Florida Insurance Inquiry Data: What Southwest Florida Asks an Independent Agency
Most insurance pages tell you what to buy. This one publishes what people actually ask. It is built from 1,712 form submissions sent through this website over four years (July 25, 2022 – July 21, 2026) — including 1,096 genuine written messages and 453 structured home-quote forms — plus 16 months of our own Google Search Console data and the latest verified figures from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, Citizens Property Insurance, and FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program.
Published by Bassine Insurance Agency, LLC, North Fort Myers, FL · every figure below states its source, sample size, and date.
First-party figures from 1,096 genuine written website messages (Jul 25, 2022 – Jul 21, 2026) and 453 structured Home Insurance quote forms. Full methodology below.
One storm wrote half of this dataset
Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida on September 28, 2022. Of the 1,096 genuine written messages our website received across four years, 588 (53.6%) arrived in September–October 2022 alone — 181 in September and 407 in October, against a typical baseline of roughly 15–25 messages per month. Claim-related messages tell the same story: 461 of our 472 claim-related messages (97.7%) arrived in those two months.
Quarterly data table
| Quarter | Genuine written messages |
|---|---|
| 2022-Q3 | 219 |
| 2022-Q4 | 425 |
| 2023-Q1 | 32 |
| 2023-Q2 | 35 |
| 2023-Q3 | 37 |
| 2023-Q4 | 14 |
| 2024-Q1 | 40 |
| 2024-Q2 | 49 |
| 2024-Q3 | 29 |
| 2024-Q4 | 23 |
| 2025-Q1 | 23 |
| 2025-Q2 | 40 |
| 2025-Q3 | 17 |
| 2025-Q4 | 18 |
| 2026-Q1 | 42 |
| 2026-Q2 | 48 |
Chart shows complete quarters (Q3 2022 – Q2 2026, 1,091 messages); 5 further messages arrived Jul 1–21, 2026, completing the 1,096-message corpus. Monthly detail inside the surge: Sep 2022 = 181, Oct 2022 = 407.
What 1,096 written messages were about
By insurance line (n = 1,096)
By intent (n = 1,096)
On the general Contact Form alone (718 of the 1,096 messages), claim-related messages are 470 of 718 (65.5%) — the Ian surge came in almost entirely through that form. And 45 messages (4.1%) describe being dropped, non-renewed, or shopping for a replacement after a carrier exit — a category that barely existed in insurance FAQs a decade ago.
Line and intent classified per message (LLM-assisted, spot-checked 25/25 agreement); one sub-5 line category folded into “Other / unspecified” under our privacy floor. Mechanical form mix of all 1,712 submissions: Contact Form 821 · Home-quote 453 · Mobile-home-quote 305 · Auto-quote 133.
How 453 Florida home-insurance shoppers filled in a quote form
Our Home Insurance quote form asks structured questions — deductibles, opening protection, roof shape, year built — and 453 people completed it between July 2022 and July 2026, with per-field answer rates of 89–100%. These are real shopper selections, not survey answers.
Deductibles: the $1,000 flat deductible wins twice
$1,000 is the most-chosen option in both deductible fields — 195 of 421 (46.3%) pick it as their non-hurricane deductible, and 163 of 428 pick a flat $1,000 hurricane deductible over every percentage option (2% is next at 99). Seventeen shoppers asked to exclude wind entirely.
