Wealthy PotAverage Home Insurance Cost: The Official Numbers
The official US average for home insurance is $1,737 a year for the standard HO-3 policy, from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. One thing about that number deserves saying immediately: it is for 2023. The NAIC published it in July 2026, because official insurance data takes years to compile, and the market has moved since. This page gives the official figures, says exactly how old they are, shows the enormous spread between states, and explains why we refuse to publish a guess at what the number is today.
Table of Contents
The Short Answer
- $1,737 a year is the NAIC average premium for an HO-3 policy, the standard homeowners form, for 2023. That works out to about $145 a month.
- It is the newest official figure there is. The NAIC published it in July 2026, and no federal or regulatory body has published a national average for 2024 or later.
- The average rose 36.6% between 2019 and 2023, from $1,272.
- State averages range from $923 in Wisconsin to $3,027 in Louisiana, a gap of 3.3 times.
- Renters pay far less: the NAIC average for an HO-4 renters policy was $173, and for an HO-6 condo policy $658.
- Households spent $737 on homeowners insurance in 2024 per the BLS, but that is an average across all households, including renters who pay none.
The Official Average
State insurance regulators collect premium and exposure data through the NAIC, which divides total written premium by house-years to produce an average premium for each policy form. A house-year is twelve months of coverage on one dwelling. This is the only national average built from insurers' actual reported premiums rather than from sample quotes, and the 2023 file covers 101,954,895.5 house-years.
The headline figure is the HO-3, the "all risks" package on the building with named-peril coverage on contents. The NAIC calls it "the most common policy sold by far": it accounted for 55.1% of all policy exposures and 79.5% of owner-occupied ones.
| Data year | Average premium, HO-3 | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $1,272 | |
| 2020 | $1,311 | +3.1% |
| 2021 | $1,411 | +7.6% |
| 2022 | $1,569 | +11.2% |
| 2023 | $1,737 | +10.7% |
The other forms in the same file, all for 2023, put the HO-3 in context. The figures are not interchangeable, because each form buys a different thing.
| Policy form | What it covers | 2023 average premium |
|---|---|---|
| HO-3 | All risks on the building, broad named perils on contents. The standard. | $1,737 |
| HO-5 | All risks on both the building and contents | $1,891 |
| HO-2 | Broad named perils on building and contents | $1,572 |
| HO-8 | Repair-cost form for older homes whose rebuild cost far exceeds market value | $1,071 |
| Dwelling fire | Narrower non-package coverage, often on rentals and secondary dwellings | $1,019 |
| HO-6 | Condo and co-op unit owners: contents, liability and the owner's insurable interest | $658 |
| HO-4 | Renters: contents and liability, no building | $173 |
The Lag Problem, and Why We Will Not Guess
The lag here is worse than in car insurance. The NAIC's homeowners report is not published on a fixed annual cycle: the 2021 data came out in December 2023, the 2022 data in May 2025, and the 2023 data in July 2026. So the freshest official number is already two and a half years old on the day it appears, and closer to three by the time most people read it.
That invites an obvious shortcut: take the 2023 average and inflate it with a price index to estimate today's cost. It is worth showing exactly how badly that fails.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does publish a monthly price index that covers home insurance, called tenants' and household insurance. It is genuinely relevant: BLS maps both homeowners insurance on an owned home and renters insurance into that single index item. In the twelve months to August 2026 it rose 4.1%, and it is up 14.1% on its 2023 annual average. As a direction of travel, that is useful: home insurance prices are still rising, though nothing like as fast as the 2021 to 2023 stretch.
As a multiplier, it is useless. Look at the same four years measured both ways:
| Measure | 2019 | 2023 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| NAIC average premium, HO-3 | $1,272 | $1,737 | +36.6% |
| BLS CPI, tenants' and household insurance (annual average index) | 151.763 | 153.264 | +1.0% |
Over four years, one measure moved 36.6% and the other moved 1.0%. Anyone who had extrapolated the 2019 NAIC average forward with that index would have missed the real figure by hundreds of dollars.
