Inside the costly new reality of insuring a home in Texas

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that when Maryann McGregor retired in 2020, she and her husband considered downsizing and selling their four-bedroom home in Clear Lake to their adult son. The couple had lived there for nearly four decades, and the house was paid off. Then their home insurance bills started to skyrocket. Two carriers stopped providing coverage, and Allstate, which had been charging them $3,300 in 2020, is no longer writing new policies in their zip code. Now they’re paying $8,000 for a policy from a little-known start-up. Their wind and hail deductible has jumped to $28,400 — twice what they paid to replace the roof last year. McGregor worries about burdening her son with the new costs. “It would be a huge impact on him to have that big insurance bill on top of the tax bills,” she said. “The insurance is more than the taxes now.”

Homeowners like McGregor are struggling in every corner of Texas to keep their homes insured, paying more for less coverage as climate change wreaks havoc on providers. Home insurance in the state is now among the most expensive in the country, trailing only Florida and Louisiana, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. Census survey data. Insurance carriers from Allstate and State Farm to smaller start-ups have responded to the rising frequency and intensity of storms not by pulling out of local markets en masse, as has happened in more regulated states like California, but by jacking up premiums and dropping homeowners in risky areas. The Texas Department of Insurance recorded a 21% jump in statewide rates last year, the biggest annual spike in at least a decade. In the last five years, rates in Texas have risen faster than anywhere else in the country, based on data tracked by S&P Global. The Houston metropolitan area has the highest average premiums in the state, according to the Chronicle’s analysis, with communities closest to the coast paying nearly three times the national average for home insurance.