WASHINGTON (Tuesday, April 1, 2025) – Today, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) published a new report that shows American homeowners saw their insurance premiums increase by an average of 24% over the past three years. Nationally, CFA found homeowners saw their insurance premiums rise twice as fast as inflation between 2021 and 2024, which amounts to a $21 billion total price hike for Americans.

The study authors of “Overburdened: The Dramatic Increase in Homeowners Insurance Premiums and its Impacts on American Homeowners” used proprietary industry data purchased for this research to evaluate the growth in insurance premiums for typical homeowners in every ZIP code in the country.

“The skyrocketing price of insurance premiums is deepening the housing crisis from Salt Lake City to New Orleans and beyond – and homeowners across the country are feeling the strain,” said CFA’s Director of Housing Sharon Cornelissen, a lead author of the report. “If we want to protect affordable homeownership, federal and state policymakers need to take action to address the rising costs and reduce risk for individuals and communities.”

From 2021 to 2024, annual insurance premiums for a typical homeowner increased

by an average of $648 across the country. By 2024, typical homeowners paid $3,303 per year for homeowners insurance. Additional findings include:

• Premiums increased in 95% of U.S. ZIP codes, and consumers in one-third of ZIP codes saw their premiums rise by more than 30%.
• The sharpest increases were found in Utah (59% jump in premiums), Illinois (50%), Arizona (48%), and Pennsylvania (44%).
• The most expensive states in which to insure a home are Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Nebraska.
• American homeowners who buy the most common coverage collectively paid an estimated $21 billion more in premiums in 2024 than in 2021. Adding in renters, condo owners, owners of manufactured homes, and homeowners who purchased less common coverage, Americans increased their annual payments to homeowners insurance companies by an estimated $27 billion over the past three years.

CFA member organizations are working with regulators, policymakers, insurers, and consumers in their states to address the growing burden that homeowners insurance is placing on American families and communities.

“With average annual Illinois premiums rising by 50% — from roughly $2,000 to $3,000 — over the past three years, it’s time for policymakers to take action on homeowners insurance,” said Abe Scarr, Director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and the Illinois PIRG Education Fund. “At a minimum, Illinois should empower the Department of Insurance to reject or modify excessive rate hikes, which would represent a basic consumer protection that residents in almost every other state enjoy.”

“Skyrocketing double-digit increases in homeowners’ insurance premiums and the potential inability to find adequate insurance, particularly in areas prone to wildfire, have the potential to wreak havoc on household budgets in Arizona,” said Diane E. Brown, Executive Director of the Arizona PIRG. “To protect consumers, policymakers should reduce barriers to coverage and ensure homeowners insurance policies are reasonable.”

This report highlights the growing crisis occurring at the intersection of housing, climate change, and property insurance. In addition to recommending several insurance reforms and investments to address the issue, CFA underscored a significant need for improved public data collection about the insurance market to help policymakers better address this emerging disaster.

“American homeowners are facing unprecedented premium hikes,” said Douglas Heller, CFA’s Director of Insurance. “But the insurance commissioners and lawmakers we depend upon to ensure that this critical coverage is available and affordable have not done enough to collect, let alone make public, the data from insurance companies that are needed to effectively target solutions to this crisis and hold bad actors accountable. Americans are stuck buying insurance from companies that our public officials seem afraid of.”

CFA calls on lawmakers and regulators to require insurance companies to publicly disclose all transactions with consumers in ways that mirror the detailed data reporting of mortgage applications. Mortgage lenders have been required to report detailed mortgage data annually under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) since 1975. While the

National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) collected limited data about homeowners insurance last year, the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) has only made some of that data public.

In “Overburdened,” CFA also makes policy recommendations regarding the need for increased investments in loss prevention, risk mitigation, and resilience; the creation of a federal reinsurance backstop to address the high costs of the “insurance for insurance companies” that is sold on an unregulated global market; and improving oversight of insurance company rate increases by state insurance departments. In the coming months, CFA will be working with state partners throughout the country to further drill down on the unique data in this report, detail the scale of the challenges facing homeowners in their states, and identify opportunities for addressing the homeowners insurance crisis that is overburdening millions of Americans across the nation.

“Overburdened” builds on prior CFA research (“EXPOSED: A Report on 1.6 Trillion Dollars of Uninsured American Homes”) using American Housing Survey data that found more than six million homes are uninsured across the country. To learn more, visit consumerfed.org.

 

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