44% of Landlords Just Said They're Done Buying. The Expense They Blame Is the One Whose Cost Base Fell This Year.

Forty-four percent of single-family landlords just told their lender they are unlikely to buy another rental in the next 12 months. The most-cited drag on their cash flow is insurance. Insurance is the one major expense on a rental P&L whose cost base fell in 2026.

The Q3 2026 LendingOne-ResiClub SFR Investor Survey ran August 17 to September 14. Of the 216 single-family landlords who finished it, 84% said rising home insurance premiums hit their cash flow over the past 12 months, and 44% said they are "very unlikely" or "somewhat unlikely" to buy another investment property in the next year. That is up from 32% in the Q4 2025 wave and the highest reading since the survey began two years ago.

The pullback is real. The reason given for it is a year out of date.

Global commercial insurance rates have fallen for eight straight quarters. Catastrophe reinsurance pricing is down 16% in 2026 alone. And Florida, the state everyone uses as shorthand for the insurance crisis, just published a regulator's report showing forty-four carriers filing for rate decreases, a share of national homeowners litigation cut nearly in half, and reinsurance costs dropping by double digits. Meanwhile the 30-year fixed mortgage went from 5.98% in February to 7.40% in October.

Insurance is the line item a landlord can still re-shop. Debt, once you close, is the one they cannot.

The expense you are quitting over is the only one getting cheaper

Retail homeowners and landlord dwelling-fire premiums lag the wholesale market by a year or more, because carriers buy reinsurance in June, file rates in the fall, and renew your policy whenever your renewal lands. The premium on your 2026 renewal notice reflects what reinsurers charged in 2023 and 2024, at the peak.

The premium on your 2027 renewal reflects what they are charging now, which is a different market entirely.

So why did your renewal still go up this year? Because you were billed on a filing made before the reinsurance cuts landed, and because the filings a regulator publishes are approvals for a carrier's book, not a promise on your individual policy. The direction of the market and the number on your bill move on different clocks.

Guy Carpenter's Global Property Catastrophe Rate-on-Line Index is down 16% for 2026 after the April and mid-year renewals, deepening from 12% at January 1, and now sits 23% below its 2024 hard-market peak. Artemis reports that is the steepest annual decline since the late 1990s, steeper than any single year of the soft market of the 2010s. On the retail side, Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index has global commercial insurance rates down 6% in Q2 2026, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline, with property down 12% after two quarters of 9% drops. Marsh credits abundant capital, lower reinsurance costs and strong insurer profitability, and expects conditions to hold absent a severe storm season.

Florida matters most here, because Florida is where the premium shock was worst and where the landlord exodus has been loudest. The Office of Insurance Regulation's July 2026 property insurance stability report says preliminary 2026 reinsurance data call results show nearly half of reporting insurers getting risk-adjusted price reductions between 15% and 25%, and at least a 10% decrease across most layers on average. Florida's domestic property insurers posted a pooled combined ratio of 83% in 2025, the lowest in more than a decade, and OIR has approved 21 new carriers to write business in the state.

One caveat to hold onto. Every Florida premium figure in this article is homeowners business, and you buy rentals on a DP-3 dwelling-fire policy. DP-3 tracks the homeowners market with its own lag and its own filings, so treat the HO data as the direction of travel, not your quote.

What the Data Shows

The cost base behind the premium is litigation, and the OIR report puts hard numbers on it. Florida's share of nationwide homeowners suits opened fell to 41.29% in 2025 from 73.15% in 2024, and its share of nationwide homeowners claims opened fell to 4.85% from 12.33%. In absolute terms, Florida insurers closed 53,413 litigated property claims in 2025 and 387,931 non-litigated ones.

The share of national litigation a single state generates went from roughly three-quarters to roughly two-fifths in one year.

Carriers are handing the savings back. The same report counts 44 companies that filed for a rate decrease and 48 that filed for no change, on residential policies effective 2024 or later. Worth noting what the report does not publish: it gives no count of companies that requested an increase, which is a transparency gap in a document whose whole job is to show the rate trend. Average homeowners premiums including wind coverage fell in 51 of Florida's 67 counties versus the January report, using data as of March 31, 2026.

The approvals keep coming. On September 22 the Commissioner approved decreases for four homeowners insurers covering more than 62,000 policies, including 10.4% cuts at Vyrd on 26,751 policies and at One Alliance North America on 17,148. The 30-day average requested rate change for Florida homeowners sat at negative 4.8% in September against negative 1.1% a year earlier, and Commissioner Mike Yaworsky told reporters he expects "more aggressive rate cuts in the near future and going into 2027."

Nationally, premiums are still rising, just much more slowly. Insurify projects a 4% increase in 2026 to roughly $3,057 after a 12% jump in 2025. NerdWallet's 2026 report puts the national median at $2,564 with the median annual increase slowing to 4.6%. Going from 12% to 4% is not a crisis.

It is a normalization.

Now put that next to the expense nobody can renegotiate after closing. Freddie Mac's weekly survey had the 30-year fixed at 7.40% on October 8, 2026, with the 15-year at 6.73%. Its own archive shows the 2026 low at 5.98% on February 26. In the same survey where 84% of landlords blamed insurance, 65% said they expect the 30-year to stay above 6.5% for the next 12 months, up from 11% in Q4 2025.

That is the number that moved.

