Homeowners’ average premiums per policy increased 8.7% faster than inflation between 2018 and 2022, and those in the top quintile of increases paid 14.7% above the inflation rate, an authoritative study of insurance costs find. The study by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office analyzed, down to the ZIP Code level, 2018-2022 data from more than 246 million policies.

Those price increases, combined with insurers pulling out of markets, probably help explain why non-renewal rates rose in 2022. What’s more, non-renewal rates were higher in areas with the highest expected losses from climate-related disasters like flooding, hurricanes, hail, tornadoes, winter storms, and forest fires, the report said.

The Insurance Office study estimated the impact that those climate risks were having on the availability and cost of insurance. It found that, of all the buildings nationwide with some risk of climate-related losses, the top 20% of ZIP codes accounted for two-thirds of the value of all buildings at risk. 

Here is a map showing where those high-risk ZIP codes are:

As one might expect, a big share of the ZIP codes most at risk are along the Southeast coast; hurricanes figure in 61.4% of the total value of all buildings at risk, the report said. But the Plains and Southwestern states also are among the highest-risk areas, mainly because of tornadoes, hail, and other so-called severe convective storms. Those storms are connected with 25.4% of the value of buildings at risk. Wildfires make up 11.7% of the risk and can be found most often in states West of the Mississippi, while heat waves and winter weather figure in the remaining 1.5%.