Pew: 71% of homeowners say costs up

Home insurance is turning into a second housing bill for a lot of Americans. That is the basic reason this new Pew survey lands. On May 6, Pew said 71% of U.S. homeowners have seen their homeowners-insurance costs rise over the last few years, and 42% said the increase was large. That matters because insurance is no longer just a background line item — in some places it is becoming a real affordability problem. ### What changed this week? Pew put fresh public-opinion numbers on something homeowners have been feeling for a while: higher premiums are now the norm, not the exception. The survey was fielded March 16-22, 2026, and included 1,236 homeowners who got the insurance questions. The headline number is the 71%, but the sharper one may be the 42% who said costs went up “a lot.” ### What do homeowners think is causing it? People do not see one neat explanation. Pew says the two reasons homeowners cited most often were insurance companies wanting to make more money and the rising cost of repairing and rebuilding homes. A sizable share also blamed extreme weather. That mix matters — it shows the public is reading this as both a corporate-pricing story and a real-cost story. ### Is this just a vibe, or is the market actually moving? The market is actually moving. Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office said in January 2025 that average homeowners premiums rose 8.7% faster than inflation from 2018 through 2022. That is not just “prices are up everywhere.” It means insurance itself was getting more expensive even after adjusting for the broader inflation surge. ### Why are rebuild costs such a big deal? Home insurance is basically a promise to pay for reconstruction after a loss. When lumber, labor, roofing, electrical work, and contractor time all get pricier, that promise gets more expensive to honor. Triple-I, an insurance industry group, said replacement costs tied to homeowners insurance jumped 55% between 2020 and 2022. So even before you get to storms and fires, the math of rebuilding has changed a lot. ### Where does climate risk enter the picture? Climate risk shows up in both price and availability. Treasury found that homeowners in the 20% of ZIP codes with the highest expected climate-related building losses paid average premiums of $2,321 from 2018 to 2022. It is also “will my insurer keep writing this policy?” ### Are insurers just padding profits? That is the politically explosive part, but the picture is messier. Homeowners clearly suspect profit-seeking. But industry data points the other way on underwriting results: Triple-I said the 2023 net combined ratio for homeowners insurers was 110.9, meaning carriers paid out about $1.11 in claims and expenses for every $1.00 they took in. That does not prove premiums are tied to losses and costs, not just margin expansion. ### Who feels this most? Pew says upper-income homeowners were more likely than lower-income homeowners to report rising insurance costs, 80% versus 54%. But lower-income homeowners were much more likely to say they had no homeowners insurance at all, 17% versus 2% among upper-income homeowners. That is the catch — the burden is not only higher bills. It is also going uninsured because the bill became too hard to carry. ### So what is the real takeaway? The new Pew numbers do not settle the blame argument. But they do show that rising home-insurance costs have become a mass-market consumer issue, not a niche problem for hurricane coasts and wildfire towns. The bottom line is simple: more Americans now see insurance as part of the housing affordability crisis, and the hard part is that several forces — repair costs, weather losses, and insurer pricing — can all be true at once.