Florida Multifamily Property Premiums Fall 40%, But Liability Keeps Climbing

Florida multifamily property insurance premiums have dropped 40% in roughly 15 months, falling from a median of $797 per door in early 2025 to $479 by this April, according to data from Advocate Technologies, an analytics firm that tracks commercial and commercial residential rates for the insurance industry.

By Olivia Hart, Business Bearings

The decline covers more than 1,000 Florida properties across all structure and coverage categories, except condominiums, with both primary and excess coverage included. At $797, Florida's early-2025 median was almost double the rate in other Southeastern states. The fall suggests the state's historic 2022 and 2023 legislative reforms have done what lawmakers intended on the property side: disincentivizing excessive claims litigation.

But the same dataset tells a harder story about liability. Median liability premiums per door in Florida rose from $167 eighteen months ago — already the highest in the Southeast — to $169 this spring. Three months ago, the median had climbed to $215, though Advocate cautioned the sample size for that most recent measurement was small.

What did tort reform actually fix?

Florida and Georgia both adopted tort reform measures in recent years aimed at curbing litigation costs and large verdicts. The property results appear to validate the approach. The liability results do not, at least in the multifamily segment.

Georgia's median multifamily property rate fell from $430 eighteen months ago to $360 this spring. Texas moved the other way, with a median of $516 this spring, up slightly from 2025. Liability, however, rose in Georgia too: the median liability premium per door climbed from $119 to $151. Other Southeast states saw slight increases, while North Carolina produced some of the lowest liability rates in the region over the last two years.

The pattern points to two different forces at work. Property pricing responds to legislative intervention and catastrophe exposure. Liability pricing responds to something reform has not touched.

Why does liability keep rising?

Advocate Technologies blamed what it called structural casualty pressures rather than cyclical market swings. "Property softening is cyclical and can reverse on one bad catastrophe season," the insurtech firm said in a recent report. "Casualty hardening from social inflation and larger jury verdicts is considered structural. Until that changes, liability's share of the book should keep growing even without new business."

That claim deserves scrutiny. The data cover multifamily properties — duplexes, fourplexes and apartment complexes with hundreds of residents — and the report itself flags a small sample in the most recent Florida reading. A $215 median drawn from a thin sample may overstate or understate the trend. What the data do show consistently is direction: liability costs in the multifamily segment have not fallen, and in Florida and Georgia they have risen despite reform.

The report does not say when, or whether, structural casualty inflation might break. That gap matters for landlords pricing renewals.

Does crime drive liability rates?

Plaintiffs' firms have leaned on crime statistics in some cases, particularly after well-publicized shootings at apartment complexes and businesses in high-crime neighborhoods. The data suggest that argument is not what moves the market.

"Crime doesn't move the price," the Advocate report said.

If crime statistics do not drive premiums, then jury awards and litigation dynamics bear the weight of explanation — which supports the report's structural-inflation thesis. It also implies that landlords in safer neighborhoods get no relief from the liability trend.

What happens next?

For multifamily owners, the arithmetic is mixed. A Florida landlord paying the median on both coverages saved roughly $288 per door per year on property while paying roughly $2 more per door on liability — though the three-month $215 reading, if it holds, would more than erase that gain at roughly $48 per door in added liability cost.

The takeaway in plain words: Florida's reforms delivered real savings on property, but liability pricing keeps growing, and Advocate expects that shift to continue until structural casualty inflation changes.