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Home Insurance Prices Up 24% in 3 Years; Midwest, Older Homes Hit Hardest

The gap between insuring a typical U.S. home and new construction has widened to more than $1,000, NerdWallet’s analysis found.
Home Insurance Prices Up 24% in 3 Years; Midwest, Older Homes Hit Hardest
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Oct 2, 2026
Fact Checked
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Written by
Data Editor & Licensed Insurance Specialist
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Key takeaways from our data analysis

  • Premiums for a typical U.S. home are 24% higher nationally compared to three years ago. A U.S. homeowner with good credit, no claims, and a house built in 1984 could now expect to pay $496 more for home insurance than in early 2023.

  • Rate increases were smaller over the past year, with some exceptions. From the first quarter (Q1) of 2025 to Q1 2026, home insurance premiums increased an average of 4.6% nationally — though a few states still faced double-digit rate hikes.

  • Price hikes hit Midwestern states the hardest. Premiums rose 25% in the Midwest from Q1 2023 to Q1 2026, after years of heavy wind and hail claims, compared with 20.5% in the Northeast, 19.2% in the South and 16.4% in the West.

  • Older homes now cost 81% more to insure than new construction. The premium gap between a 1984-built home and a new build grew from 59.2% in Q1 2023 to 81.2% in Q1 2026. A 1984-built home now costs $1,149 more a year to insure.

Home insurance is up 24% in three years, but increases are slowing

Home insurance premiums for the typical U.S. homeowner rose 24% from Q1 2023 to Q1 2026, a median increase of $496, according to NerdWallet’s 2026 Home Insurance Rates Report, which analyzed more than 840 million rate estimates. 

The typical U.S. home insurance premium reached $2,564 in early 2026

  • To make the comparisons in this study meaningful, NerdWallet tracked only insurance carriers that maintained a largely consistent market presence throughout the analysis period — excluding companies that entered or exited markets mid-period. This means the premium changes shown reflect genuine rate movement, not shifts in carrier or coverage availability.

    See our full methodology below.

Most of the increases came before 2025. The national median premium increased 7.0% from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, then jumped 10.8% from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025, when 29 states saw double-digit increases. Over the past year, the national median increase slowed to 4.6%.

Premiums fell in 18 states and Washington, D.C. from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, with the largest drops in North Carolina (-9.6%), Rhode Island (-7.9%) and West Virginia (-7.6%). In each of the two years before that, premiums fell in just three states: Alaska, New Mexico and West Virginia from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, then Florida, Nevada and Wyoming from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025. Four states saw double-digit increases over the past year, led by Pennsylvania (16.4%), Arizona (14.9%) and Minnesota (10.9%).

Premiums fell in 18 states and Washington, D.C., in the past year — up from three a year earlier

Why premiums rose fastest from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025

Part of the reason Q1 2024 to Q1 2025 saw the biggest premium jumps is timing. Each year, insurance companies buy their own catastrophe coverage, known as reinsurance, to protect against major losses like hurricanes or wildfires. At the January 2023 reinsurance renewal, reinsurers hiked rates dramatically: 25% to 50% for insurers with a relatively clean record of recent losses, and a 45% to 100% rate increase for home insurers with recent large-dollar claims.

In most states, insurance companies can't immediately pass those higher reinsurance costs on to their customers. Instead, they must file proposed rate increases with state regulators, submit evidence for the increase in accordance with the state's insurance law, and wait for approval — which isn't always guaranteed.

In California, for example, home insurers waited an average of 186 days, roughly six months, for regulators to decide on a homeowners rate filing in 2023. In the years before that, the slowest filings took anywhere from about 660 days to nearly 1,200 days to clear. That gap between filing and approval may explain why the steepest increases reached homeowners a year or more after reinsurance costs first spiked in January 2023.

Midwest premiums jumped 25% in three years, the most of any region

For a typical homeowner in the Midwest, home insurance rates increased at a faster pace than those in other parts of the country, climbing 25% between Q1 2023 and Q1 2026, compared to 21.3% in non-Midwestern states for a 1984-built home with the same coverage profile.

Home insurance costs rose in 47 of 51 U.S. jurisdictions since 2023

Where costs didn't increase

  • Alaska: -15.4%

  • Wyoming: -4.6%

  • Washington, D.C.: -0.5%

  • New Mexico: 0%

Where costs increased most

  • Arizona: 49.8%

  • Wisconsin: 40.9%

  • Hawaii: 38.3%

  • Virginia: 36%

  • Utah: 33.9%

Wisconsin and Michigan among the hardest-hit states in the country

Several Midwest states posted cumulative increases that rank among the steepest in the country. Wisconsin homeowners saw a +40.9% cumulative premium increase between 2023 and 2026, while Michigan (+29.9%), Iowa (+27.7%), Minnesota (+27.3%), and Indiana (+27.2%) all saw similarly high increases outpacing the national average.

