Florida's Share of Homeowners Insurance Lawsuits Falls to 41 Percent: What It Means for Claim Resolution

Florida has long accounted for a share of the nation’s homeowners insurance lawsuits far out of proportion to its share of claims. The latest data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) shows that gap narrowing quickly. As reported by Insurance Business on July 23, Florida’s share of nationwide homeowners insurance lawsuits dropped from 79 percent in 2020 to 41 percent in 2025, while its share of national homeowners claims fell to under 5 percent ¹.

The figures come from OIR’s semiannual Property Insurance Stability Report dated July 1, 2026, which tracks litigation practices, premiums, profitability and reinsurance in the residential market ². For mediators, defense counsel, policyholder counsel and adjusters, the report offers a useful look at where disputes are going and where they are still concentrated.

Fewer new suits, but litigation is not gone

OIR’s preliminary 2025 market conduct data shows 41.29 percent of nationwide homeowners suits opened in Florida, down from 73.15 percent in 2024 ². Personal residential lawsuits served on property insurers through the Department of Financial Services fell 23 percent from 2023 to 2024 and 25 percent from 2024 to 2025, and the first five months of 2026 showed a further 25 percent decline compared with the same period a year earlier ². Assignment-of-benefits suits have nearly disappeared from the data ².

OIR attributes the change to the Legislature’s reforms, including SB 76 (2021), SB 2-A (2022) and HB 837 (2023), which repealed the one-way attorney fee statutes with limited exceptions and restricted contingency fee multipliers ².

Still, the claims lifecycle data shows litigation remains a significant cost. Of 456,200 claims closed in 2025, 53,413 were litigated, about 12 percent ¹². Average loss adjustment expense on a litigated claim was $15,257, compared with $2,044 on a non-litigated claim ¹.

South Florida remains the outlier

The regional split matters for practitioners in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. According to the report’s figures, those three counties recorded a 27.27 percent litigated claims rate, compared with 8.16 percent in the rest of the state ¹. Among all perils, windstorm and hail claims ended up in litigation most often, at a rate of 16.44 percent ¹.

In other words, the statewide decline has not erased the South Florida litigation pipeline. Files already in suit, and new disputes over roof damage, causation and scope of repairs, continue to need a path to resolution.

Implications for mediation practice

Several points stand out for counsel and claims professionals preparing for mediation in the current market:

• The economics favor early resolution. A roughly sevenfold difference in average adjustment expense between litigated and non-litigated claims ¹ gives both sides a concrete reason to resolve disputes before discovery costs accumulate.
• Fee leverage has shifted. With one-way fees largely repealed ², policyholder counsel and insurers are evaluating settlement value with different fee assumptions than in prior years. Mediators can help parties test those assumptions in caucus.
• Market stability affects authority. OIR reports a pooled combined ratio of 83 percent for domestic property insurers in 2025, the lowest in more than a decade, and 21 new companies approved to write residential policies since the reforms ². A healthier market may make carriers more willing to resolve aged inventory, though authority still varies widely by company.
• Pre-suit tools remain available. Notices of intent to initiate litigation, which must precede a property insurance suit, continued to decline through April 2026 ², which suggests more disputes are being handled, or abandoned, before a complaint is filed.

With hurricane season underway, the volume of new claims later this year will test whether these trends hold. Either way, a substantial number of South Florida property disputes will continue to land at the mediation table.

Tony Roca, a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil and Family Mediator, conducts mediations by Zoom statewide. Counsel and adjusters can check his live availability and book a mediation online.