NAIC Report Finds Northeast Homeowners Market Competitive as Premiums and Nonrenewals Climb
Northeast homeowners’ premiums rose 55% from 2018 through 2024, and company-initiated nonrenewals rose 147% — even as the region kept the lowest premiums and claim frequency in the country, and underwriting profitability improved sharply in 2024.
A new study of the U.S. homeowner’s insurance market finds that the Northeast continues to have a highly competitive insurance marketplace and comparatively low claim frequency, even as insurers have raised premiums, increased nonrenewals and reduced policy counts.
The July 31 report from the NAIC’s Center for Insurance Policy and Research examines homeowners insurance market data collected by state regulators from 2018 through 2024. The analysis uses Market Conduct Annual Statement, or MCAS, data together with other NAIC financial data to examine changes in policies, premiums, claims, nonrenewals, cancellations and underwriting results.
For Massachusetts and other New England insurance professionals, the report’s Northeast Zone data describes a market that differs substantially from the more stressed homeowners markets elsewhere in the country. The Northeast had the lowest average premium per policy among the four NAIC regions in 2024, the lowest rate of paid claims per 1,000 policies and the lowest company-initiated nonrenewal rate. At the same time, nonrenewals in the Northeast have risen substantially since 2018, and premium increases accelerated in 2023 and 2024.
One structural caveat applies throughout: the report’s Northeast Zone excludes New York, which did not submit MCAS data during the study period. The regional figures therefore omit the zone’s largest state.
Northeast Premiums Rise 55% Since 2018
Homeowners insurers wrote approximately $22 billion in direct premium written in the Northeast in 2024 on 15.7 million policies, an average of $1,396 per policy. That was the lowest average among the four NAIC zones, compared with $1,476 in the Midwest, $1,600 in the West and $1,818 in the Southeast.
The direction of the numbers is unmistakable. Total Northeast homeowners direct premium written increased 55% between 2018 and 2024. Average direct premium written per policy increased 44% over the same period, with much of the increase occurring during 2023 and 2024.
Inflation accounts for a substantial portion, but not all, of the increase. After adjusting premiums to 2025 dollars using the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index, the NAIC calculated that the Northeast’s average premium per policy rose 18.3% in real terms from 2018 through 2024.
The report also compared premiums with changes in home values. On that basis, the Northeast’s average effective homeowners rate — annual premium per $1,000 of home value — remained 5.5% below its 2018 level in 2024, because home values rose faster than premiums over the period. The report found that the effective rate began moving upward in 2023.
The NAIC cautioned that these are regional averages and may obscure substantially different conditions in individual states or local markets.
More Than Half of Northeast Insurers Reduced Policy Counts
One of the more notable findings for New England concerns changes in carrier policy counts.
The NAIC identified 263 insurers that wrote homeowners coverage in at least one Northeast state in every year from 2018 through 2024. Of those companies, 141 — 54% — reduced their total Northeast policies during the period, cutting their policy counts by an average of 38.7%. The remaining 122 insurers increased their Northeast policy counts by an average of 60%.
Total Northeast policies in force nonetheless grew 7.4% from 2018 through 2024 — the smallest increase among the four zones — indicating that the growth was concentrated among a subset of expanding carriers even as most consistent writers shrank their books.
The report also drew a distinction based on insurers’ geographic reach. Among 51 national companies operating consistently in the Northeast during the seven-year period, 24 increased their Northeast policy counts and 27 decreased them. Among 179 state-by-state insurers operating consistently in the region, 47% increased their policy counts. The NAIC described the broader pattern as larger cross-state writers frequently reducing policy counts while regional and state-by-state companies absorb some of those policies.
Turnover was also a feature of the period: 61 insurers left the Northeast homeowners market entirely between 2018 and 2024, while 56 entered it.
Northeast Nonrenewals Nearly Double in Two Years
The clearest indication of tightening underwriting in the Northeast may be company-initiated nonrenewals.