Even brand-new homes in the Midwest faced sizable premium increases relative to the rest of the country. Home insurance rates on newly built Midwestern homes rose 13.4% over the three-year window — nearly double the 6.8% increase for new construction outside of the Midwest.

Severe storms likely drove most of the Midwest increases

The main driver here appears to be severe weather — tornadoes, hail, and catastrophic windstorm damage — according to our analysis of National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) storm event data from 2020 to 2025. Severe convective storms caused $51 billion in U.S. insured losses in 2025, the third straight year above $50 billion and more than any other category of natural disaster.

In fact, three of the four U.S. states with the largest cumulative increase in severe hail events since 2023 are in the Midwest, according to our analysis. Severe hail events, defined as a storm with hail at least one inch in diameter, more than tripled in Missouri (+276%) and Illinois (+258%) from 2023 to 2025 versus the previous three-year period, while Indiana (+183%) experienced a similarly large spike in destructive hailstorms during the same period.

States where severe hail increased, 2020 to 2025 | NerdWallet analysis of the NOAA Storm Events Database

Hail causes damage to cars, too, and Midwest auto insurance rates have climbed alongside home rates. Our 2026 Auto Insurance Rates Report found that six of the 10 states with the largest auto insurance increases since January 2023 are in the Midwest. Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota are among the hardest-hit Midwest states for both home and auto coverage.

Older homes cost 81% more to insure than new builds

Over our three-year analysis period, premiums for newly built homes rose 8.9% — a median increase of $116 — compared to 24% for 1984-built homes. In Q1 2026, insurance premiums on new homes actually went down slightly (-0.3%) compared to the previous year, while rates for older homes climbed 4.6%, according to our analysis.

Further, the gap in premiums when you insure a new home versus an older one is getting considerably larger, according to our analysis.

The older-home premium gap has grown to $1,149

In Q1 2023, the cost to insure a house built in 1984 — near the 1982 median for owner-occupied homes, according to U.S. Census Bureau data — was around 59.2% higher than the premium on a new construction home, with all other factors being equal. By early 2026, that gap had grown to 81.2% — a premium difference of more than $1,000 per year.

Filing one claim can raise your rate up to 36%

If you shop for a new policy after filing a single weather-related claim, you’ll likely be quoted a higher rate in nearly every state. The size of that increase can vary dramatically depending on where you live. Nationally, one wind or weather claim increases rates 10.2%, and in some states more than double that.

Here are the 10 states where a single claim adds the most to a homeowner's annual bill.

Where one weather claim costs homeowners the most

  • Increase in median home insurance premium after one wind claim, by state, Q1 2026 | NerdWallet analysis of Quadrant Information Services data

Some states limit when insurers can raise your rate after a weather claim, so check your state’s rules before assuming one claim will raise your premium.

When it might make sense to pay out of pocket

Claim frequency is one of the biggest rating factors insurers consider, and small claims can count against you more than their size suggests. Repeat low-payout claims, such as a $1,500 repair after a storm knocks down a section of fence, may signal that you rely on insurance for routine maintenance and may cause your home insurance rates to skyrocket or lead the insurer to drop you from your policy when it comes up for renewal.

To put the claims math into concrete terms: at the national median premium of $2,564 per year, a 10.2% premium surcharge for a single claim would add around $261 annually to your bill. If you experienced $1,500 worth of damage with a $1,000 deductible, your insurer only pays out $500. By paying that full $1,500 out of pocket to avoid the surcharge, you'd break even in roughly two years.

💡 Nerdy tip: Raising your deductible from $1,000 to $2,500 can save you 11.4% on home insurance premiums annually, our analysis found — roughly offsetting the added cost of a prior claims surcharge. However, it also raises the amount you’re responsible for paying out of pocket when you make a claim. Before increasing your deductible, make sure you have enough savings to pay for minor repairs or unexpected maintenance issues on your own.

Filed rate changes for 2026 suggest the market may be cooling

Because rate filings are public, they offer an early read on what existing customers will see at renewal. According to our analysis of requested rate changes from January 2026 through mid-August, 53.6% of company filings asked for rate increases, with a median requested change of +1.0%, meaning half of filings asked for 1% or more and half asked for less. By comparison, 68.7% sought increases in 2025 and 81.6% in 2024, with a median requested rate change of +5.4% and +10.0%, respectively.

Insurers are asking for smaller rate increases in 2026

The median requested change could still rise before year-end if insurers file for larger increases, though forecasters expect a below-average Atlantic hurricane season in 2026. For now, our findings suggest many have paused increases to compete for new customers after multiple years of steep rate hikes. Even so, homeowners in some states may feel the pain more than others going into 2027.

Global property-catastrophe reinsurance rates fell about 15% at the January 2026 renewal cycle, and U.S. property-catastrophe pricing fell a further 20% to 25% at the July 2026 renewal. AM Best reported in May 2026 that improving loss ratios and smaller rate increases “may signal stabilization after a period of higher rate changes.”

