Florida's insurance crisis, county by county.

Florida's property-insurance market has been in slow-motion crisis for years. Private carriers have pulled back, gone insolvent, or stopped writing new business in the highest-risk parts of the state. When a homeowner cannot find or afford private coverage, they land on Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state-created insurer of last resort. That makes Citizens enrollment one of the cleanest available proxies for insurance-market distress: the more policies a county has on Citizens, the harder it has become to insure a home there on the open market.

Using Citizens' official Citizens Property Insurance, Detail by County report (April 2026), we broke the numbers down for all 67 Florida counties. Statewide, 228,964 policies now sit with Citizens at an average premium of $1,843 a year. But the burden is wildly uneven, concentrated along the coasts and in the highest hurricane-exposure counties.

Where the most homeowners rely on Citizens

South Florida dominates the raw count, both because of population and because coastal wind risk has driven private carriers out fastest. Miami-Dade County alone accounts for 56,357 policies, more than the next two counties combined.

Where insurance costs the most

Raw counts track population; average premium tracks pure risk. By that measure the Florida Keys (Monroe County) are in a class of their own, with hurricane and storm-surge exposure pushing the average Citizens premium to $4,380, roughly 2.4x the statewide average. The rest of the most-expensive list is a tour of Florida's most exposed coastlines and rural interior.

Where it is still relatively affordable

Inland North Florida tells the opposite story. Counties far from the coast, with lower wind risk, still see average Citizens premiums under half the state figure, a reminder that "Florida insurance" is not one market but dozens.

What this means if you are buying

Insurance is no longer a rounding error in a Florida housing budget; in the highest-risk counties it can rival or exceed property taxes. Before you commit to a county, or a specific home, run the real carrying cost, not just principal and interest. Our True Cost of Ownership calculator folds county-level insurance and taxes into a single monthly number, and our affordability calculator works backward from your income to the price you can actually carry once insurance is in the math.

You can also go deeper county by county: see the full most-expensive counties to insure and counties most dependent on Citizens rankings, or open any county housing scorecard for home values, taxes, insurance and our buyer-value score in one place.

Source & method: Citizens Property Insurance, Detail by County (April 2026). Policies in force and premium reflect Citizens' personal residential book by county; private-market policies are not included, by design, because Citizens enrollment is the signal we are measuring. Figures are aggregated and rounded by Momentum Realty. This article is informational and not insurance or financial advice.