Majority of Florida residents refuse to believe state's property insurance crisis is any better, says poll

A majority of Florida homeowners say that despite proclamations by lawmakers and rating agencies, they don't believe the property insurance market is improving in the state, with more than a quarter asserting that the market is getting worse.

A majority in that same poll say that, by far, tackling property insurance is more important than lowering property taxes.

Those are findings from a survey of 1,511 Florida homeowners conducted last month by the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida in conjunction with the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel.

When asked which statement is closest to their view, 55% of respondents said they see no signs the homeowners insurance market is improving, 26% think the market is getting worse, and 18% believe the market is improving and rates are likely to come down.

When asked who they feel has benefited most from insurance reforms, a strong majority (69%) said it's been the insurance industry, with 16% saying consumers have benefited most, and 9% said trial lawyers.

The poll comes as property insurance becomes a major issue in the Florida gubernatorial race between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly.

Donalds has gone on the airwaves and campaign trail blasting Jolly's proposal to create a state catastrophe fund to absorb wind insurance coverage that the Democrat says could reduce insurance rates by up to 60% to 70%.

Donalds contends that would result in a $1,000 "hurricane tax," citing a recently published study by researchers at Florida State University's Herbert Wertheim College of Business. However, that study did not review Jolly's proposal, but instead a plan introduced by two lawmakers in the Florida Legislature in 2024.

(That plan is not publicly available but the Donalds campaign shared it with the Phoenix.)

Donalds has introduced his own plan to lower property insurance rates, which would maintain legislation passed in 2022 and 2023 that has limited homeowners' right to sue insurance companies. He and other Republicans in the Legislature have boasted that those laws have reversed the crisis the property insurance market was in at the time.

Jolly has countered that they haven't done nearly enough to reduce premiums.

AM Best, a ratings agency, released a report this summer finding that Florida's home insurance market was beginning to stabilize. It reported that personal property insurance companies recorded nearly $1 billion in underwriting gains last year, following a $132 million underwriting loss two years earlier.

An representative of AM Best told WINK TV that profits for insurance companies were "probably creating some space for rates to come down," although he added, "We haven't seen that really happen dramatically yet, but I think the expectation is that forward looking there should be some easing now."

Of the 1,511 Florida homeowners surveyed in the poll, 261 said they had filed a claim against their insurance company in the past five years. Of those 261, 45% said their claims initially were denied; 47% of those people said that their annual insurance premiums had increased by at least 50% in the past five years.

Salience

The survey notes that 19% said their premium increased by that amount in the past year, compared to just 2% nationwide, according to a 2024 national Consumer Reports survey.

"Florida homeowners are overwhelmingly negative in their assessment of not just the property insurance market, but also government efforts to overhaul it," said Sean Freeder, faculty director of the survey lab and associate professor of political science at UNF.

"Only about one in 10 Democrats and Independents, and one in four Republicans, see signs of improvements, which is remarkable. Plenty of political science research shows that perceptions of the economy are highly influenced by partisanship — the more one's own party controls government, and therefore economic policy, the stronger the assumption that government policies are effective and the belief that the economy is healthy. For Republicans to break from these assumptions, and from their own's party's direct messaging, dissatisfaction with that aspect of policy must be very high and very salient."

When asked to choose between property taxes or property insurance, 63% of respondents said they are more concerned about insurance, while 36% indicated greater concern about taxes.

"This is remarkable given the amount of attention that has been spent this year discussing property tax reform, especially with Amendment 3 on the ballot," Freeder said.

"Even in a rhetorical environment that would otherwise prime Floridians to think heavily about property tax, nearly two in three still said property insurance was the greater concern. This sentiment was essentially uniform across partisanship and region of the state."

The survey's margin for error is +/- 3.18 percentage points.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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