The costs are particularly high along the Gulf of Mexico, where communities face rising sea levels and frequent and catastrophic flooding. In the Houston metropolitan area, residents reported paying twice the national average for fire, hazard and flood insurance last year.
Homeowners across the state are struggling to keep up with rising costs. Many are making the risky decision to give up protection altogether.
1. Home insurance prices are rising in Texas.
Home insurance costs skyrocketed in 2023, marking the largest single-year increase in at least a decade, according to Census Bureau data.
Texas was already one of the most expensive states for home insurance in 2022, but it moved up in the rankings to No. 3 in 2023 due to price increases. That year, homeowners in the state paid an average of about $2,300 for fire, hazard, and flood insurance.
2. Insurance in Houston is one of the most expensive in the United States
As of 2023, Houston remains one of the least expensive cities in the country, with the cost of living 8 percentage points below the national average and housing costs holding steady at 18 percentage points below.
But home insurance costs were disproportionately high in the Houston metropolitan area that year. The metro area outperformed 370 other cities across the country, including California and parts of the East Coast, some of the country’s most notorious for high prices and extreme weather.
3. Thousands of people are left unprotected
More Americans are choosing not to purchase home insurance, leaving their homes and families increasingly exposed to dangerous and harmful extreme weather events.
In Texas, the percentage of uninsured homeowners has been steadily increasing for a decade, but the drop has consistently been steepest among low-income households, which insurers say are already struggling to make ends meet. This suggests that the price may be lower.
4. Catastrophic weather is driving up costs
The Houston Chronicle mapped home insurance costs reported by homeowners based on extreme weather risk scores calculated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although not without exceptions, this overlap was impressive.
In Texas, areas facing a higher risk of catastrophic climate change paid up to $672 more for home insurance last year than their neighbors in safer parts of the state, according to a Chronicle analysis. There are often
About data
How home insurance costs are calculated:
The Houston Chronicle used the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Public Use Microdata sample to estimate home insurance costs across the United States. This data contains about two-thirds of the responses that the Census typically uses to create public tables, and several changes are made before publication to ensure confidentiality. As a result, estimates may differ slightly from those directly compiled and published by the Census.
In this story, home insurance costs represent the self-reported total amount of fire, disaster, and flood insurance that homeowners pay each year.
All historical values ​​in this story are adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2023 dollars.
How climate change risk is calculated:
The Chronicle obtained climate change risk scores from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index data file. NRI measures the extent to which U.S. communities face threats from 18 natural disasters of national and regional significance, including hurricanes, heat waves, floods, and wildfires.
FEMA’s risk measure is a composite score of a community’s expected annual economic losses from natural disasters, its societal vulnerability to the negative effects of those disasters, and its resilience or ability to prepare for, adapt to, and withstand hazardous events. is.
The Chronicle has grouped FEMA data into public use microdata areas to estimate risk for communities across the country. PUMA is a statistically representative area defined by the census. Each consists of approximately 100,000 inhabitants. Although regions vary widely in size, they are designed to be as homogeneous as possible in population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions.
creditReporter caroline guisolfi. visual person caroline guisolfi. editor alexandra kanik. Creator Alejandra Matos, Nathan Boley, Rebecca Hennes and Fatima Farha. Hearst Newspapers is powered by DevHub.
