If you don’t have interstate traffic to contend with, Wendy and Larry Nevers’ still-new-to-them home is about a 30-minute drive west of Boise. Their neighborhood of nice homes on large lots is mostly surrounded by farmland.
The couple moved to the Treasure Valley a little over a year ago after Larry retired from a Washington school district near Yakima. They share their home with five pets, including a dog named Steve Buscemi.
“Since the tooth removal, I do call him Snaggletooth,” Larry said.
They had been looking for a warmer, drier place to call home once their children were out of college.
“I really enjoy the neighborhood,” Wendy said of their new Idaho home. “But I'm not happy with the increase in my homeowner's insurance this year.”
Their premium for the first year was around $830.
“And then this year is $1,080,” Wendy explained. “That's almost a 30% increase.”
The new rate reflects a roughly $140 discount they got after installing a new roof, without which it would have been closer to a 50% jump. Wendy said she budgets for 5% increases in expenses like insurance, which her steadily growing retirement nest egg can easily cover.
“But it doesn't grow 30% a year, so I can't keep up with that,” she said. “So something else would have to go.”
Her agent pointed to inflation, wildfire risk, and other factors cited by many experts to explain growing instability in the homeowners insurance market across the West. But Wendy wants a clearer explanation of how her insurer arrived at her premium.
“Explain this,” she said. “Where are the numbers? Show me the numbers.”
An unhealthy market
While an unwelcome surprise for the Nevers, new data from the Idaho Department of Insurance shows that their experience is now a common one. Similar – or far steeper – increases are being seen across the state, along with widespread policy cancellations.
“This is everybody's problem,” said Dean Cameron, Idaho’s top insurance official. “And it's a dramatic problem that's impacting the entire state.”
Earlier this year, Cameron’s office mandated that insurers provide detailed data between 2022 and 2024. It showed that premiums rose 37% from just over $1,300 to roughly $1,800 on average. That was accompanied by a collapse: between 2022 and 2023, total homeowner policies statewide fell from 464,364 to 424,113, or about 9% of the market.
“It is very, very rare to see that significant of a drop. It shows really unhealthiness in the marketplace,” he said, adding that “it would constitute a significant change in the marketplace.”
An important part of the drop in policies, Cameron explained, was due to three carriers winding down their homeowners operations in the state. But the “bulk of the 2023 loss is simply carriers tightening where they want to underwrite, where they want to sell and and deciding who they're not renewing.”
“Our fear is that we've got 30,000-plus people that decided to go without coverage,” he added. Thousands may have also found their way to so-called surplus line policies, which aren’t licensed by the state and are not required to follow all regulations: coverage can be limited, deductibles can be high and dangers like wildfires can be excluded.
“A healthy insurance market does not rely on surplus lines for traditional products, like homeowners’ coverage,” the insurance department warns, while also acknowledging that they “may be the only choice available.”
Growing risks
Rising claim payouts and rebuilding costs in the wake of increasingly destructive wildfires and other disasters are key factors at play, according to Kenton Brine, president of the Northwest Insurance Council, an industry nonprofit. He said that construction costs rose as much as 40% between 2021 and 2023, especially “in fast-growing and higher-risk” parts of the West.
“What Idahoans are seeing in the homeowners' insurance market today is a reflection of insurers needing to respond to dramatically higher costs coupled with significant concern about risk exposure,” Brine explained in an email. “And this is where it is important to remember that any insurer that writes and sells a policy has as its first responsibility the need to remain solvent – to be able to pay any and all losses that are covered by the policies it sells to consumers.”
For those Idaho ZIP codes that have seen dramatic changes, Brine said three dynamics are likely at play. First, insurers may be worried about “the concentration of policies they have historically underwritten in an area” because of the possibility of “unsustainable losses” when disasters hit. They may respond with policy cancellations to reduce that risk.
They may also have difficulty finding or affording sufficient reinsurance – the insurance companies themselves take out to protect against massive losses – “forcing them to reconsider how much risk they can responsibly cover.”
And finally, “insurers may combine some nonrenewal activity with significant increases in premiums for the policyholders still able to maintain coverage.”
“Those premium increases may result in some insureds dropping coverage, either temporarily while they shop for other coverage, or permanently if their homes do not have a mortgage,” Brine added.
Brine also shared that there are some early signs that the U.S. homeowners market could be stabilizing. While noting that inflation and climate change-fueled disaster losses continue to affect premiums and availability, a “return to overall profitability” is expected in 2026, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
“That could help, over time, improve market resilience and support more stable pricing for consumers,” the industry-backed non-profit said in a release.
