Across the U.S., more than 11 million households have no home insurance—leaving roughly 1 in every 7 homes exposed if disaster strikes. For a growing number of homeowners, skipping coverage isn’t a careless oversight but an uneasy trade-off as insurance prices climb and coverage options disappear entirely.
Some roll the dice, hoping the next natural disaster skips their property. That risk, however, turns every storm season into a gamble, one that can have life-altering consequences if luck runs out.
Once a basic safeguard of owning a home, affordable and dependable insurance is becoming harder to find in places most exposed to climate extremes. Rising risks and an increasingly strained insurance market aren’t just driving up costs—they’re also reshaping where people believe they can safely and sensibly put down roots.
Insurance is getting harder to find—everywhere
It’s not news that home insurance is hard to find in places like California, which is prone to wildfires, earthquakes, and other risks like flooding and landslides. Many longtime policyholders are finding themselves dropped by insurers they’ve trusted for years, sometimes just before disaster strikes.
Just ask Claire O’Connor, a Los Angeles–based real estate agent and homeowner, who spoke with Realtor.com® in May. She lost her coverage in November 2024, and by January 2025, her house was gone, destroyed in the Palisades Fire.
“I literally said to my husband when we got dropped, ‘as if our house is going to burn down,’” she recalled.
(AGUSTIN PAULLIER/AFP via Getty Images)
But it’s not only Californians facing this harsh new reality.
“We are witnessing a significant increase in the number of clients struggling to obtain or renew home insurance in areas facing elevated climate risks, such as wildfire, flood, and hurricane zones,” says Pete Walther, president and CEO of Marsh McLennan Agency Private Client Services.
“This trend has been exacerbated by a challenging personal insurance market that has affected not only California but also states like Florida, Texas, and Colorado. No state is immune to these challenges.”
Recent numbers back him up: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the U.S. have jumped from occurring roughly every 82 days in the 1980s to about every 16 days since 2020.
And the effects are rippling far beyond the usual hot spots. In Hawaii, for example, hurricane insurance rates have spiked about 50% in the past year alone, according to Sharilyn Tanaka, senior vice president of Atlas Insurance Agency. Some insurance carriers have pulled out of the islands altogether, leaving both single-family homes and condos harder to insure—and some owners struggling to find coverage at all.
“I’ve never been in a time, in all my years of doing this, which has been over 20 years, of being the agent to tell someone I’m not able to find you insurance,” Tanaka recently told Hawaii News Now.
It’s a pace insurers can’t ignore and homeowners can’t afford to overlook.
Is this changing where people live?
Insurance deserts are starting to reshape the real estate market, too.
“Emerging data and anecdotal evidence suggest that coverage challenges are beginning to impact real estate values and buyer behavior, particularly in the luxury and high-end markets,” says Walther.
According to projections from analytics firm First Street, “climate abandonment areas”—places where mounting insurance costs and rising risks could push people to relocate—are on track to see average property values drop 6.2% by 2055.
Meanwhile, regions with fewer climate threats and more predictable insurance costs are poised to benefit from the migration. First Street expects these lower-risk markets to see strong home price growth, averaging a 10.8% increase through 2055, fueled in part by a projected 68% population jump.
How to stay insurable
As insurance becomes harder to secure or afford in climate-vulnerable places, experts say the best defense is a proactive one.
“To mitigate risk and maintain insurability—especially for homes in areas that may be considered ‘insurance deserts’—we recommend that clients adopt a comprehensive approach to fortifying their properties,” says Walther.
So what does that look like in practice? Walther and other industry experts recommend following the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety guidelines, which outline proven ways to strengthen homes against the forces of wind, fire, and flood.
The guidelines lists some of the most effective upgrades:
- Installing a wind-rated garage door to withstand hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe storms. Often overlooked, your garage door can act as a shield, preventing debris from compromising the structural integrity of your entire home.
- Adding whole-house surge protectors and a backup generator to guard against power outages and lightning strikes.
- Replacing old roofs with wind-rated, noncombustible, or Class A-rated materials, which can help protect against wildfires and heavy storms alike.
On top of physical improvements, homeowners should keep detailed records of receipts, inspection reports, and before-and-after photos to show insurers exactly what measures they’ve taken. In a tighter market, a well-documented, resilient property can make all the difference between getting covered or getting dropped.
From individual to community resilience
Insurance experts agree: The next few years will bring more changes for homeowners.
In the next one to three years, Walther anticipates several key changes that homeowners should prepare for. These include increased premiums and deductibles, enhanced underwriting criteria, the emergence of new coverage options, and increased focus on risk mitigation.
In plain terms, homeowners should expect to pay more and prove more. Insurers will be looking more closely at whether a home can actually withstand the risks it faces, and homeowners will have to plan their budgets and upgrades accordingly.
But resilience doesn’t stop at the front door.
“We believe that real change will only occur with a shift in mindset toward resiliency,” says Walther. “This involves not just individual homeowners but also communities at large recognizing the importance of preparing for and adapting to climate risks.”
Early examples are already taking shape. Just outside San Diego, for instance, KB Home recently built Dixon Trail, a new development billed as the nation’s first Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood, certified to meet strict fire-resilience standards set by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety.
Homebuyers there are paying a premium for peace of mind, and so far, every new homeowner has been able to get insured. It’s a small but hopeful sign of what community resilience can look like, and the real benefits it offers homeowners.
