Appraisal Is Doing Florida’s Heavy Lifting. Time to Build It Like We Mean It.
Appraisal was supposed to be the fast, cheap way to settle a dollar-amount dispute without going to court. Florida courts are leaning on it harder than ever right now. The process underneath it hasn’t kept up.
The Shift Is Already Happening
Since the 2022 reform stripped the one-way attorney fee shift out of property claims, filing a lawsuit stopped being the automatic move it used to be for policyholders. Appraisal picked up the slack. Courts noticed. The Second District’s recent decision in the Leeward Bay case now lets a trial judge send the whole disputed claim to appraisal without first wading through every coverage argument the carrier wants to raise — following the same dual-track approach the Third District had already been running for years. That’s an appellate court actively making more room for appraisal, not less.
It’s not uniform yet — the Fourth District hasn’t signed on to that approach — but the direction is unmistakable. Appraisal isn’t the alternative to the system anymore. It’s becoming the system. If that’s where Florida is headed anyway, we should build it on purpose instead of backing into it by accident.
The Right to Invoke Shouldn’t Be Negotiable
Some policies are being written so appraisal only happens if both sides agree to use it. That’s the problem. Appraisal is supposed to be a right either party can exercise, not something the other side gets to veto.
Put it in the law, plainly: either side has the right to invoke appraisal, period. Policies need to be written to match. No mutual-agreement requirement, no exceptions.
Deadlines With Actual Teeth
The 20-day window to name an appraiser already exists — but only as contract language. When someone misses it, the consequence gets litigated months later as a waiver or estoppel fight, which is exactly the kind of drift that turns a claim that should take weeks into one that takes the better part of a year. I’ve watched it happen from the inside: a carrier that blew its own deadline still dragged an objection out for nearly twelve months before quietly dropping it and letting the same appraiser go right back to work.
Miss the deadline → argue about it in court for months → maybe it gets resolved eventually.
Make the 20-day naming deadline self-executing and statutory. Carrier misses it, the claim pays as demanded. Insured misses it, the claim is dismissed. No standoff. No year of billable hours arguing about a date that already passed.
Appraisers Get a Clock Too
Right now, two appraisers can sit in “still working on it” limbo indefinitely. There’s no statutory point where the process is required to either produce an agreement or formally declare impasse and move to an umpire. That open-ended runway is exactly where claims quietly stall for months with nobody accountable for the delay.
Set a fixed impasse deadline from the date both appraisers are seated. Agree by then, or declare impasse and move to the umpire. No indefinite runway either way.
Insulate the Umpire From Both Sides
The umpire only exists to break a genuine deadlock — which means the umpire selection process shouldn’t start until there’s an actual deadlock to break. Some carriers push to pre-agree on umpire candidates before the appraisers have even gotten to work, which defeats the entire point of having a neutral fallback: it turns the umpire into a negotiated party instead of a backstop.
Only the two appraisers may propose umpire candidates, and only after impasse is formally declared — never before. The carrier is not a party to that naming process. Not as a proposer, not as a gatekeeper.
Build the Registry — Don’t Leave It to a Judge’s Inbox
When the two appraisers can’t agree on an umpire today, it goes to a judge — who asks both sides to submit candidate lists, candidates the other side has usually already rejected once, and then picks one anyway. It’s slow, it clogs a docket that has better things to do, and it produces exactly the kind of back-and-forth this whole process was supposed to avoid.
This isn’t a hypothetical fix. Two states already built it:
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Texas — Active
TDI Umpire Roster
Official roster for windstorm claims — registration, qualifications, conflict-of-interest disqualifiers under state rule (28 TAC §5.4214–.4215).
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Louisiana — 2024
HB 609
Statewide appraiser and umpire registration system. Commissioner sets qualifications, collects fees, can penalize bad actors.
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Florida already tried a version of this. SB 336 in 2023 aimed at appraiser and umpire licensure, and it stalled before crossing the finish line. The appetite for it is already there. The model to copy is sitting two states over.
Build a state-maintained umpire registry under DFS or OIR, with real qualification requirements: CPAU certification, an active Florida public adjuster or independent adjuster license, a minimum of five years of claims or appraisal experience, and good standing with the state. Annual renewal and continuing education required, same as PA licensing already works. When appraisers can’t agree, pull the next qualified name off the list. Administrative decision, not a judicial one. It clears the courts, it’s faster for the homeowner, and the registration fees fund the very oversight that makes the list trustworthy in the first place.
On the PA-as-Appraiser Question
Carriers object to a PA serving as appraiser because of “bias” — but look at who they put in that chair themselves. Most carrier-side appraisers work almost exclusively as vendors for insurance companies, and their next job depends on pleasing the company that keeps hiring them. That’s a far more direct financial incentive than anything a PA has. A PA doesn’t charge separately for appraisal work — it’s part of the same contingency arrangement already governing the claim, and it actually saves the homeowner money: a standalone appraiser typically runs $1,200 to $2,500. And the PA already knows the file cold, which means a faster, cheaper process for everyone, not a slower one.
If either appraiser is genuinely off-base, that’s exactly what the umpire is there to catch. The “disinterested” objection ignores that check entirely and only ever gets raised against one side.
To be straight about the law as it stands: the Florida Supreme Court’s Parrish v. State Farm (2023) does currently hold that a contingency-fee PA fails the “disinterested” standard, regardless of the umpire backstop. That’s binding precedent today. This isn’t a claim that current law already agrees — it’s the case for why the legislature should change it, especially once the umpire process is locked down the way §5 proposes.
I’ve also written a longer piece specifically on the “impartial vs. disinterested” language distinction — read that here — if you want the deeper legal breakdown.
Where This Leaves Us
None of this is radical. Texas and Louisiana already run state umpire registries. Florida already tried and stalled on the same idea. Courts are already expanding when they’ll compel appraisal instead of litigating coverage first. The pieces are moving in one direction — appraisal doing more of the work litigation used to do — and the only question left is whether the process underneath it gets built deliberately or keeps limping along one waiver fight at a time.
Fixed deadlines with real consequences. An umpire selection process no carrier can get near before impasse. A state-run registry that pays for its own oversight. And an honest legislative conversation — not a courtroom workaround — about whether the disqualification rule still makes sense once the umpire backstop is actually airtight.
That’s faster for homeowners, cheaper for everyone, lighter on the courts, and it puts Florida in the same company as the states that already figured this out.