Run the arithmetic in Broward County, where OIR's table puts the average homeowners premium with wind at $6,136. A 10% premium cut saves $614 a year, worth about $8,500 of value at a 7.2% cap. The rate move that already happened this year, 5.98% to 7.40%, costs $2,710 a year in additional debt service on a $240,000 loan. Same property, same twelve months: debt took 4.4 times more out of the deal than the insurance cut can give back, and that is the full documented move rather than a forecast.

Even at a 20% premium cut, debt still wins by more than two to one.

Common Mistakes Investors Make Here

• Underwriting the quote instead of the market. One bind quote goes in the spreadsheet and kills the deal, while three carriers in that county filed decreases this year and a fourth just got approved. Your quote is one carrier's current rate, not the market's direction.
• Treating a trailing premium as a forward expense. If the seller's 2024 policy is sitting in the file, that is a peak-cycle number. Re-quote it yourself, in both directions, before it touches your model.
• Blaming the wrong line item and taking the wrong action. "Insurance broke my returns" leads to "stop buying." "Debt broke my returns" leads to changing the debt, which means seller financing, assumptions, shorter amortization, more down payment, or a stated rate trigger you will actually act on. One of those is a strategy, and the other is a mood.
• Assuming a filed decrease is your decrease. OIR's own report warns that actual charged premium varies by company, insured value, deductible and policy terms. Verify on your own property, at your own renewal.

Where I Land

The insurance crisis is over as a pricing story and the market has not repriced for it, so I would be buying in the high-premium coastal Florida counties the 44% are walking away from. That is where the stale premium line in everyone's model is biggest in dollars: OIR's county table shows $7,863 in Monroe, $6,323 in Palm Beach, $6,136 in Broward and $5,975 in Miami-Dade, against $2,191 in Marion and $2,756 in Pasco, which means a 15% cut is worth $1,179 of NOI in Monroe and $329 in Marion.

Here is the called shot. By the January 1, 2027 OIR stability report I expect Florida's share of nationwide homeowners suits opened to stay under 45%, and by the Q3 2027 LendingOne-ResiClub survey I expect the share of landlords blaming insurance for a cash-flow hit to fall below 70% from today's 84%. If both land, the 44% who stood down in September 2026 stood down on a cost structure that was already falling.

What I would not do is pretend debt is fine. At 7.40% a lot of deals genuinely do not work, and that is the honest reason to pass. Pass on the rate.

Do not pass on the premium.

How to Use PropGPT for This

Show me single-family homes in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, 3 bed or more, built 2002 or later, listed over 90 days, under $450,000, with estimated rent and current list price.

Post-2002 Florida construction carries the modern building-code and wind-mitigation credits, which is where a softening reinsurance market shows up in a quote first. Pair that with long days-on-market in the counties the survey crowd just abandoned.

For each of these properties, calculate insurance as a percentage of estimated gross annual rent using a $6,136 annual premium, then recalculate at $5,500 and at $4,900.

This is the whole thesis as a sensitivity table. Build every deal three times, at the county average, at a 10% cut and at a 20% cut, and keep the ones that clear your threshold on the forward premium instead of the trailing one.

Find absentee-owned single-family rentals in Lee and Sarasota counties purchased between January 2022 and December 2023, with mortgage data and current estimated equity.

That cohort bought at peak prices and then took peak premiums on renewal. They are the most likely to be done, and the most likely to answer the phone.

Pull sales and listing history for this property plus the last three arms-length comps within half a mile sold in the past 12 months, and flag any that sold below assessed value.

Run this once a property clears the sensitivity table. The insurance thesis gets you to the shortlist. Comps still have to get you to the price.

List the Florida counties where my target price band has the highest ratio of estimated rent to purchase price, and show active inventory counts for each.

Run this before you commit to a market. The premium cuts are statewide, but the yield is not, and you want both.

How to Actually Check Your Own Premium, and Who to Call

If you own in Florida, three steps this week.

1. Pull your county's average premium with and without wind from the July 2026 OIR stability report and compare it to what you are actually paying.
2. Run your county and coverage band through OIR's CHOICES rate comparison tool. It returns sample averages for model risk profiles by county rather than personal quotes, which is exactly what you need to tell whether your carrier is off-market.
3. If you are off-market, re-shop before renewal and ask your agent in writing whether your carrier has filed a decrease and when it takes effect. Have your four-point inspection, roof documentation and wind-mitigation certificate in hand, because those are what move the number.

For questions about filings, approved rate changes or a carrier's conduct, the Insurance Consumer Helpline runs out of the Florida Department of Financial Services Division of Consumer Services at 1-877-693-5236, or 850-413-3089 from outside Florida. Contact details sit on the OIR consumer page. This is reporting, not legal, tax or insurance advice. Confirm your own coverage decisions with a licensed agent.

The Bottom Line

Eight straight quarters of falling commercial insurance rates, catastrophe reinsurance down 16% this year, forty-four Florida carriers filing for decreases, and a state that went from three-quarters of the nation's homeowners litigation to two-fifths in twelve months. That is the insurance market a quarter of the landlord base just quit over. Meanwhile the 30-year went from 5.98% to 7.40% in eight months and two-thirds of those same landlords expect it to stay above 6.5% for a year.

Re-shop every policy you own this quarter, rebuild your underwriting on the forward premium instead of the seller's trailing one, and go look at the counties where the dollar savings are largest and a record 44% of landlords just said they are standing down. Start with the sensitivity table above in PropGPT. If a deal only works at a 20% premium cut, pass it. If it works at a 10% cut, you are looking at the best entry this cycle has offered, and you are looking at it almost alone.