| Deductible choice | Non-hurricane (421 answered) | Hurricane (428 answered) |
|---|---|---|
| $500 | 65 | 27 |
| $1,000 | 195 | 163 |
| $2,500 | 92 | — |
| $5,000 | 69 | — |
| 1% | — | 8 |
| 2% | — | 99 |
| 3% | — | 19 |
| 5% | — | 53 |
| 10% | — | 42 |
| Exclude wind entirely | — | 17 |
The house behind the quote
| Field | Answers | What people told us |
|---|---|---|
| Buying vs. switching | 453 | Yes, buying: 226 (49.9%) · No: 227 |
| Opening protection | 453 | Hurricane-rated: 231 (51.0%) · Basic: 184 · None: 38 |
| Roof shape | 404 | Gable: 196 · Hip: 146 · Flat: 62 |
| Construction | 411 | Frame: 215 · Concrete block: 130 · Mixed: 66 |
| Structure type | 449 | Mobile home: 273 · Single family: 152 · Condo: 12 · Townhouse: 6 · Duplex: 6 |
| Usage | 450 | Primary: 284 · Secondary: 93 · Seasonal: 56 · Rental: 17 |
| Year built | 433 | 1980–1999: 241 · pre-1980: 72 · 2000–2009: 66 · 2020+: 37 · 2010–2019: 17 |
Source: 453 Home Insurance quote-form submissions on this site, Jul 25, 2022 – Jul 21, 2026; blanks reported per field; no cells suppressed.
Which insurance lines Southwest Florida searches for — 16 months of our own search data
From March 2025 through June 2026, queries we could class by insurance line generated 267,025 Google impressions for this site (of 389,793 property-level impressions; brand-name queries and noise excluded). Auto leads at 69,531 (26%), but the mix is broad — this is what a general-lines independent agency’s search footprint actually looks like.
Home & condo peaks in late spring; flood spikes in March–April
Home & condo search interest peaked in May–June 2026 (4,549 / 4,367 impressions vs 1,523 in Oct 2025). Flood interest spiked in March–April 2026 (1,140 / 1,376 vs 334 in Oct 2025). Mobile/manufactured-home interest peaks in March–April (4,589 / 5,398) — the same spring peak we measured independently on our dedicated mobile-home site.
Home & condoMobile / manufactured homeFlood
Monthly data table
| Month | Home & condo | Mobile / manufactured | Flood |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-03 | 2,368 | 1,490 | 413 |
| 2025-04 | 3,210 | 2,457 | 709 |
| 2025-05 | 3,169 | 1,901 | 668 |
| 2025-06 | 3,447 | 1,132 | 658 |
| 2025-07 | 3,057 | 977 | 705 |
| 2025-08 | 3,410 | 1,450 | 673 |
| 2025-09 | 2,013 | 1,107 | 347 |
| 2025-10 | 1,523 | 1,204 | 334 |
| 2025-11 | 1,681 | 1,540 | 465 |
| 2025-12 | 1,917 | 1,850 | 544 |
| 2026-01 | 2,766 | 2,509 | 688 |
| 2026-02 | 2,008 | 2,367 | 509 |
| 2026-03 | 2,571 | 4,589 | 1,140 |
| 2026-04 | 3,826 | 5,398 | 1,376 |
| 2026-05 | 4,549 | 2,309 | 902 |
| 2026-06 | 4,367 | 2,233 | 792 |
Source: Google Search Console for bassineinsurance.com, Mar 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026, query-level impressions in disjoint line classes, brand excluded. This measures search interest reaching one agency’s site — not statewide search volume or market size.
Florida’s residential insurance market, in verified numbers
4.16 million homeowners policies — and Citizens is no longer a top-10 writer
Florida had 4,155,093 owner-occupied homeowners multi-peril policies in force as of March 31, 2026, across roughly 90 reporting companies (Florida OIR Market Intelligence Report, 2026-Q1; shares computed from OIR’s published policy counts against that statewide total). State Farm Florida leads with 396,252 (9.54%). Citizens — the state-created insurer of last resort — ranks 28th in this line at 43,473 policies (1.05%).
| # | Homeowners multi-peril writer | Policies in force | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | State Farm Florida | 396,252 | 9.54% |
| 2 | Slide | 384,098 | 9.24% |
| 3 | American Integrity | 266,834 | 6.42% |
| 4 | First Protective | 239,618 | 5.77% |
| 5 | Universal P&C | 234,105 | 5.63% |
| 6 | Tower Hill Insurance Exchange | 227,899 | 5.48% |
| … | … | … | … |
| 28 | Citizens Property Insurance | 43,473 | 1.05% |
The Citizens wind-down is the story of 2025–2026
Citizens’ all-lines policy count fell from 941,156 (Jan 31, 2025) to 278,246 (Jun 30, 2026) — a drop of 662,910 policies in 17 months. Citizens frames it as “from 1.4 million policies in late 2023 to about 274,000, roughly 2% of the Florida residential market,” backed by 13 approved take-out carriers for 2026, $2.82 billion in purchased reinsurance, and the SB 2-A rule that makes a policy ineligible to stay with Citizens when a private offer comes within 20% of its renewal premium.
