Home insurance methodology

How we research home insurance

We are not an insurance agency and we do not sell insurance. We are a comparison and information site. A home insurance premium depends on the home itself (its rebuild cost, age, roof, location, and the cover you choose) more than on any national average. What we can do is show you what published sources say the average homeowner pays, for a stated form and place, at a stated date, and point you to the carrier's own quote route for a price that reflects your home.

How we research

Our research follows the same steps for every home insurance page on the site.

1. Start with the official source, not a roundup. For prices, that means the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the state departments of insurance. For rules, it means the state statute or the department of insurance page that states it. Secondary sources are never the source of a figure. If an official source cannot be found, the figure is not published.
2. Copy the figure exactly as the source prints it. No rounding, no estimating, no "correcting" a source's own rounding.
3. Name the statistic, the form, the place, and the date, every time. A homeowners average is meaningless without the policy form (HO-3, HO-4, HO-6, dwelling fire), the place, and the date. Every published average on the site travels with a line naming all of those, and a "Current as of" date directly with the figure.
4. Keep different series apart. Figures from different sources, different years, or different policy forms are never averaged together and never presented side by side as if they were the same series.
5. Have every page reviewed by an editor before publication. Our editors are Enu Zehra and Ms. Kakka. They check every figure against its named source. A page is not published until the figures check out.
6. Re-verify on a fixed schedule. Averages are reviewed at least every six months. A figure past its review date is flagged, not silently left as if it were current.

The sources we use

National Association of Insurance Commissioners: Dwelling Fire, Homeowners Owner-Occupied, and Homeowners Tenant and Condominium/Cooperative Unit Owner's Insurance Report: Data for 2023, July 2026. This is the source of every state and countrywide homeowners average on the site. Countrywide HO-3 (the standard owner-occupied form): $1,737 per year. Lowest state: Wisconsin, $923 per year. Highest state: Louisiana, $3,027 per year. Oregon: $1,003 per year, an earlier secondary figure of $893 for Oregon is the 2022 value and is not used. Renters (HO-4) countrywide: $173 per year. Dwelling-fire countrywide: $1,019 per year. Dwelling-fire cover is not directly comparable to homeowners cover, so it is shown separately and never averaged in with HO-3. Geography: all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

Texas Department of Insurance: Homeowners Market Overview. Texas homeowners average: $3,489 per year for 2025 (preliminary). A conflicting $3,506 figure from secondary sources is not used: the Texas Department of Insurance's own page prints $3,489. Current as of November 2026.

California Department of Insurance. Sustainable Insurance Strategy, page updated 27 October 2026. California: $1,571 per year; United States: $1,512 per year. The data year is not stated on the source page. These figures are therefore never presented alongside the NAIC HO-3 figures (California $1,655, countrywide $1,737 for 2023) as if they were the same series. When a source does not state its data year, we say so, and we keep the figure apart from dated series.

Florida Office of Insurance Regulation: Property Insurance Stability Report, 1 July 2026, county table pp. 19-21, Market Intelligence Report data as of 31 March 2026. Method: average premium actually charged: total premium in force divided by policies in force, owner-occupied homeowners policies in the admitted market. All 67 Florida counties are published, homeowners with wind and without wind. Monroe County is the highest, at $7,863 per year. The report also publishes condo unit-owner averages. No statewide figure is published here, because the report PDF prints none: statewide averages sometimes quoted elsewhere do not appear anywhere in the report, and a simple mean of the 67 county averages would be unweighted and wrong, so it has not been computed.

Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) limits. Dwelling limit $1,773,000 and contents limit $374,000, effective 1 January 2026. Stated on our Texas pages where windstorm cover is discussed, with the effective date.

National Flood Insurance Program benchmark. One published benchmark is used for flood-cost context: Texas $966, South Carolina $764, national $976 per year. From a published NFIP analysis updated 18 May 2026. It is a secondary published analysis, not an official NFIP figure, and it is labelled as such wherever it appears.

NAIC Complaint Index. The NAIC publishes a complaint index for insurers, based on a three-year window of confirmed complaints relative to market share. We use it as the basis for future complaint-based comparisons. We publish no complaint ranking that we have not computed from the NAIC's own published index, and we publish the method beside the ranking.

AM Best financial strength ratings. AM Best publishes financial strength ratings for insurers. Where we show a financial-strength figure, it is AM Best's published rating, named as such, with the date it was checked. We do not convert ratings into our own scores.

