Florida home insurance: the ZIPs where it costs the most and the least

How wide is the gap between the cheapest and most expensive ZIP?

$39,216 wide. The cheapest observed premium in the data is $1,503 (ZIP 33576); the most expensive is $40,719 (ZIP 33480). That is not a typo.

The U.S. Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office tracked actual premiums paid — not quotes, not estimates — across 560 Florida ZIP codes from 2018 to 2022. These are real dollars that policyholders handed over. The median across all 560 ZIPs is $3,211. The mean is $4,864. The gap between median and mean tells you the distribution is badly skewed: a cluster of coastal ZIPs pulls the average up hard.

Which ZIP codes are the most expensive, and why does the location matter?

The top ten are all coastal or near-coastal, and the cheapest among them — $21,818 — is still nearly seven times the statewide median.

Palm Beach, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Naples, Jupiter, Lake Worth Beach, and Vero Beach all appear in the top ten. These are barrier islands, inlet communities, and waterfront neighborhoods. Insurers price for replacement cost and for storm surge exposure. A buyer moving to one of these ZIPs who is budgeting on the statewide average of $4,864 is off by tens of thousands of dollars per year.

ZIP	Area	Observed premium (avg per policy)
33480	Palm Beach	$40,719
33140	Miami Beach	$34,055
33316	Fort Lauderdale	$24,366
34102	Naples	$23,927
33141	Miami Beach	$23,306
33462	Lake Worth Beach	$23,271
33408	Jupiter	$22,223
33455	Hobe Sound	$22,109
32963	Vero Beach	$22,107
33156	Pinecrest / Coral Gables area	$21,818

Which ZIP codes pay the least?

The ten cheapest ZIPs all come in under $1,650, and eight of them are in the Ocala or The Villages corridor of north-central Florida — inland, elevated, away from the coast.

The single cheapest ZIP in the data is 33576, at $1,503. That is about $125 a month. Geography explains most of it: these are inland communities with lower wind exposure and no meaningful storm surge risk. They are also not high-replacement-cost markets. A house that costs less to rebuild costs less to insure.

ZIP	Area	Observed premium (avg per policy)
34472	Ocala area	$1,642
32609	Gainesville area	$1,634
34473	Ocala area	$1,629
32159	Lady Lake	$1,583
32163	The Villages	$1,582
34481	Ocala area	$1,560
34609	Spring Hill	$1,558
34748	Leesburg	$1,545
32641	Gainesville area	$1,514
33576	San Antonio / Pasco County	$1,503

How does the most expensive ZIP compare to the statewide median?

ZIP 33480 in Palm Beach costs 12.7 times the statewide median of $3,211. That works out to about $37,500 more per year than a median-priced policy.

Put it in annual cash terms: a buyer in 33480 pays roughly $3,393 a month in insurance alone. That is more than the total mortgage payment on many Florida homes. Anyone underwriting a purchase in that ZIP using median Florida insurance figures will be wrong by a meaningful amount — not a rounding error, a second rent payment.

Does this data cover every Florida homeowner?

No. The Treasury data covers 560 ZIP codes; Florida has more than that. And the figures are averages per policy within each ZIP, not a guarantee of what any individual property will pay.

Two things the data cannot tell you: what a specific property will be quoted today, and whether that property can get coverage at all. The Florida market has seen carrier exits since this 2018-2022 observation window closed. Availability has changed. A ZIP that had competitive premiums in 2022 may have fewer options now. The figure for your property depends on age of roof, construction type, elevation certificate, and what carriers are still writing in that county. The Treasury number tells you the ZIP’s revealed cost history. It does not replace an actual policy quote.

What should a buyer do with this information before making an offer?

Look up the ZIP before you make an offer, not after — and get an insurance quote as a condition of your due diligence, not an afterthought.

The spread in this data is too large to absorb as a surprise. A buyer moving from a state where $1,800 a year is a normal premium and landing in ZIP 33316 will face a $22,566 annual difference. That reshapes the affordability calculation entirely. It changes the price you can offer, the loan you can carry, and whether the deal makes sense at all. Run the insurance number the same day you run the mortgage number. If the ZIP is in the top ten of this list, assume the premium is material until a carrier tells you otherwise in writing.