The high costs and declining availability of homeowners insurance are having a negative impact on real estate markets.
Blame wildfires and hail — made more destructive by climate change — for the deteriorating insurance situation in the West. Add in hurricanes and other disasters elsewhere, and it's a nationwide trend — one that a new report from the advocacy group the Insurance Fairness Project says is threatening home sales.
"Across the country, potential homeowners with approved mortgages and signed contracts are having their deals collapse because insurance coverage is unobtainable," the report opens.
It pointed to recent survey data that found that roughly one in 10 homebuyers and sellers ran into insurance issues, many of which ultimately derailed deals. In 2024, one in seven California realtors had sales fall through due to insurance complications, up dramatically from 2023, according to San Francisco Chronicle reporting cited.
Realtors elsewhere in the West report similar issues, like Val Jones, who works in a rural Idaho county heavily impacted by rising premiums and policy cancellations. At a state legislator-organized forum in early 2026, she recounted a deal of hers that collapsed at the last yard due to unexpectedly high premiums.
"It was just sad to see that," she said. "It's affecting people that are here and affecting people that are trying to live in our community as well."
At a press event for the report's release, Douglas Heller, insurance director with the Consumer Federation of America, suggested how to respond.
"The havoc that climate change is wreaking across the country is hitting us all in different ways, to be sure," he said. "But in the West, the wildfire burden has to be addressed."
"We also have to make sure that the insurers are playing a part," he added.
Moira Birss, a senior fellow at the Climate and Community Institute, said that wildfire mitigation on individual properties won't be enough.
"It's much more effective on the whole to do community- and landscape-level risk reduction than it is to do individual home risk reduction," she said.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
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