What does a published average mean, and what does it not mean?

A published average is an average for a stated form and place, not your price. The NAIC HO-3 countrywide figure of $1,737 describes the standard owner-occupied form, averaged across all insured homes. Your rebuild cost, roof age and material, the age of the home, your ZIP code, your claims history, and the cover and deductible you choose will move your price away from the average, sometimes a long way. An average is useful for one thing: comparing places and forms in broad terms, and spotting whether a quote you receive is in the usual range. It is not a quote, and it is never presented as one.

A published average is also a snapshot in time. The NAIC homeowners report covers data for 2023 and was published in July 2026. When a newer report is published, we update the figures and the "Current as of" date. Until then, the date on the figure tells you exactly how old it is.

What we do not do

• We do not publish per-carrier home premiums. No free source publishes them. Every per-carrier home premium on this site is Quote-only: no price figure appears on the entry at all, not even a "from" figure. The entry links to the carrier's own quote route instead.
• We do not invent ratings. No carrier rating appears without its source, scale, and date stated on the same card. No "best company" verdict is drawn from averages, because averages cannot support one.
• We do not publish savings claims. No savings figure appears unless the basis (who saved, versus what, over what period, from what data, dated) is stated beside it in the same view. If the basis cannot be stated, the figure does not appear.
• We do not compute figures a source does not publish. We do not average Florida's 67 county figures into a statewide number, because an unweighted mean of county averages would be wrong. We do not mix the California Department of Insurance figures with the NAIC series, because the data year is unstated. Where a figure does not exist, we say so.
• We do not take payment for placement. No carrier pays to appear, to rank higher, or to be shown first. Sort order on results is by lowest price among published averages.
• We do not show carrier logos, "Buy now" buttons, or lead-generation funnels. We ask for your ZIP code and basic facts only. We never ask for contact details, and nothing you enter travels to a carrier.

How often we update

Published averages are reviewed at least every six months; the next review is due May 2027. State figures are re-checked whenever a state department publishes a new report, and at each six-month review at the latest. When a figure is updated, the "Current as of" date and the "Last reviewed" date on the page change with it. When a source publishes a correction, we correct the figure and add a correction note under our corrections policy.

Limitations: read this before you decide

• No comparison covers every insurer. Carriers that do not publish usable figures, write only in a few states, or sell only through agents may not appear here at all. Check a carrier's own site for the final price.
• A published average is not your price. See above.
• Averages go stale. Every average carries a "Current as of" date. An average past its review date is flagged.
• Flood cover is usually a separate policy, not part of a standard homeowners policy. Our flood pages explain the National Flood Insurance Program and private flood cover separately; a homeowners average never includes flood premium.
• Windstorm cover in coastal Texas is provided through TWIA, not the standard market, and its limits are stated separately on our Texas pages.
• Sorting, filtering, and side-by-side comparison need JavaScript. Without JavaScript the full comparison is shown on the page, but it cannot be re-sorted, filtered, or compared side by side in the browser.

Sources

1. National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Dwelling Fire, Homeowners Owner-Occupied, and Homeowners Tenant and Condominium/Cooperative Unit Owner's Insurance Report: Data for 2023, July 2026. https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/publication-hmr-zu-homeowners-report.pdf
2. Texas Department of Insurance, Homeowners Market Overview. https://agate.tdi.texas.gov/general/texas-homeowners-insurance-market-overview.html
3. California Department of Insurance, Sustainable Insurance Strategy, page updated 27 October 2026. https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/180-climate-change/sustainable-insurance-strategy.Cfm
4. Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, Property Insurance Stability Report, 1 July 2026. https://floir.gov/docs-sf/default-source/property-and-casualty/stability-unit-reports/july-2026-isu-report.pdf
5. Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, coverage limits effective 1 January 2026 (as cited on our Texas pages).
6. Published NFIP analysis, updated 18 May 2026 (secondary analysis, labelled as such where used).
7. National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Complaint Index (public index, three-year window). https://www.naic.org/
8. AM Best, financial strength ratings (as cited where shown). https://www.ambest.com/

Questions or corrections: hello@countrypilot.net (email only) or our corrections policy. Content reviewed by editors Enu Zehra and Ms. Kakka.

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See also: How we calculate averages · Editorial policy · Corrections policy