Fire in suburbia
Colorado’s Marshall Fire is a tragic example of how quickly and spectacularly insured properties can be reduced to foundations. Just before New Year’s Eve 2021, the wind-driven inferno killed two and destroyed over 1,000 homes in less than 24 hours, causing more than $2 billion in damage.
“That was eye-opening. I’ve studied fire for over 20 years, but the Marshall Fire burned down a hotel. It forced the evacuation of a Chuck E. Cheese. We're talking about a fire in suburbia,” said Jennifer Balch, a fire scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “And it really changed my conception of what is the wildland-urban interface.”
In a 2024 paper, she and her coauthors argued that it is rapid fire growth that matters most when it comes to risks to homes and neighborhoods.
“The modern era of megafires is often defined based on wildfire size, but it should be defined based on how fast fires grow and their consequent societal impacts,” the October 2024 Science publication opens. “Speed fundamentally dictates the deadly and destructive impact of megafires, rendering the prevailing paradigm that defines them by size inadequate.”
Balch and her team found that blazes that grew faster than 4,000 acres in a day – less than 3% of incidents – accounted for nearly 90% of structures damaged or destroyed. Many of them burned through grass, like the Marshall Fire – just a short drive from her campus. A 2023 paper found that nearly 80% of all structure loss in the West over the three most recent decades occurred in grass or brush fires.
“Our fastest fires are not moving through forests,” Balch said. “They're actually moving through grasses. And the reason why is because grasses are very fine, flashy fuels. They dry out very quickly, and they carry fires very, very quickly under high wind conditions.”
Idaho, so far, has been spared its own Marshall Fire, but there is no shortage of fast fires. Data from her study shows 15 of the 100 fastest incidents in two recent decades were in the Gem State, the second-highest figure after California, which had 20. Nevada had 13, and fast fires in general are pervasive across the West. Balch pointed to the role of invasive cheatgrass, which has “been implicated in some of the fastest moving fires and the highest amount of fire activity … in the larger Great Basin area.”
They’re also getting faster, with some of the most significant acceleration – nearly 700 more acres burned on fires’ most active days over two decades – seen in the Snake River Plain, according to the study.
In Idaho, some of the sharpest homeowners policy drops – nearly 20% in some cases – are in the Snake River Plain, where those fast fires are concentrated, according to data provided to the Mountain West News Bureau by the Idaho Department of Insurance. Asked if the risk of a Marshall-style incident could be at play behind the major insurance pullback seen there, Brine said he “couldn’t categorically confirm” that.
“But I agree that the conclusions you draw from the Balch study speak for themselves,” he wrote. “And insurers likely are aware of and responding to that risk in both underwriting (nonrenewals or writing less business) and/or premium increases.”
The ingredients for a Marshall-style catastrophe are drought-dried grass, high winds, a spark and homes in the way, according to Balch. Those same extreme conditions returned to the Colorado Front Range this month. For the first time in the state, the National Weather Service issued a “particularly dangerous situation (PDS) red flag warning” for an area that included the recently devastated communities.
“And my guess is that there are regions in Idaho that have that constellation and that are set up for these types of disasters. Now that’s the scary side of the coin,” Balch said. “The hopeful side is that fire is something that we can do something about.”
“We can’t stop an earthquake or a hurricane,” the Council’s Brine wrote in a similar vein. “But we can prepare for and mitigate losses from (and learn to live with) wildfire.”
A public or private problem?
In March, an Idaho House of Representatives committee considered a measure that would have created a so-called wildfire risk mitigation fund to provide grants for replacing roofs, protecting eaves and otherwise preparing homes for wildfire. It was backed by Dean Cameron, who said that it could both help keep homes standing and reduce insurance premiums.
“It's a national problem, it's not just an Idaho problem,” Cameron told legislators. “We're watching other states as carriers are leaving other states. We're trying to get out in front of it and prevent situations like we're seeing in Colorado and California and other states where carriers are leaving faster than they're coming in.”
But the measure was met with concerns, and skepticism about the scale of the problem.
“Director, I get it,” said Rep. Vito Barbieri (R-Dalton Gardens). “I mean, apparently, we are facing some concerns, most of them anecdotal in my mind.”
He questioned whether it was an appropriate use of state funds, and asked whether “helping maintain insurance across the board is still a private problem, is it not?”
“It's both a private and a public problem,” Cameron responded, adding “[W]e know by studies that it is a problem that – if the homeowners next to the (wildland urban interface) don't protect their property – it impacts the homes that are further in communities.”
“That's only one part of the community problem,” Cameron continued. “My neighbors in Meridian, Idaho, are getting 30% rate increases. It's not just because [there are] wildfires, but it's because of the wildfire losses that [are] occurring here in Idaho and occurring in other states.”