The two are not contradicting each other. They answer different questions. A price index holds the product constant and asks what the same coverage costs. The NAIC average divides premium by exposures, so it also moves with how much insurance people are buying. The NAIC says as much in the report itself: premium "is determined by the amount of insurance purchased (generally based on the value of the insured property), the types of property covered, the types of perils covered, and the specific limits and deductibles a policyholder chooses." Rebuild costs climbed hard after 2020, dwelling limits climbed with them, and the average premium climbed even where rates alone did not.
So we publish no estimate for 2024, 2025 or 2026. There is no primary figure for those years, the shortcut that would manufacture one is demonstrably broken here, and a wrong number on a page like this is worse than an honest gap.
How States Compare
| Most expensive | Average premium | Least expensive | Average premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | $3,027 | Wisconsin | $923 |
| Texas | $2,864 | Oregon | $1,003 |
| Florida | $2,779 | Nevada | $1,013 |
| Colorado | $2,492 | Utah | $1,107 |
| Oklahoma | $2,486 | Michigan | $1,110 |
Louisiana's average is 3.3 times Wisconsin's. Hurricane exposure explains the top of the list, hail and severe convective storms explain Colorado and Oklahoma, and the bottom of the list is mostly states with modest catastrophe exposure.
Two things to hold on to before reading anything more into the ranking. First, Colorado at fourth is a reminder that this is not only a coastal story. Second, and more important, the NAIC attaches its own warning to exactly this kind of comparison:
"Average premium is an imperfect measure of the relative 'price' of insurance due to wide variations in hazards, economic conditions, and real estate values from state to state. Even when comparing identical policy forms and amounts of insurance, premiums for homeowners coverage can differ dramatically across the country."
A high state average can mean expensive risk, or expensive houses, or simply that owners there buy more coverage. It does not on its own tell you a carrier is overcharging.
What the Coverage Amount Does
The single biggest lever on a home insurance premium is how much dwelling coverage the policy carries, and the NAIC file lets you see that directly. These are countrywide HO-3 averages within each band of insurance amount.
| Amount of insurance | Average HO-3 premium |
|---|---|
| Under $150,000 | $954 |
| $150,000 to $199,999 | $1,192 |
| $200,000 to $249,999 | $1,282 to $1,297 |
| $250,000 to $299,999 | $1,350 to $1,414 |
| $300,000 to $349,999 | $1,475 to $1,492 |
| $350,000 to $399,999 | $1,598 |
| $400,000 to $499,999 | $1,679 to $1,825 |
| $500,000 to $599,999 | $1,973 |
| $600,000 to $699,999 | $2,249 |
| $700,000 to $999,999 | $2,916 |
| $1,000,000 and over | $4,314 |
Most policies sit in the middle of that table. The NAIC reports that 55.2% of dwelling fire and owner-occupied policies were written for coverage amounts between $150,000 and $400,000 in 2023.
This is also the answer to a question people ask a lot: why has my premium gone up when I have not changed anything? Often the dwelling limit did change, because the insurer indexed it to rebuilding costs at renewal. Across the whole table the average premium climbs from $954 to $4,314 on coverage amount alone, so a limit that moves up a band or two carries real money with it.
Catastrophes, Nonrenewals and Availability
The NAIC report is blunt about what sits behind the state spread: "Since the late 1980s, catastrophes have been occurring with greater frequency and severity, and are a significant consideration in the pricing of home insurance." Citing the Insurance Information Institute, it puts total US insured catastrophe losses for 2016 to 2025 at more than $940.4 billion in 2025 dollars.
Price is only half of what that does to a household. The other half is whether cover is offered at all, and there is a federal measurement of it. The Treasury's Federal Insurance Office analysed a data call covering 51.9 million policies in 2022 and published the results in January 2025. Its findings, for 2018 to 2022:
- The national nonrenewal rate, the share of policies insurers chose not to renew, was 1.05% in 2018, dipped during the pandemic years, and rose to 1.20% in 2022.
- In the fifth of ZIP codes with the highest expected losses from climate-related perils, the nonrenewal rate averaged 1.61%, about 80% higher than in the lowest-risk fifth.
