[jyl]

States generally try to hold down premiums for homeowners’ and related insurance, while risks have been rising due to climate change, cost of materials/labor/permits, higher values, higher litigation risk, building in riskier places. Insurance industry has been pushing states to permit large premium increases, by gradually withdrawing from the market. In FL for example, almost no national insurer does flood insurance any more.

I think last couple years have been the tipping point, some big states have been forced to reform their insurance rules to be much more insurer-friendly - FL and CA being the examples I know of. If the industry can break the resistance of the big states, they’ll be able to break the resistance of smaller states - withdrawing from NC or ID is a lot easier than from FL or CA. And yes, major disasters in one state do tend to increase premiums in other states.

So insurance premiums will go up generally. Maybe not all at once. I just increased my homeowners’ coverage and added earthquake coverage here in Portland, and the added cost was reasonable. But I expect to get hit here eventually.

I read that 1/5 of FL homes are un-insured. I don’t know if that is true, maybe it only refers to flood coverage.

Going un-insured (liability-only) could make sense in some rare cases. Probably not for most people. You may be confident your house is not at risk of wildfire or hurricane, but what about an ordinary house fire or falling tree or burst pipe? Do you have $1MM cash laying around?

My guess is that the insurance industry is not unhappy to see more people go uninsured. For the most part, that is probably the worst risks self-selecting themselves out of the insurance market. They didn’t want to insure those risks anyway.

Kind of like how the health insurance industry would be perfectly happy if everyone over 50 decided to go uninsured for medical.