“This is homeowners’ money as they are buying their insurance,” he said of the mitigation fund’s source. “We want to take a little bit of that money to help harden their homes and reduce the risk, which will therefore lower rates for everybody.”
The committee voted to hold the bill, and the Republican-dominated legislature passed no insurance measures last session.
Barbieri recently told the Mountain West News Bureau that he remains concerned about the mitigation fund proposal, a version of which Cameron said his office will back again this session. The approach, Barbieri argued, presumes that insurers will choose to cover properties where owners have made significant mitigation efforts.
“The constituents I’ve spoken to already have the perimeter of their properties cleared and are still losing their insurance,” he said, leading him to believe that such a fund would not be an effective solution.
Another approach he suggested would be to “force insurance carriers” to cover homes with wildfire risk as long as those homeowners have taken sufficient protective measures. But he acknowledged that such a law could scare off insurers, which “would be counter to the intent.”
“The creation of a fund to help at-risk homeowners may be only a portion of the actions the legislature may take to stop this trend,” Barbieri wrote. “The question then becomes: How does the state require private companies to take on risk not supported by their actuarials?”
Bipartisan concern
A lot has happened since the last Idaho legislative session, including the release of the insurance department’s data.
“I don't think it'll fall off the radar this year,” said first-term Rep. Mike Pohanka (R-Jerome). “It's not going to be good for the people of Idaho if we do nothing … Something has to happen.”
Pohanka’s district includes the world-famous resort community of Sun Valley, where average premiums have jumped by well over $2,000 in two years. It also includes large swaths of the Snake River Plain. He said he’s struggling to understand what’s happening in his district, and that lawmakers from both parties are hearing from constituents who are also worried and confused.
“We need to make sure that the citizens are covered,” he said. “I think there will be bipartisan support on this, I really do.”
His colleague Monica Church (D-Boise) said the data from Cameron’s office has helped build that bipartisan concern.
“Once people see it, you can't unsee it,” she said. “It's very clearly an issue in every single legislative district, and so showing my colleagues is really all I have to do.”
The first-term state representative said she was shocked when she saw the massive shifts in and around her Boise area district.
“We're losing providers and seeing the largest increase in premiums in communities that are not situated in forest areas, or what we would traditionally think of as highly prone wildfire areas,” she said. “They are in the middle of cities in the flatlands.”
She was also shocked by the wide gap seen between premiums collected in 2024 (roughly $710 million) and claims paid out (nearly $300 million).
Responding to that concern, Brine said that data doesn’t reflect reinsurance costs and other expenses, and that “insurance pricing is not at all the same as pricing a loaf of bread or a new car.”
“Insurers have to calculate premiums based not just [on] what they paid in claims last year, but what they anticipate they may pay in claims in future years – and they have to plan for the worst-case scenario,” he said, adding: “It takes one disaster to render an under-capitalized insurer insolvent and unable to pay claims.”
In the upcoming legislative session, Church said she intends to push a measure to require at least 60 days notification when insurers plan to drop customers.
“It's chaos,” she said. “And 60 days is not a long time to deal with chaos, but it's a start.”
Inspired by a recent Colorado insurance reform, she said she’ll also back a bill that would require more transparency from the industry.
“If they are going to raise rates or, God forbid, they are going to issue a non-renewal, they have to give the homeowner the criteria,” she said. “They would have to show the homeowner exactly what it is that they don't have, and then they would have to provide mitigation strategies.”
Brine said the Northwest Insurance Council’s member companies support Director Cameron’s grant program, as well as building codes that encourage wildfire-safe home construction. They would also “likely not strongly oppose” Church’s proposal for 60-day cancellation notifications.
“That said, it is important for policyholders and policymakers to understand that every new requirement, mandate or restriction that requires insurers to change their policies or operations costs money,” he said.
“And those costs inevitably become part of the cost of insurance paid by consumers,” he added. “So, we urge caution when considering new regulations.”
Church said doing nothing also has a cost: “It’s just going to get worse.”
Set differences aside
In the meantime, Wendy Nevers thinks there are some things she can do on her own at her Nampa home.
“Even though I think the fire danger is low, I am going to do away with a bush that's right here next to the house,” she said. “And the wood deck is on the hit list too.”
But she still expects more rate increases.
“I think that our legislators could set aside whatever their differences are – because we know they have them – and work for the good of the people and see if they can't come up with a plan,” she said.
She’d like to see those impacted push their legislators to do something.
“We have not done that yet,” she conceded. “But after having this bill experience recently, we're going to be doing that.”
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.