- Those same high-risk ZIP codes paid average premiums per policy of $2,321, which FIO puts at 82% more than the bottom fifth.
- Claims there were bigger too: severity averaged about $24,000 against about $19,000 in the lowest-risk areas.
FIO's own words on why the nonrenewal number matters: "Higher nonrenewals can indicate that insurers are tightening underwriting standards, and households in areas with higher nonrenewal rates may have more limited options for insurance coverage."
Two caveats on that block. FIO's dollar figures are inflation-adjusted and come from a different collection than the NAIC premium data above, so the two sets of numbers should not be mixed or compared line by line. And Texas insurers did not report nonrenewal information, so Texas is outside the national nonrenewal figures.
One more signal is hiding in plain sight in the NAIC data itself. The averages include policies written by residual market mechanisms, which the NAIC describes as a state's "insurer of last resort" for high-risk properties, among them Florida Citizens, Louisiana Citizens, the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association and various FAIR plans. Where the private market has pulled back, the state averages above already reflect what the backstop charges.
What Households Actually Spend
A second federal source measures the household side, and it is a different statistic that happens to be about the same thing. The BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey found the average household spent $737 on homeowners insurance in 2024, up from $641 in 2023, a rise of 15.0%. The same survey puts spending on tenant's insurance at $40.
Do not compare $737 with $1,737. They are built differently, and the gap is not a contradiction:
- The NAIC figure is the price of one policy for one year. Every dollar in it was paid by someone who bought a homeowners policy.
- The BLS figure is a mean across all households, including every renter and every outright owner who carries nothing. Only 37.2% of households in the 2024 survey reported any homeowners insurance spending at all, and the zeros are averaged in with everyone else.
Use the NAIC number to think about a policy, and the BLS number when you are building a picture of national household spending. For your own budget, neither is a substitute for your own declarations page. Home insurance belongs in the housing line of average monthly expenses, usually alongside property tax inside the escrow portion of an average mortgage payment.
What Drives Your Own Premium
No national average predicts your bill. The NAIC's consumer guide sets out what insurers actually weigh, and the list is worth reading as a to-do list rather than trivia:
- Where the house is, down to the exposure of the specific location: wind, hail, wildfire and the distance to a fire station, a water source and the quality of local fire protection.
- The cost to rebuild, not the market value. The NAIC is explicit that the two differ, because market value includes the land and follows the property market. Coverage is priced off the rebuild figure.
- How the house is built and how old it is. Masonry usually costs less to insure than wood frame, and older homes in poor condition cost more than newer ones.
- Claims history, both yours and the history of the house itself, and of homes nearby.
- Your deductible. NAIC's own example: a policy with a $1,000 deductible costs less than the same policy with a $500 deductible. The NAIC also notes that in some locations there are catastrophe deductibles, expressed as a percentage rather than a dollar amount, which can work out much larger than most people expect.
- Your credit history, through a credit-based insurance score. The NAIC's wording is that "in many states" insurers use it to decide whether to offer cover and what to charge. Several states restrict or ban the practice, so whether it applies to you depends on where you live.
- Discounts you have to ask for: smoke detectors, alarms, sprinklers, deadbolts, and bundling the home and auto policies with one carrier.
One structural warning the averages hide. The NAIC also flags an 80% rule: if your dwelling coverage drifts below 80% of the full replacement cost of the home, the insurer may reduce what it pays on a claim, even a partial one. Rebuild costs have moved a great deal since 2020, so a limit set years ago and never revisited is the most common way a policy quietly stops working.
The other gap worth naming is liability. A homeowners policy carries a personal liability limit that is often far below what a serious claim can reach, and the same is true of the liability on your car insurance. That is the gap umbrella insurance exists to close, and it is usually cheap relative to what it covers.
Sources & Methodology
- NAIC, Dwelling Fire, Homeowners Owner-Occupied, and Homeowners Tenant and Condominium/Cooperative Unit Owner's Insurance Report: Data for 2023, published July 2026: every average premium on this page by policy form, by state and by amount of insurance, the 101,954,895.5 house-years of exposure, the policy-form shares, the limitations quote and the residual market description. Earlier editions of the same report supplied the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 figures.
