Utah Leads U.S. in Home Insurance Nonrenewals

Utah homeowners were dropped by their insurers at a higher rate than anywhere else in the United States in 2025, according to a new analysis of regulatory data, as wildfire risk and rapid development in fire-prone terrain push the nation’s home insurance crisis deep into the Mountain West.

Insurers initiated nonrenewals equal to 4.45% of Utah homeowners policies in force last year — roughly one policy for every 22 — according to an analysis by Weiss Ratings of 2025 data reported to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The rate was 8.4 times Utah’s 2018 level and more than 2.6 times its 2024 rate, vaulting the state from 17th worst nationally to first in a single year.

“In a very short period of time, Utah has gone from a warning to the nation’s loudest alarm bell,” Weiss Ratings founder Dr. Martin D. Weiss said in a statement. “A homeowner who has paid premiums faithfully for years can suddenly be forced to hunt for replacement coverage that may be more expensive and less protective.”

California ranked second at 2.93%, or about one in 34 policies, while Florida — long the poster child for insurance market turmoil — did not place in the top 10, the analysis found.

A Crisis That Moved Inland

For years, the conversation about America’s homeowners insurance crisis centered on California and Florida. Florida saw more than 30 carriers go bankrupt or exit the state between 2020 and 2023, and California carriers fled or stopped writing new policies amid restrictive rate rules. Both states have since enacted reforms and stabilized their markets — pushing the crisis inland.

Newsweek described Utah as the crisis’s “new epicenter,” noting that California still placed second-worst nationally last year despite a year-over-year decline. Florida, meanwhile, retains the nation’s highest premiums, with most homeowners paying between $6,000 and $8,500 annually depending on coverage.

The geographic shift reflects a broader pattern: as climate change-fueled disasters — wildfires, powerful storms, damaging wind and hail — grow more frequent and severe, insurers are becoming far more aggressive about managing their exposure.

The Mountain West News Bureau, which first reported the data, found that a number of Western states now exceed the 1% nonrenewal rate that experts consider a warning threshold. Arizona is just over 2%, with Nevada and New Mexico close to that level, and Idaho and Colorado both around 1.4%.

“Unless state legislatures intervene,” said Dave Jones, director of UC Berkeley’s Climate Risk Initiative and a former California insurance commissioner, “it’s only going to get worse.”

Why Utah

Utah’s predicament is not simply a matter of bad luck. The state has combined rapid population growth with aggressive home construction in the wildland-urban interface — the fire-prone zones where development meets flammable vegetation.

“This rapid growth in wildfire-prone areas, combined with rising losses from wind and hail storms and higher rebuilding costs, have pushed insurers to become far more aggressive about managing catastrophe exposure,” Newsweek reported.

The results are already visible on the landscape. State Sen. Evan Vickers, a Republican from Cedar City, said developers built 6,300 homes in high-risk zones over the past decade — second only to California, which built roughly 10,000 in similar areas. Utah homeowners insurance premiums surged about 59% from 2021 to 2024, the highest percentage jump in the country.

In June 2026, the Cottonwood Fire near Beaver became the most destructive wildfire in Utah’s history by structures lost, burning roughly 97,000 acres. The blaze destroyed 150 structures, forced residents to flee, and knocked out the area’s electrical grid.

“Transformers melted to the ground, there was damage to the substation — all of our facilities up on the mountain are gone,” PacifiCorp regional business manager Tom Heaton told residents at a community meeting, the Deseret News reported. “They’re just gone.”

The fire also laid bare the consequences of nonrenewals. Lynn and Pamela Jenkins, who rent out condos at Eagle Point Resort, had been denied insurance on several units. Seven of their eight condos burned.

“I don’t think it’s right that the insurance companies can deny you, and then you lose everything,” Lynn Jenkins said.

The Safety-Net Gap

One factor sets Utah apart from states like California and Florida: it has no FAIR plan — a state-backed, last-resort insurer of the kind that many states use to cover homeowners the private market will not.

Without that backstop, nonrenewed Utah homeowners must turn to surplus-lines carriers, also known as excess and surplus (E&S) insurers. These policies are subject to fewer rate regulations, are generally not protected by state guaranty funds if the insurer fails, and often carry higher costs and deductibles.

“A healthy insurance market does not rely on surplus lines for traditional products, like homeowners’ coverage,” reads a fact sheet from the Idaho Department of Insurance. At a legislative forum in January, a representative of that department described surplus-line policies as “the Wild West of insurance.”

The shift is already measurable. Surplus-lines premiums in Utah grew from $1.1 million in 2018 to $13.7 million in 2025 — a 12.3-fold increase, according to Weiss Ratings. Weiss also flagged a concerning pattern nationally: in California’s surplus-lines market over the past five years, insurers paid out about 49 cents in claims for every dollar of premium earned, compared with nearly 71 cents for regular insurers.

“The net result is that some industry players appear to be turning homeowners’ misfortune into an opportunity for their own bottom line,” Weiss warned.

Some homeowners, particularly those without mortgages, simply go without coverage. Analysis from Insurify shows that roughly 14% of American homes are uninsured, and data provided to the Mountain West News Bureau put Utah’s uninsured rate at 11.3%.

A Policy Response, and Its Limits

Utah lawmakers and regulators appear to be focusing on wildfire mitigation and insurer transparency rather than directly restricting nonrenewals. In 2025, the state enacted HB 48, the Wildland Urban Interface Modifications bill, which required the state to develop official wildfire-risk maps and identify high-risk areas.

Under the law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2026, insurers writing coverage in high-risk wildland-urban interface areas must reference the state’s official wildfire-risk maps when evaluating properties. The measure also created a wildfire mitigation fund, supported by per-structure fees of $20 to $100, and gave homeowners a pathway to challenge risk classifications through certified lot assessments.

Still, the law does not require insurers to give a written reason when they decline to write a policy — a gap underscored by homeowners like the Jenkinses, who lost uninsured property without explanation.

“The jump in nonrenewals is raising a lot of eyebrows, and it should,” Utah Republican state Rep. Matt MacPherson told the Mountain West News Bureau, calling the data “very troubling.” He said he is exploring potential legislative responses.

Utah Insurance Commissioner Jon Pike has cautioned against forcing insurers to offer specific discounts or coverage terms, warning that mandates can backfire — including by prompting some carriers to stop writing new homeowners policies altogether. He noted that about 130 underwriters still offer homeowners coverage in the state, and pointed to State Farm’s premium discounts for homeowners certified through the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety’s Wildfire Prepared Home program as an example of voluntary risk-reduction incentives.

What’s Next

Jones, the former California insurance commissioner, frames the crisis as fundamentally a climate problem with a two-part solution. In the long term, he said, “we’ve got to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and we need every state to take steps to do that.” In the short and intermediate term, he argues for more investment in mitigation — and for ensuring insurers’ models actually account for it, as Colorado’s legislature required in 2025.

Because insurance is required for mortgage holders, rising nonrenewals carry ripple effects well beyond individual homeowners. “The net result is very bad for mortgage availability, the ability of people to get a mortgage, the ability to maintain a mortgage, and then overall the home and real estate market,” Jones said.

With Utah’s wildfire season still unfolding and lawmakers signaling they will revisit insurance costs in the next legislative session, the state’s experience may serve as an early warning for the rest of the country. The question now is whether policymakers can stabilize a market that climate risk keeps pushing toward the edge — or whether the Wasatch Front becomes the model for what comes next.