Homeowner’s insurance premiums vary widely from state to state, but they are all going up

Six months after wind-whipped wildfires killed 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in and around Los Angeles, the scenes in Altadena and Pacific Palisades are still horrific, with block after block of burned out homes and businesses.

But every so often, there are small signs of rebirth, from a property owner cleaning up their lot, or workers repairing a home that was merely damaged. Occasionally, one can even see homes being rebuilt — the owner having navigated the complicated permitting process, and, crucially, having managed to obtain insurance.

“The situation in insurance has actually been remarkably stable, considering everything that happened,” said Scott Wilk, an independent insurance agent and owner of the Santa Clarita, California, branch of TWFG Insurance.

That is not to say that premiums are not surging after the wildfires. The online marketplace Insurify projects California premiums will rise 21% this year, even in areas that are far from Los Angeles, in what experts had predicted would be a year of only modest increases in the state.

“An event like that in California just has a really significant impact on how much we project premiums to go up,” said Chase Gardner, data insights manager at Insurify. He added that when insurance companies “are paying out more than they’re bringing in premiums, the more that goes up, the more they need to raise prices.”

In fact, Insurify is projecting premium increases in all 50 states this year, averaging around 8%. California’s increase is not even the largest. That distinction belongs to Louisiana, where premiums are projected to rise 28%. Nor is the phenomenon limited to coastal states. Iowa and Minnesota are also looking at double-digit increases.