Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation moved 199,434 policies to private insurers in one week under its depopulation programme — the largest single-week transfer in the programme’s history.
Citizens now expects to end 2025 with roughly 430,000 policies in force, against a peak above 1.4 million.
What Depopulation Actually Is
Citizens is the state-backed insurer of last resort. It exists to cover Florida homes the private market will not, and by statute it is not supposed to compete with private carriers on price.
Depopulation — or “take-out” — is the mechanism that moves policies back out. Private insurers apply to assume blocks of Citizens policies. Citizens notifies the policyholder that an offer has been made. If the private offer is within 20% of the Citizens premium, the policyholder is no longer eligible to stay with Citizens and is moved automatically unless they actively opt out and can show the private quote exceeds that threshold.
That 20% rule is the engine of the whole thing, and it is why depopulation accelerates when the private market gets healthy rather than when homeowners choose to leave.
Why the Market Turned
Three legislative changes, passed in 2022 and 2023, did most of the work:
Elimination of one-way attorney fee shifting. Florida previously required insurers to pay a claimant’s legal fees when the claimant prevailed, without reciprocity. That structure made small disputed claims economically attractive to litigate and made Florida an outlier — the state generated a wildly disproportionate share of the country’s property claim litigation relative to its share of claims.
Restrictions on assignment of benefits. AOB allowed contractors to take over a homeowner’s claim rights and pursue the insurer directly. It was reformed, then largely eliminated for property claims.
Shortened claim filing windows. The deadline to file a new or reopened claim was cut substantially.
Litigation volumes fell. Loss ratios improved. Reinsurers came back. New carriers entered the state — more than a dozen since the reforms — and existing ones found they could write again.
What It Means If You Are Being Depopulated
Being moved out of Citizens is generally good news, but it is not automatic good news.
- Compare coverage forms, not just premiums. The take-out policy is a new policy from a new company. Check the hurricane deductible (usually a percentage, not a flat sum), the roof settlement basis — replacement cost versus actual cash value schedules by roof age — and any water damage sublimits.
- Check the assuming carrier’s financial rating. Several of Florida’s newer insurers are small, thinly capitalised and rated by Demotech rather than AM Best. That is acceptable to most lenders but worth knowing.
- Know your opt-out window. It is short, and it requires action. If you do nothing, the transfer happens.
- Do not assume Citizens is cheaper. By law it is not supposed to be, and after years of statutory glide-path increases, it frequently is not.
The National Read
Florida spent a decade as the cautionary example of a residual market swallowing a state’s property insurance system. It is now the example of one shrinking back — and it did so through litigation reform rather than through subsidy.
California, which is at an earlier point on the same curve with its FAIR Plan, is watching this closely. So is every state that has quietly let its wind pool grow.
Sources: Florida Realtors, “Citizens Policy Count Plummets”; Citizens Property Insurance Corporation
See how the national carriers compare on price and claims in our home insurance guide.