What you can do to lower your home insurance costs

If you’re looking for ways to trim your home insurance costs, consider the following:

Shop around before your renewal arrives

Insurers requested much smaller increases for 2026 than in prior years, with half of filings seeking less than a 1% change, so a competing quote is more likely to beat your renewal offer than it was a year ago.

Think twice before filing a small claim

Filing a single weather claim could raise your premium by about 10%, and far more than that in the highest-penalty states. At the national median, a 10% rate increase adds roughly $260 to your home insurance bill.

Consider raising your deductible

Raising your home insurance deductible from $1,000 to $2,500 can typically save you 11.4% on homeowners insurance, our analysis found — or about $292 per year at the national median. While that’s a meaningful discount, it raises the amount you’re responsible for paying out of pocket before your home insurance kicks in to cover the rest of the damage. If you go this route, make sure you have enough in savings to cover the higher out-of-pocket amount.

Factor insurance into home-purchase decisions

The premium gap between a 1984-built home and a newly built equivalent has widened to 81.2% — a difference of more than $1,000 a year. Research by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety found that asphalt shingles weathered for just two years and already struck by smaller hail were roughly 10 times more susceptible to damage from severe hail than brand-new shingles. For a homebuyer weighing comparable properties, the age of the roof is now a meaningful line item in the cost of homeownership.

Reporters: To request the data behind this report or to speak with one of our licensed NerdWallet insurance professionals, email press@nerdwallet.com.

NerdWallet writers are subject matter authorities who use primary, trustworthy sources to inform their work, including peer-reviewed studies, government websites, academic research and interviews with industry experts. All content is fact-checked for accuracy, timeliness and relevance. You can learn more about NerdWallet's high standards for journalism by reading our editorial guidelines.

Methodology

This report is based on more than 840 million home insurance rate estimates that Quadrant Information Services calculates from insurers’ own filed rating formulas, covering all 50 states and Washington, D.C., at four points in time: March 2023, March 2024, February 2025, and January 2026 — corresponding to rates available to consumers in Q1 2023, Q1 2024, Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, respectively.

Rates represent both new business and renewal rate estimates — or what a new policyholder would be offered when shopping for a new policy in addition to what existing ones are charged at annual renewal with the same company. Because insurers often price new business differently from renewals, NerdWallet's figures may differ from industry-reported renewal statistics. Quadrant derives its rate data from modeled estimates based on carrier rating algorithms; figures may not reflect every available carrier or every consumer's individual circumstances. Notably, Liberty Mutual does not participate in Quadrant's rate data and is not represented in this analysis.

The benchmark home

To represent a typical American homeowner, NerdWallet anchored its analysis to homes built in 1984, close to the median owner-occupied U.S. home, which was built in 1982, according to 2024 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data. Unless otherwise noted, all national and state median figures reflect 1984-vintage homes.

Coverage profile

All median rate and rate-of-change calculations using Quadrant data, including national headline figures, Midwest comparisons, the dwelling-age gap analysis and the claims penalty data, pool rates across three dwelling coverage levels ($300,000, $400,000, and $500,000) while holding other variables constant: a home built in 1984, deductible ($1,000) credit (good), and claims (none). These levels bracket the cost to rebuild a typical U.S. home, about $410,000, according to NerdWallet’s analysis of 2025 home rebuilding cost data from First Street. Pooling adjacent coverage levels also gives state-level medians a large enough sample to be reliable.

Year-over-year comparability

NerdWallet applied a strict comparability filter before computing year-over-year figures. Only coverage variants and carrier/state combinations present in all four years of data were included in median calculations. This ensures reported changes reflect genuine, directly comparable pricing shifts among stable carriers, rather than mathematical artifacts caused by insurers entering, exiting, or going insolvent during the analysis period.

The comparison window

The most recent year-over-year comparison (February 2025 to January 2026) covers an 11-month period rather than a full calendar year. All percentage changes for this period are reported as-measured and have not been annualized.

State medians

State median figures represent the median of all ZIP-level carrier medians within a state, after the comparability filter and exclusions described elsewhere in this methodology. States where fewer carriers provide quotes, or where a carrier's participation is limited to certain ZIP codes, may show greater variability in medians than larger, more competitive markets.

Defining the Midwest

Midwest figures use the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwest region: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

State rate filing data

NerdWallet analyzed homeowners rate filings submitted to state regulators from Jan. 1, 2022, through Aug. 17, 2026, to provide forward-looking context on what existing homeowners can expect at renewal. Filings include both approved and pending requests. Each insurer was counted once per state per year, and results were aggregated using median filed rate impact. Four states are not included. Filings in Florida and Alabama are not represented in any year because their filings don’t report a rate impact in our data. Louisiana isn’t represented due to a small sample of filings with reported rate impact in 2024 (5 total) and 2025 (1 total), and has no filings with reported rate impact so far in 2026. Wyoming insurers filed no homeowners rate changes from 2024 through Aug. 17, 2026.