| Date | Citizens policies in force |
|---|---|
| 12.31.24 | 936,182 |
| 01.31.25 | 941,156 |
| 12.31.25 | 395,337 |
| 01.31.26 | 392,689 |
| 02.28.26 | 336,393 |
| 03.31.26 | 321,957 |
| 04.30.26 | 294,894 |
| 05.31.26 | 293,772 |
| 06.30.26 | 278,246 |
Flood: Southwest Florida holds over a fifth of the state’s NFIP policies
The five SWFL counties we serve held 219,389 NFIP flood policies in force on July 21, 2026 — 21.8% of Florida’s 1,006,908 — led by Lee County at 79,928 (computed from FEMA’s OpenFEMA FimaNfipPolicies v2 dataset; NFIP direct policies only, excludes private flood).
| County | NFIP flood policies in force (Jul 21, 2026) |
|---|---|
| Lee | 79,928 |
| Collier | 50,143 |
| Sarasota | 34,607 |
| Charlotte | 29,076 |
| Manatee | 25,635 |
| SWFL 5-county total | 219,389 |
| Florida statewide | 1,006,908 |
For storm-scale context: FLOIR’s catastrophe reporting puts Hurricane Milton’s estimated insured losses at $5.62 billion statewide (as of December 9, 2025).
Sources: Florida OIR Residential Market Share Reports (2026-Q1, policies in force Mar 31, 2026; OIR notes MIR data is not audited); citizensfla.com policies-in-force and Jun 23, 2026 press release; FLOIR take-out company approvals; FEMA OpenFEMA FimaNfipPolicies v2 (retrieved Jul 21, 2026); FLOIR catastrophe reporting. All figures verified live on Jul 21, 2026.
How often America asks about Florida insurance — in Google and in AI assistants
Market-level demand for Florida insurance lines, including a number most reports don’t publish yet: how often people put these questions to AI assistants each month.
| Search term | Google searches / month (US) | AI-assistant queries / month |
|---|---|---|
| independent insurance agent near me | 9,900 | — |
| homeowners insurance florida | 9,900 | 2,272 |
| auto insurance florida | — | 2,001 |
| flood insurance florida | 2,900 | 282 |
| mobile home insurance florida | 2,400 | 62 |
| florida home insurance | 1,600 | 1,355 |
| boat insurance florida | 1,600 | 84 |
| umbrella insurance florida | 590 | — |
| auto insurance fort myers | 480 | — |
Source: DataForSEO Google Ads search volume and AI-assistant query volume, United States, retrieved Jul 21, 2026. Market-level data — not this site’s traffic. “—” = not measured for that term.
Where every number comes from
First-party form corpus
1,712 form submissions on bassineinsurance.com, Jul 25, 2022 – Jul 21, 2026 (Contact Form 821, Home-quote 453, Mobile-home-quote 305, Auto-quote 133). 1,210 carried free-text messages (the mobile-home quote form has no message field). We removed, in order: 25 of our marketing agency’s internal form-health tests, 67 URL-spam messages, 8 pattern-spam messages, and — after a hand review of all 44 messages our classifier could not label — 14 residual B2B solicitations (cold pitches for design/SEO/VA services). That leaves 1,096 genuine written messages (Contact 718, Home 292, Auto 86). Classification was LLM-assisted with a 25-message manual spot-check (25/25 agreement); an automated hurricane-mention flag proved unreliable and was dropped rather than estimated — the hurricane analysis relies on intent labels and dates instead.
