By Rommel Lopez
Florida families are being priced out of the American dream, and it isn’t just the cost of lumber, land, or labor doing it. Ask any home builder, Realtor, or condo board in this state and they’ll tell you the same thing: insurance has become the line item that kills the deal. A young couple can qualify for a mortgage, find a starter home they can afford, and still get shut out at the closing table because the annual premium alone runs into the thousands. For years, that spiraling cost has had less to do with hurricanes and everything to do with a legal system that turned every roof claim and construction dispute into a lawsuit.
In 202, the Florida legislature passed a tort reform package that began to turn that around. Ending one-way attorney fees and curbing assignment-of-benefits abuse in property claims removed much of the incentive to litigate first and negotiate never. Shortening the statute of limitation on lawsuits gave builders a defined end to their liability exposure, which matters enormously when underwriters are deciding whether to write a policy in this state at all. We have started to see insurers re-enter the Florida market and new capacity return to a market that was hemorrhaging carriers. That is not a talking point; it is the difference between a family closing on a home and a deal falling apart because no carrier will write the policy.
But anyone showing property in this state right now knows the job is unfinished. Condominium owners are being hit from two directions at once. The new structural inspection and reserve-funding requirements enacted after the Surfside tragedy, which every responsible Floridian supports, layered on top of insurance premiums that have not come down nearly enough. Older condo buildings are seeing owners hand over units they can no longer afford to insure. On the single-family side, the cost of general liability and medical coverage for the trades keeps climbing, and that cost gets built into the price of every home before a single buyer walks through the door.
Building on the 2023 reforms, rather than retreating from them, is the only path forward. A reasonable cap on medical malpractice awards would ease the liability costs that ripple through every job site, from the doctor to the electrician, all of which show up in any insurance premium. Further limits on third-party litigation financing would remove another incentive that keeps defect claims in court instead of resolved. Neither proposal closes the courthouse door to a homeowner with a legitimate claim. Both would stop treating every water stain and every code question as a jackpot.
No one in the housing industry is asking Florida to become a place where builders and insurers face no accountability. Quality construction and honest claims handling matter, and buyers deserve both. What the last several years have shown, though, is that a legal system built around suing first and settling never does not protect homeowners; it prices them out. For the sake of consumers and first time homebuyers, we should keep the lawsuit reforms of 2023 in place and build upon them for the future.
