in the five markets on this platform. Nationwide has returned to the Florida homeowners market with competitive home and auto packages, though availability is still limited statewide.

The more relevant development for buyers in this price range is the wave of new Florida-domiciled admitted carriers approved since 2023. The new admitted carriers include Slide, Orange, Trident, Manatee, Mangrove, Mainsail, Orion180, Ovation, and Tailrow. Whether any of these carriers will still be operating five years from now is a legitimate question — Florida has a well-documented history of small admitted carriers becoming insolvent during active hurricane seasons. Financial strength ratings, reserve adequacy, and reinsurance structures matter when evaluating a new entrant, and a Florida-specialist independent broker is better positioned to assess those factors than a buyer relying on a carrier's marketing materials.

The HNW Carrier Market: Who Writes Palm Beach, Jupiter, Naples, and Miami

For buyers whose Florida home has a replacement cost above approximately $750,000 to $1 million, the relevant carrier set is entirely different from the admitted mass-market carriers described above. High value home insurance is a specialty homeowners program for residences whose replacement cost typically starts at $1 million, written by HNW carriers like Chubb, AIG Private Client Select, PURE, Cincinnati, Vault, and Berkley One rather than mass-market insurers like State Farm, Allstate, or Farmers. None of these carriers sell direct. All require placement through a licensed independent private-client broker who holds active appointments with the carriers.

Chubb Masterpiece targets $1.5M+ dwellings. PURE and Vault sit in the $1M to $3M+ range. Cincinnati Executive Capstone writes up to $50M. AIG's HNW business is now Private Client Select, an independent MGA. Each has a distinct underwriting appetite, pricing position, and claims service model. The practical decision framework used by independent private-client brokers placing HNW Florida accounts is roughly as follows: for replacement costs of $750K to $1.5M on standard construction without complex personal property, Cincinnati is frequently the most competitive on premium while still providing meaningful coverage features. For $1.5M to $3M with custom construction or significant art, jewelry, or collections, Chubb and PURE are the primary candidates, with PURE often more competitive on price in that range while Chubb's blanket personal property model better serves clients with collections above $100,000. Above $3M, or for multi-property and complex household situations, Chubb and AIG Private Client are the appropriate carriers.

After Nationwide exited the high-value personal lines sector in 2024, PURE has emerged as a major player in this space. As a reciprocal insurer owned by its policyholders, PURE takes a member-first approach that aligns its interests with those of its clients. PURE is particularly notable for its high-limit excess flood insurance that integrates with the homeowners policy, which matters for coastal estate buyers in Palm Beach and Miami Beach where the NFIP's $250,000 structure cap is nowhere near the property's value and private flood layering is mandatory.

When the Admitted Market Won't Write: Surplus Lines

Some Florida properties sit outside what any admitted carrier will write at standard terms. Oceanfront properties in VE flood zones, homes with histories of prior claims, structures with certain construction types, and very high-value properties that exceed individual admitted carrier appetite ceilings are the most common cases. For these properties, the relevant market is surplus lines, also called excess and surplus or E&S insurance.

Surplus lines carriers are not subject to Florida's filed rate requirements and can customize policy terms, deductibles, and coverage structures in ways admitted carriers cannot. That flexibility is the point: an E&S underwriter can get comfortable with a risk by requiring a higher deductible, carving out certain exposures, or mandating specific property improvements that an admitted carrier's filed rate system cannot accommodate. Both Chubb and AIG operate surplus lines entities that can write Florida coastal properties their admitted paper declines. The trade-off is that surplus lines policies do not carry Florida Insurance Guaranty Association protection in the event of carrier insolvency, which is a consideration that buyers purchasing very high-value oceanfront properties should raise specifically with their broker.

The Wind Mitigation Certificate: The Single Most Leverageable Variable

Regardless of which carrier a buyer ultimately uses, the wind mitigation inspection and resulting certificate is the most leverageable single variable in a Florida homeowners insurance premium. A wind mitigation inspection documents the construction features that reduce hurricane damage risk: roof shape, roof covering material, roof deck attachment, roof-to-wall connection, opening protection, and roof covering age. Properties with favorable wind mitigation features, particularly hip roofs with strong deck attachment and impact-rated windows and doors, qualify for significantly lower windstorm premiums than equivalent properties without those features.

Any buyer purchasing a property in Palm Beach, Jupiter, Naples, Stuart, or Miami should obtain a current wind mitigation inspection before closing, not after. The inspection results should be provided to the insurance broker before a final quote is confirmed. Premium differences of $5,000 to $20,000 per year between properties with strong and weak wind mitigation features are documented in the South Florida coastal market. For a buyer evaluating two properties at similar prices, the wind mitigation profile is a real financial variable that should appear in the comparison.

The broader insurance picture for the five markets on this platform, including the flood insurance mechanics, the hurricane deductible structure, and the post-Surfside condo assessment risk that operates entirely separately from the homeowners market, is covered in our earlier piece on Florida's insurance market restructuring. The carrying cost models for Palm Beach, Jupiter, and Naples each incorporate current insurance ranges as a line item in the full annual ownership cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

For related analysis: Florida's insurance market restructuring · Palm Beach full carrying cost analysis · Naples cost of ownership · Jupiter cost of ownership. Not legal, tax, or financial advice. Insurance availability and pricing change frequently. Obtain current quotes from a licensed Florida-specialist independent broker before any purchase commitment. Data as of June 2026.