The average cost of homeowners insurance nationwide rose to $3,012 a year in the first half of 2026, a 2.2 percent increase, according to a new analysis from the insurance marketplace Insurify. Minnesota homeowners saw a far sharper move over the same stretch: premiums there climbed 12.9 percent, or $457, in just six months, one of the steepest state-level increases the report found anywhere in the country. The gap between the national number and Minnesota’s own shows how unevenly rising insurance costs are landing from state to state.
Insurify’s First-Half 2026 Rate Analysis
Insurify, an online platform that compares home and auto insurance quotes, published its first-half 2026 rate analysis on September 15, drawing on premium data the company collects from its own quote comparisons across the country. The report put the national average annual premium at $3,012, up 2.2 percent since the start of the year, and it separately tracked how far above or below that pace individual states and counties moved. Insurify’s own researchers said prices remain on track to hit the company’s projected 4 percent increase for the full year, meaning the second half of 2026 is expected to add to the increase already recorded rather than ease it. The company builds its figures from the same pool of policies it quotes for shoppers comparing carriers, which gives it a running, first-hand view of premium movement between the annual rate filings state regulators publish on a slower schedule.
A rising premium with a filing window most people miss: A homeowners policy renews on its own schedule, and the property-tax relief that could offset a bigger bill has to be claimed by its own deadline, not applied automatically. See the five kinds of property-tax relief in The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
Minnesota’s Premiums Rose Nearly Six Times Faster Than the National Pace
Minnesota’s 12.9 percent, $457 increase over six months stood well above the 2.2 percent the same report measured nationally, making the state one of the sharpest movers Insurify tracked anywhere in the country. A homeowner paying the state’s new average is absorbing in half a year roughly what many homeowners elsewhere see over several years of normal premium growth, a compression of cost increases that leaves far less time to plan around a bigger bill or shop for a cheaper policy before the renewal notice arrives. Insurify’s report also singled out one Minnesota county, Le Sueur, where the increase ran even steeper than the statewide figure, underscoring that a single state average can still understate how bad the increase looks on a specific homeowner’s renewal notice. Other states in the same report moved by far smaller amounts, which is part of why an insurer’s national average of $3,012 tells a household very little about what its own renewal bill is likely to do; the state and county figures underneath that average are where the real difference shows up.
Minnesota’s Own Regulator Points to Hail and Severe Storms
The Minnesota Department of Commerce, the state agency that oversees insurance companies operating in Minnesota, attributes rising homeowner premiums to a combination of extreme weather, reinsurance costs and repair expenses. The agency’s own figures show Minnesota absorbed $6.3 billion in property damage from windstorms and hailstorms in 2022 alone, and a single hailstorm on August 11, 2023, caused more than $1 billion in damage by itself. The department also points to rising reinsurance costs, the price insurers themselves pay to spread catastrophic risk, along with higher labor and materials costs for repairs, as compounding factors that show up in the premiums homeowners are billed each year. None of those cost pressures is unique to one insurer or one policy type, which is why the department frames the increase as a statewide trend tied to weather rather than a pricing decision any single company made on its own.
A National Pattern Tied to a Rising Toll from Disasters
The pressure pushing premiums higher in Minnesota mirrors a broader trend federal data has tracked for years. The National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reports that weather and climate disasters caused more than $1 trillion in direct losses across the United States between 2017 and 2024 alone, part of a historical tally the agency puts at $2.785 trillion in damages across roughly 400 billion-dollar events since it began tracking them. The agency states plainly that the frequency of disasters causing at least a billion dollars in damage has been rising, which is the same underlying pressure insurers cite when they explain higher premiums to state regulators. That national backdrop is why a report like Insurify’s rarely finds a state where premiums are falling; the question from one state to the next is mostly how much faster than the 2.2 percent national pace a given homeowner’s own bill is climbing. Insurers price that rising disaster toll into premiums well before a state’s own regulator finishes reviewing a rate filing, which is part of why a report built from live quote data, like Insurify’s, can pick up a shift like Minnesota’s months before it shows up in a state’s official rate-filing archive.
A Homeowners Premium and the Relief Filed Separately From It
A rising national homeowners premium, with Minnesota’s own bill climbing well into double digits over just six months, adds real pressure to a household budget that also has to cover property taxes and utility costs on their own separate schedules. None of those bills coordinates with the others, and a homeowner focused on an insurance renewal notice can easily miss a property-tax filing window that closes at a different time of year.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit lists the five kinds of property-tax relief and the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters, plus separate help with heating, cooling and home-repair costs.
See the application log and renewal calendar in The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures here are linked to the report and agencies that published them.
