Home Insurance Rates Up 47% Since 2020 as Colorado Costs Double

Home insurance costs spread beyond hurricane states

For most of this decade, rising home insurance costs were treated as a problem for Florida and California. New data shows that view no longer holds. LendingTree's 2026 State of Home Insurance report found that homeowners rates rose a cumulative 46.8% nationally from 2020 through 2025, and every state recorded an increase over that period.2 The fastest increases were mostly in states west of the Mississippi River. Florida and California, long seen as the center of the crisis, did not make the top 10.3

Colorado had the steepest increase. Its rates more than doubled, rising 100.8% over the five years. Iowa followed at 96% and Minnesota at 88.2%.2 Utah, Nebraska, Arizona, Illinois, South Dakota, Oregon and Montana filled out the rest of the top 10, and each rose more than 56%.1 West Virginia had the smallest increase at 19.2%, followed by Vermont and Maine at roughly 20%.4

The year-by-year figures show when the pressure built. Rates rose just 2% in 2020 and 2.8% in 2021, then 5.2% in 2022, peaked at 12.7% in 2024 and slowed to 6% in 2025.4 The slowdown was uneven. In 2025, Colorado rose another 18.3%, Minnesota 17% and Iowa 14.7%, about three times the national rate.3 Florida, Montana and Texas each rose less than 1% that year.4

Hail, wildfire and the claims gap

Coverage of the report broadly agrees that severe weather is the main cause, though the type of weather differs by region. Colorado went through 22 separate billion-dollar disasters between 2020 and 2024. The Insurance Information Institute points to hail, wildfire, tornadoes and severe storms as the biggest drivers.1 The December 2021 Marshall Fire alone destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the suburbs around Boulder. Colorado's new housing is also increasingly being built in "Hail Alley," the country's most hail-prone area.1

In Minnesota and Iowa, a LendingTree analyst blamed convective storms: wind, rain and hail that damage large numbers of homes at once and produce enough claims to force rate increases.5 Utah's main threat is wildfire rather than hail. A local investigation found its home insurance costs rising about six times faster than paychecks.5

The claims data supports the weather explanation. LendingTree found that in Louisiana, Iowa and Hawaii, home insurers paid out more in claims than they collected in premiums.1 Regulation also slows how quickly insurers can respond. The Government Accountability Office found that from 2020 through 2024, the median time to approve a rate filing was 331 days in Colorado and 305 days in California.1 Because of that delay, losses from one year often show up in premiums a year or two later. That helps explain why Colorado homeowners were still facing double-digit increases in 2025.

Fast growth and high prices are different problems

A large percentage increase does not necessarily make a state expensive. Arizona's rates rose 71%, the sixth-largest increase, but the state is not among the costliest places to insure a home.1 Nebraska has both problems. Its rates rose 72%, and its average premium of $4,956 a year is now the second-highest in the country.1

The state rankings also depend on who is measuring. Insurance.com's 2026 data ranks Massachusetts first for percentage growth, with average premiums up 42.9% from 2025 to 2026, though its $2,112 average is still below the national average of $2,872.8 The same data puts Florida's average at $8,471, still the most expensive in the country.8 Another analysis put Pennsylvania at the top of the past year's increases at 16.4%, followed by Arizona and Minnesota.6 A year earlier, a different dataset put the national five-year increase at 40.4%, with Colorado's 76.6% again in first place.7

The differences come from methodology. LendingTree models one standard policy with $350,000 in dwelling coverage and a $1,000 deductible.4 Other trackers use different policy profiles and time periods. Even so, two findings appear across all of them: the Mountain West and the Plains states keep showing up near the top, and costs are rising in nearly every state, not just a few disaster-prone ones. A separate Consumer Federation of America finding shows how widespread it is: insurers raised premiums in 95% of U.S. ZIP codes between 2021 and 2024.1

Insurers are profitable again

The rate data alone leaves out the insurers' side. After years of losses, the homeowners business is profitable again. AM Best reports that U.S. homeowners insurers earned a $16.5 billion underwriting profit in 2025, their first since 2019. In 2024 they lost $1.3 billion, and losses over the previous five years totaled more than $35 billion.31 The industry's combined ratio, which compares claims and expenses with premiums collected, fell to 87.8%, the best in more than a decade.32

Colorado stands out. Its direct combined ratio fell from 96.9% to 57% in 2025, the same year LendingTree measured an 18.3% rate increase there.312 In that state, earlier rate increases appear to have more than caught up with losses. Profits in the wider property and casualty industry were also high. Underwriting income reached about $68 billion in 2025, which S&P Global calls a likely record.3839 Consumer advocates have used those numbers to argue that policyholders are paying for windfall profits.37

The industry and its analysts read the same numbers more cautiously. Verisk says the 2025 results came mostly from unusually low catastrophe losses, including a nearly 90% drop in hurricane-related claims, rather than from any decline in underlying risk.33 That warning is reasonable. California's homeowners combined ratio jumped to 205.3% after the Los Angeles wildfires, and Missouri lost money after a severe tornado season.31 Still, the evidence shows that most of the industry has repaired its finances. One sign is the pace of approved rate increases, which fell from 13.5% in 2024 to 7.6% in 2025 and 4.3% in the first half of 2026. Lower reinsurance costs helped.31 In Ohio, Nationwide announced an 18% cut in homeowners rates.40 If the weather stays calm, more of these cuts should follow. A single bad catastrophe season could reverse them.

Auto insurance has leveled off

Car insurance went through its own surge earlier and is now mostly flat. One estimate puts auto premium growth at 64% between September 2020 and September 2025.21 Since then the market has cooled. Insurify found that average full-coverage premiums fell 6% in 2025, then rose 1% in the first half of 2026 to $2,237 a year. Insurify projects increases in 32 states by year's end.23 ValuePenguin forecasts a national increase of just 0.67% for 2026, the smallest since 2022.30

The state forecasts disagree here too. Insurify expects Connecticut to finish 2026 about 15% higher, with Kentucky and West Virginia close to 8%.26 ValuePenguin named New Jersey as the biggest riser at about 10.5%.25 Insurify instead found New Jersey premiums down 5% in the first half of the year.23 Insurify also suggests carriers may be raising prices in historically cheap states while cutting them in expensive ones.23 Auto insurers posted a 91.8 combined ratio in 2025, so that line is profitable as well.36

Health insurance costs are still accelerating

Health insurance is the one category where costs are speeding up rather than slowing down. KFF's 2025 survey found that employer family coverage averaged $26,993, up 6%, compared with 2.7% inflation.11 It was the first time in two decades that family premiums rose 6% or more for three straight years.14 Mercer projected that workers' 2026 costs would rise another 6% to 7%.13 Small businesses with ACA-compliant plans faced a median proposed increase of 11%, driven by hospital prices, physician costs and specialty drugs such as GLP-1s.15 Before the enhanced subsidies lapsed, KFF estimated that subsidized marketplace enrollees would pay 114% more in premiums on average without them.18 KFF's 2026 employer survey is due October 22.11

What it adds up to

These markets are on different cycles. Auto insurance has largely corrected, and homeowners pricing is slowing on average while insurers are profitable again. Health coverage is still rising faster than wages. For a household in Colorado, Iowa or Nebraska, the result is a home insurance bill that roughly doubled in five years and is not coming back down, on top of health premiums that keep climbing. The homeowners slowdown also depends on luck, since 2025's profits came largely from a mild hurricane season. Unless the weather stays calm or states move faster to reduce losses, the slowdown in home insurance prices may not last.