- NAIC, A Consumer's Guide to Home Insurance: the rating factors, the rebuild cost versus market value distinction, the deductible example and the 80% replacement cost rule.
- Federal Insurance Office, US Department of the Treasury, Analyses of U.S. Homeowners Insurance Markets, 2018-2022, January 2025: the nonrenewal rates, the risk-quintile premium and claim severity comparisons, and the 51.9 million policy sample.
- BLS Consumer Price Index, series CUUR0000SEHD, tenants' and household insurance, US city average, not seasonally adjusted: the 4.1% twelve-month change to August 2026 and the annual averages used in the comparison table.
- BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, series CXU220121LB0101M and CXU350110LB0101M: household spending on homeowners insurance and on tenant's insurance, all consumer units, 2024, with the percent-reporting figure.
- BLS, Owners' Equivalent Rent and Rent factsheet and the CE UCC to CPI ELI concordance: confirmation that homeowners insurance on an owned home is mapped into the tenants' and household insurance index item, and that the item carries a relative importance of 0.292 as of December 2025.
What we deliberately did not state. No national average premium for 2024, 2025 or 2026, because no primary source publishes one and the index-based shortcut is shown above to be unreliable here. No figure taken from an insurance quote comparison site: those publish sample quotes for a hypothetical property, not filed premium data. No list of states that restrict credit-based insurance scores in home insurance, because we did not verify one statute by statute. No named insurer withdrawals, because the NAIC's homeowners market data call has not published results and we will not source that claim from news coverage.
This article is for general information and is not insurance advice. All figures were checked against the primary sources listed above on 2026-09-30. The NAIC data year is 2023 throughout, the FIO data covers 2018 to 2022, and the BLS expenditure data is for 2024. Premiums are individually rated, and your own cost will differ from any average. Check your own declarations page and speak to your insurer or a licensed agent before acting.
FAQ
What is the average cost of home insurance?
$1,737 a year for an HO-3 policy, or about $145 a month, per the NAIC's most recent published data, which covers 2023 and was released in July 2026.
Why is the official figure for 2023 and not this year?
Because state regulators compile the data through statistical agents and the NAIC publishes it well after the fact. The 2021 data appeared in December 2023, the 2022 data in May 2025 and the 2023 data in July 2026. No later national average exists from a primary source.
Can I just add inflation to the 2023 number?
No, and this page shows why. Between 2019 and 2023 the BLS index for tenants' and household insurance rose 1.0% while the NAIC average premium rose 36.6%. An index holds coverage constant; the NAIC average also moves with how much insurance people buy. The two do not convert into one another.
Is home insurance still going up?
Yes, though more slowly. The BLS index for tenants' and household insurance rose 4.1% in the twelve months to August 2026, after a much steeper run through 2024 and 2025.
Which state has the most expensive home insurance?
Louisiana, at $3,027 a year for an HO-3 in 2023. Wisconsin is the cheapest at $923. The NAIC cautions that states differ enough in hazards, property values and coverage bought that the ranking should not be read as a price comparison.
How much is renters insurance on average?
$173 a year for an HO-4 policy in 2023, per the NAIC. A condo or co-op HO-6 policy averaged $658.
Why is my premium higher than the average?
Usually the coverage amount. NAIC data for 2023 shows the countrywide HO-3 average running from $954 under $150,000 of coverage to $2,916 between $700,000 and $1,000,000. Location, claims history, the age and construction of the house, your deductible and in many states your credit history all move it further.
How much does the average household spend on homeowners insurance?
$737 in 2024, per the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey. That is an average across all households, including renters, so it is not comparable to the per-policy figure.
Are insurers really dropping homeowners in risky areas?
The measured version of that: Treasury's Federal Insurance Office found the national nonrenewal rate rose to 1.20% in 2022, and averaged 1.61% in the fifth of ZIP codes with the highest expected climate-related losses, about 80% above the lowest-risk fifth.
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"Average Home Insurance Cost: The Official Numbers." Wealthy Pot, 2026. https://wealthypot.com/average-home-insurance-cost/