Structured home-quote fields
453 Home Insurance quote forms with per-field answer rates of 89–100%; blanks reported per field; no cells suppressed. Note the routing artifact stated above: 60.8% of structure-type answers on this form are mobile homes, so its bands describe the form’s real mixed population.
Privacy floor
We publish aggregates only. Every published category count is at least 5; one sub-5 insurance-line category was folded into “Other / unspecified.” The message-volume chart is quarterly because some individual months fall below that floor. Question themes are paraphrased; no customer text is quoted and no personal information appears on this page.
Search data
Google Search Console for this domain, Mar 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026. Line-class figures are query-level (267,025 classed impressions) and exclude brand and unclassifiable queries; the property-level total (389,793 impressions) is larger because Google anonymizes some queries. Each figure on this page states which level it uses. Search-interest curves describe queries reaching this one site — never market size.
Public data
Florida OIR Market Intelligence Report 2026-Q1 (policies in force Mar 31, 2026; OIR publishes MIR data unaudited; market shares are our computation from OIR’s policy counts); Citizens policies-in-force page and Jun 23, 2026 press release; FLOIR take-out approvals and catastrophe reporting (Milton figures as of Dec 9, 2025); FEMA OpenFEMA FimaNfipPolicies v2 API (NFIP direct policies in force on Jul 21, 2026). Market and AI demand volumes are DataForSEO-sourced, US, retrieved Jul 21, 2026. Every external source was verified live on Jul 21, 2026.
What this page deliberately leaves out
Google reviews of our agency are analyzed on our companion mobile-home data report (same agency listing) rather than repeated here. Mobile-home market deep-dives (FLOIR mobile-home tables, mobile-home housing stock) also live there: Florida Mobile Home Insurance Data.
Cite this page
Download the aggregated dataset (CSV)
Frequently asked questions
What do people actually ask an independent insurance agency in Florida?
In our 1,096 genuine written website messages (2022–2026), claim-related messages lead at 472 (43.1%) — but 97.7% of those arrived in the two months after Hurricane Ian. In the steady state the inbox is quote-dominated: 392 messages (35.8%) are new-quote requests, and 45 (4.1%) come from people dropped or non-renewed by a carrier.
How many homeowners insurance policies are in force in Florida?
4,155,093 owner-occupied homeowners multi-peril policies were in force statewide as of March 31, 2026, across roughly 90 reporting companies (Florida OIR Market Intelligence Report, 2026-Q1). State Farm Florida is the largest writer at 396,252 policies (9.54%).
Is Citizens still Florida’s biggest home insurer?
No. Citizens ranks 28th in the standard homeowners multi-peril line at 43,473 policies (1.05%) as of Q1 2026, and its all-lines policy count fell from 941,156 in January 2025 to 278,246 by June 30, 2026 — from 1.4 million in late 2023 to about 2% of the residential market, per Citizens — as 13 approved take-out carriers absorb policies under Florida’s depopulation program.
What hurricane deductible do Florida homeowners actually choose?
In 453 home-quote forms submitted to us, the flat $1,000 hurricane deductible was the most-chosen option (163 of 428 answering), ahead of every percentage option — 2% was next at 99. For the non-hurricane deductible, $1,000 also led (195 of 421). Seventeen shoppers asked to exclude wind coverage entirely.
How many flood insurance policies are there in Southwest Florida?
219,389 NFIP flood policies were in force across Lee, Collier, Sarasota, Charlotte, and Manatee counties on July 21, 2026 — 21.8% of Florida’s 1,006,908. Lee County alone holds 79,928 (FEMA OpenFEMA NFIP policy data; direct NFIP policies only).
Are most home-insurance shoppers buying a new home or switching carriers?
It is almost exactly half and half: 226 of 453 home-quote requests to us (49.9%) were for a home being purchased, and 227 were existing owners re-shopping their coverage.
35.8% of the people who write to us are asking exactly that. We quote home, mobile home, auto, flood, and watercraft across Florida’s private market.
Request a quote or call (239) 995-0333Related: Home insurance · Flood insurance · Auto insurance · Watercraft insurance · Mobile home insurance · Florida mobile home insurance data (companion report)