Dennis Hendrickson
Insurance & Risk · October 25, 2026

Home Insurance Now Costs More Than Property Taxes in Most US Counties

A new analysis finds home insurance premiums, plus weather-driven auto costs, now outrun property tax bills in three out of four US counties.

Home insurance premiums now cost more than property taxes in roughly two thirds of U.S. counties, and once you add in the weather related slice of auto insurance, that climbs to three quarters of the country. That is the finding from a new Bloomberg Intelligence analysis, and it matches what I see on the insurance side of my business every renewal season: the premium line has quietly become the biggest fixed cost of owning a home, bigger than what you write the county for your property.

The tax side of that same bill is its own fight: Property Tax Bills Keep Rising Even After You Pay Off Your Mortgage follows the revolt building in states like Ohio and Florida. And the same weather risk that drives these premiums is now showing up on utility bills: PG&E May Separate Its Gas Business because its 4 million gas customers are carrying borrowing costs tied to wildfire exposure.

Over the past decade, county average homeowners insurance premiums have risen 45% after adjusting for inflation. Nebraska alone saw a 79% jump. Put together, homeowners nationwide are now paying 14% more for insurance than for property taxes, and 30% more once weather driven auto premiums are folded in. The Southeast has it worst, where low property taxes combined with hurricane exposure push premiums to 2.5 to 4 times the size of the typical tax bill. In the Northeast, the West and big metro areas, higher property taxes keep insurance from standing out as much, even though it is still climbing there too. Colorado, Utah and Minnesota are seeing the same pressure from hailstorms and severe winter weather driving claims up.

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What This Squeeze Does to Jobs Tied to Housing

This hits jobs two ways at once. First, it eats into every homeowner's budget, and that is money that does not get spent locally, at restaurants, on home improvement, on anything discretionary. A Zillow and Thumbtack analysis cited in the same reporting found the hidden cost of homeownership, taxes, insurance, utilities and maintenance, now runs $16,566 a year, up 31.7% over five years, with insurance the biggest driver of that increase. Second, it hits the home service contractors who depend on homeowners having money left over to spend on repairs and upgrades. When a bigger share of the housing budget goes to the insurance bill, less is left to pay a roofer, a painter or a landscaper. I see this from the marketing side of my business too: contractors feel their customers' tightening wallets before anyone writes a headline about it.

What It Means for Starting or Running a Business

If you lease space for a business, the same pressure shows up on the commercial side. Commercial property insurance has been climbing for the same reasons, wind, hail, flood and hurricane claims, and landlords pass those costs through to tenants, either directly or folded into rent. Anyone signing a lease today needs to ask what the insurance line in operating expenses actually looks like now, not what it looked like three years ago. If the business owns its building outright, the same renewal shock described here for homeowners applies just as much to a storefront or a small office.

Why Washington Shifting Disaster Costs Changes the Math

Part of why this keeps getting worse is not only claims, it is who pays for cleanup after a disaster. The federal government has covered about 90% of disaster recovery costs over the past two decades. Under the Trump administration, that split is moving toward 50-50, with state and local governments picking up far more. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Andrew John Stevenson called that shift a very daunting proposal for local government, local budgets, and noted that localities do not have the capital on hand to deploy the way the federal government does. If local governments end up raising property taxes to cover more of their own disaster costs, the gap between insurance and property taxes could eventually narrow, but not because insurance got cheaper.

What Renewal Shock Actually Looks Like From the Inside

In insurance, this shows up first at renewal, not at the moment you buy the policy. Carriers reprice based on claims experience across an entire region, so one bad hail season or hurricane can push every renewal in that zip code higher, even for homeowners who never filed a claim. Alexandra Glickman of Arthur J. Gallagher and Co. put it plainly: homeowners need to be ready to pay more just to keep adequate coverage, not better coverage, the same coverage. That matches what carriers have been doing broadly, tightening underwriting, raising wind and hail deductibles, and in some high risk areas pulling back from writing new business at all. The renewal notice is where homeowners find out their risk got reclassified, often with little warning.

What to Check Before Your Next Renewal

If your renewal jumped this year, do not just pay it and move on. Ask whoever handles your policy exactly what changed: loss history in your area, your roof's age, your deductible structure, and whether you qualify for any mitigation credits.

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