Beyond the national number: What builders need to know about today’s insurance market

For the past two years, insurance premiums have kept going up, but by a little less each year. That’s the national trend, and it’s the reason many people assume the insurance market is finally settling down. Whether that’s actually true depends heavily on which state you’re in, and getting it wrong with a buyer can cost more than credibility. Christi Burkhardt, Vice President of National Sales and Growth at Westwood Insurance Agency, breaks down what the state-by-state data really shows and how builders can put it to work this fall. Ask a builder in California and a builder in Florida how the insurance market is affecting their buyers right now, and it’s likely you’ll get two different answers. Both would be right. Knowing which answer applies to which market is what turns a vague sense that “insurance is stabilizing” into something a sales team can actually use with a buyer. What the national number doesn’t show New research from S&P Global Market Intelligence (GMI) shows the U.S. effective approved homeowners rate change has fallen fast — from roughly 13.6% in 2024, to about 6.3% in 2025, to just 1.8% through July 2026. On its own, that number reads as good news: The insuranc...