A handful of U.S. states reliably top headlines when it comes to insurance news, often because catastrophic loss events in these locations drove up costs and made insurance more difficult to secure. Lending Tree recently looked at home-insurance rate increases nationwide and determined that states where homeowners are shelling out the most for insurance also are places where housing prices have swelled significantly. In general, home insurance prices nationwide are up nearly 38% since 2019, according to Lending Tree. "Insurance companies have to repair more homes, and it's more expensive to rebuild each one than it might have been just five years ago," Lending Tree Insurance Expert Rob Bhatt said in the site's recent article about state-by-state home insurance rate increases. "When their costs of paying claims go up, they turn around and raise our rates. This is affecting prices for just about everyone, including people who haven't been directly impacted by a natural disaster, or at least not yet." Inflation, housing prices, construction costs and catastrophic-event history all converge to determine which U.S. states are becoming least affordable when it comes to home insurance. The slideshow above illustrates the 10 U.S. states with the steepest home-insurance rate increases between 2019 and 2024, according to Lending Tree. Related: |

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