New homeowners insurance data reveals insights into market trends and suggests future research needs

Abstract

Homeowners insurance coverage is critical for managing financial risks, supporting recovery following disasters, and securing mortgage financing for home purchases. As the costs associated with climate impacts continue to rise, there are growing concerns about the sustainability of insurance availability and affordability. Historically, a lack of granular, publicly available data has limited our understanding of current trends, drivers, and consequences associated with changes in homeowners insurance markets. In January 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Insurance Office helped to address this gap by releasing the Property and Casualty Market Intelligence (PCMI) data set. These data include information on premiums, claims, and non-renewals for 246 million policies from 2018 through 2022, aggregated at the zip code level. We provide an initial assessment of current dynamics in the US homeowners insurance markets revealed through the PCMI data. For each variable on insurance losses, premiums, and availability, we evaluate trends both across the US and over time. Across the U.S., there are several geographic regions that emerge as having particularly high insurance losses and premiums and low availability. We also examined trends over time for each variable, but did not find strong evidence of increasing losses and premiums or decreasing availability over the limited sample period. We conclude by highlighting several opportunities for future research using the data.