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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Homeowners insurance has become significantly more expensive and much harder to find in recent years as insurers continue pulling back from the most vulnerable areas of the country, according to a new report by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).
Between 2018 and 2024, the time frame analyzed by the nonprofit organization representing the lead insurance regulators of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, U.S. consumers saw homeowners insurance premiums rise faster than inflation in every region of the country.
The average premiums surged by 18.3 percent in the Northeast, 24.7 percent in the Midwest, 26.5 percent in the Southeast and 43.3 percent in the West, even after accounting for inflation.
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While the West reported the biggest increase over the seven-year period, homeowners in the Southeast paid the highest average premiums, at $1,818 per year in 2024, while those in the Northeast paid the lowest at $1,396.
The West was also the region where insurers cut the most coverage between 2018 and 2024, according to NAIC, opting not to renew customers’ policies once they expired.
Nonrenewal rates per 1,000 in-force policies increased by 216 percent in the West, the biggest increase in the country. It was followed by the Northeast, where company-initiated nonrenewals jumped by 147 percent, the Midwest, up 125 percent, and the Southeast, up 96 percent.
As of 2024, there were over 103 million policies in force across the country, one-third of which were in the West (32.9 percent), followed by the Southeast (27.8 percent), the Midwest (24.1 percent), and the Northeast (15.2 percent).
The Southeast appears to be the costliest region for homeowners insurance, based on NAIC data, while the West is experiencing the most dramatic deterioration in market conditions, with premium growth and insurer pullbacks outpacing other parts of the country. Overall, the coastal areas of the country are suffering the biggest premium hikes and a surge in cancellations, as they are more exposed to natural disasters—even as lawmakers are trying to address the challenge.
“The data tells the story of a homeowners insurance market that is overall operationally robust but nonetheless under pressure and exhibiting signs of stress,” NAIC’s report’s co-authors, Jeffrey Czajkowski and Paula Harms, wrote.
“Between 2018 and 2024, premiums increased, claim frequency and severity generally trended upward, insurer-initiated nonrenewals became more common, and cancellations for nonpayment increased. Many insurers continued to write homeowners coverage, but more than half reduced the number of policies they carried,” they added.
“These trends support consumer sentiment that coverage is becoming more expensive and harder to find or keep in some places.”
Newsweek reached out to NAIC via email for comment.
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Why Are Homeowners Insurance Costs Rising?
More frequent and more severe extreme weather events, which research has found to be linked to global warming, the higher costs of rebuilding materials, and reinsurance are driving up costs for insurers, who in turn are transferring this extra financial burden onto customers, wherever they can.
In disaster-prone states like California and Florida, an exodus of insurers in the years following the pandemic led lawmakers and regulators to introduce changes to ensure coverage for all homeowners, while their insurer of last resort inflated in size in the face of widespread cancellations.
But the crisis has been felt all across the country, and has gained the attention of federal lawmakers. Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a report that average premiums per policy increased 8.7 percent faster than the rate of inflation from 2018 to 2022.
Within the same period, weather and climate disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage increased more than fivefold compared with the 1980s, after adjusting for inflation, the department found.
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While NAIC’s analysis of state insurance agencies’ data stops in 2024, we know from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index (PPI) for homeowners insurance premiums that the cost of homeowners insurance has continued rising across the country, jumping by another 7 percent since the beginning of 2025.
The index does not represent exactly what homeowners pay out of pocket each month, but it shows the “closest, most consistent national proxy for homeowners insurance premiums over time,” according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
What Impact Is It Having on Homeowners?
Americans have taken notice of how much their homeowners insurance bills have gone up in recent years.
A poll published earlier this year by the Pew Research Center showed that 71 percent of U.S. homeowners say their homeowners insurance costs have gone up over the last few years, including 42 percent who say it has gone up “a lot.”
About two-thirds (65 percent) believe they have done so because insurance companies are trying to make more money, but another 61 percent say repair and rebuilding costs are a major reason. Fewer respondents, 46 percent, pointed to extreme weather events as a reason for the premium hikes.
Homeowners insurance costs have been spiking for more than two decades now, according to NAR, though they have picked up speed in recent years, as confirmed by NAIC, which found that the phenomenon has accelerated between 2021 and 2024.
U.S. homeowners are paying the price of these increases. According to NAR, the long-term trend of insurance inflation eroded Americans’ ability to afford a home by close to 10 percent since the 1990s. Overall, home insurance takes up at least 10 percent of monthly housing costs in 20 states, a recent study by LendingTree found.
The result is that many Americans, whenever they can, are doing without coverage at all. Low-income households are more likely to go “bare” and put their house at risk—ultimately exacerbating their financial situation should disaster strike.
Based on data by the Chicago Fed, between 2007 and 2017—before the recent premium hikes—6 percent of all U.S. homeowners lacked insurance on their property. Researchers found that Black and Hispanic homeowners were most likely to be in the uninsured group, and years of education, income, and home value were all positively correlated with having homeowners insurance.
Similarly, a more recent report by the Urban Institute found that the burden of home insurance falls hardest "on lower-income households, on communities in hazard-prone areas, and increasingly on markets where the relationship between peril risk and cost is anything but straightforward."
Of the 86.6 million owner-occupied homes in the U.S., 12.2 million U.S., or nearly one in seven—are uninsured, according to the latest data by LendingTree, with the highest rate in the nation (23.9 percent) reported in West Virginia.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Sam Wilson.
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