Northeast insurers reported 184,382 company-initiated homeowners nonrenewals in 2024, equivalent to 11.7 nonrenewals per 1,000 policies in force. That remained below the corresponding rates of 14.2 in the Midwest, 22.0 in the Southeast and 25.1 in the West.
The Northeast rate has been moving upward rapidly. It increased from 6.2 nonrenewals per 1,000 policies in 2022 to 7.2 in 2023 and 11.7 in 2024. Compared with 2018, the Northeast nonrenewal rate increased 147%, the second-largest increase among the four zones. The 2024 jump was particularly pronounced: Northeast company-initiated nonrenewals increased from 115,417 in 2023 to 184,382 in 2024.
Company-initiated cancellations after a policy’s effective date show a different trend. The Northeast recorded 76,983 such cancellations in 2024, or 4.9 per 1,000 policies — 16% below its 2018 level. The contrast suggests that the underwriting adjustment reflected in the data is occurring largely at renewal rather than through midterm cancellation.
Northeast Claim Frequency Remains Lowest in the Country
Claims results also distinguish the Northeast from the rest of the country.
Insurers closed 718,102 Northeast homeowners claims with payment in 2024, approximately 10% of the 7.35 million paid claims nationwide. Adjusted for policies in force, the Northeast recorded 45.7 paid claims per 1,000 policies, compared with 63.4 in the West, 76.2 in the Midwest and 90.1 in the Southeast. The Northeast’s 2024 claim frequency was 27.8% below its 2018 level.
Severity moved in the opposite direction. The NAIC estimated an inflation-adjusted average Northeast claim cost of $13,423 in 2024, 22.9% above the region’s 2018 level. Northeast claim severity peaked in 2023 before declining somewhat in 2024.
Northeast Underwriting Results Improve Sharply in 2024
The report’s underwriting results show a substantial improvement for Northeast homeowners insurers.
Average Northeast homeowners underwriting profit as a percentage of direct premiums earned remained positive throughout the seven-year period. It stood at 7.5% in 2018, rose to 17.1% in 2019 and stayed positive through 2023, when it was 9.1%. In 2024, the Northeast measure increased to 23.3%, the highest of the four NAIC zones. By comparison, the Western Zone reported a 6.7% underwriting profit in 2024, while the Midwest and Southeast remained slightly negative at -5.9% and -0.2%, respectively. The NAIC notes that its zone averages are not weighted by premium.
Northeast loss-ratio data improved as well. The NAIC found that loss ratios declined across national, regional and state-by-state Northeast writers in 2024 after running higher in 2023, with the middle tier of regional carriers showing slightly higher loss ratios on average than national and state-by-state writers over time. The report calculated approximately $9.02 billion in incurred losses among the Northeast homeowners companies included in that analysis.
Northeast Remains a Highly Competitive Homeowners Market
Despite the policy-count reductions by many insurers, the NAIC’s analysis does not characterize the Northeast homeowners market as lacking competition.
Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, or HHI, to measure market concentration, the report found that the Northeast’s HHI remained below 1,000 throughout the period studied. Under the methodology used in the report, an HHI below 1,000 generally indicates a highly competitive market. The report found that homeowners markets nationally ranged from highly competitive to unconcentrated, with conditions varying by region.
That finding matters when read alongside the Northeast’s rising premiums and nonrenewals: those developments occurred while the regional homeowners market continued to include a broad range of competing insurers.
A More Detailed State-Level Analysis Is Coming
The current report does not provide Massachusetts-specific results. Massachusetts is incorporated into the broader Northeast Zone, and the NAIC repeatedly cautions that regional averages can conceal substantial differences among individual markets.
The study is also not the NAIC’s final word on homeowners market conditions. In March 2026, state insurance regulators coordinated through the NAIC launched a separate homeowner property insurance market data call seeking ZIP-code-level information from property/casualty insurers, covering premiums, policies, claims, losses, limits, deductibles, nonrenewals and coverage types. The resulting analysis should provide considerably greater geographic detail than the regional MCAS results in the current report — and, for Massachusetts professionals, the granularity necessary to gauge how closely conditions in the Commonwealth track the Northeast averages reported here.
