Why Texas home insurance costs so much in 2026

If your home insurance bill has climbed every year since you bought the house, you’re not imagining it. The median Texas homeowner paid 60% more for home insurance in 2024 than in 2019, while the national median rose 30% over the same stretch (Dallas Fed, 2026). Texas got hit twice as hard as the rest of the country.

Here’s what happened, what’s changed recently, and where you actually have some say.

The numbers behind the increases

The Texas Department of Insurance tracks average statewide homeowners rate changes each year. The recent run looks like this (TDI, 2026):

Year	Average statewide homeowners rate change
2023	+21.1%
2024	+18.7%
2025	+4.3%

These are averages of the rate changes insurers filed with TDI, across homeowners, renters, condo, and mobile home policies. Your own renewal can be higher or lower.

Two back-to-back years near 20% is the reason a $2,000 policy in 2022 could have been renewing around $2,900 by 2024, and closer to $3,000 after the 2025 change. Compounding does the damage. A 21.1% increase followed by an 18.7% increase is a 43.7% jump over two years, before any change to your home or your claims history.

The 2025 figure is the encouraging part. Growth slowed substantially, from 18.7% in 2024 to 4.3% in 2025 (Dallas Fed, 2026). That doesn’t mean prices are falling, but the steep part of the climb looks to be behind us for now.

Weather is the biggest driver

Texas gets a lot of expensive weather, and insurers price for it. Wind and hail have accounted for an average of 62% of Texas homeowners losses since 2019 (TDI, 2026). In 2025 alone, insurance companies paid $8.74 billion in Texas homeowners losses (TDI, 2026).

The trend line matters as much as the totals. The number of annual billion-dollar disasters in Texas rose from eight in 2017 to 20 in 2024, two and a half times as many (Dallas Fed, 2026). Reinsurance, the coverage insurers buy to back their own claims capacity, got more expensive after the pandemic as weather losses climbed, and that cost pressures premiums (Dallas Fed, 2026). The same report notes reinsurance prices now appear to be easing.

A hailstorm in North Texas doesn’t need to touch your roof to touch your bill. Insurers typically price by rating territory, so if your area has been paying out heavily, homes around you tend to share the cost.

Rebuilding costs more than it used to

Your dwelling coverage is supposed to rebuild the house, not buy a new one. So when lumber, shingles, and roofing labor get more expensive, the amount of coverage you need goes up, and so does the premium on it.

Construction wages rose faster in Texas than nationally after pandemic labor shortages, and tariffs have pushed up building material costs (Dallas Fed, 2026). Many policies include an inflation adjustment that raises your dwelling limit at each renewal. Check your renewal declarations page to see whether yours did. That’s a good thing when you have a claim, but it’s a second reason your bill went up even if your rate didn’t.

Why the pain lands harder in Texas

Insurance is now a bigger slice of the housing budget here, and it’s growing faster than the national average. Texas homeowners without a mortgage spent 14.9% of their housing costs on insurance in 2024, and those with a mortgage spent 7.9%. Both figures rose about a full percentage point since 2019, compared with a 0.5 to 0.7 point rise nationally (Dallas Fed, 2026).

Part of that is the weather. Part is exposure. Texas has grown quickly, and the average single-family home here carries a climate risk score of 61 against 33 for the U.S. as a whole (Dallas Fed, 2026). More houses facing more weather means more claims, and the whole pool pays for it.

What you can actually control

You can’t move the Gulf or cancel hail season. But a handful of choices move your price more than most people expect.

• Your wind and hail deductible. Moving from 1% to 2% of dwelling coverage is often one of the biggest levers on a Texas policy. On a $350,000 home that means taking on $3,500 more of a storm claim yourself in exchange for a lower premium every year.
• Your roof. Age, material, and whether it’s rated for impact all factor into the price. Some carriers price a 15-year-old roof very differently from a 3-year-old one, and some will only cover an older roof at its depreciated value.
• Your dwelling limit. It should match what it would cost to rebuild, not your market value or your mortgage balance. Over-insuring costs you money, and under-insuring costs you at claim time.
• Your carrier. Insurers weight all of the above differently. The company with the sharpest price on a new build in Round Rock may not be the one with the sharpest price on a 1985 house in Waco.

What to do next

1. Pull your declarations page and check three things: dwelling limit, wind and hail deductible, and whether roof coverage is replacement cost or actual cash value.
2. Get a rebuild estimate if your dwelling limit hasn’t been reviewed in a few years. Your agent can run one.
3. Ask for quotes at two deductible levels so you can see the trade-off in dollars rather than guessing.
4. Have an independent agent compare several carriers on the same coverage. Since every insurer prices Texas risk a bit differently, the spread between them is often wider than you’d expect.