HousingWireHousingWire
While most of the insurance crisis news is focused on the impact of hurricanes and wildfires, hail is gaining ground as the repair of storm-damaged houses has grown so expensive that insurers are increasing premiums and even dropping homes to protect profits.
Per Wall Street Journal coverage of the same topic, convective storms — meaning storms characterized by rising warm, moist air, that potentially leads to heavy rainfall, strong winds, hail and even tornadoes — cost insurers $58 billion in the U.S. last year. That’s more than every U.S. hurricane except Katrina and Ian, according to the Insurance Information Institute, and more than the projected price tag for the Los Angeles fires.
“Hail damage is one of the leading causes of insurance claims, particularly in storm-prone states like Florida and Texas,” Anthony M. Lopez, CEO of Your Insurance Attorney, told HousingWire. Lopez also chairs the firm’s property insurance department. “Because insurers treat hailstorms as a costly risk, homeowners often see premium increases — even if they haven’t personally filed a claim. Some insurers have also introduced higher deductibles or coverage limitations specifically for hail-related damage, shifting more financial responsibility onto policyholders.”
Lopez says that hail can cause significant destruction to roofs, windows, siding and other exterior structures, depending on the size. “Insurers worry about the frequency and severity of these storms, especially in regions where hail is common,” he added. “However, while they highlight these risks when justifying rate hikes, they also frequently deny or underpay legitimate claims, leaving homeowners struggling to cover necessary repairs.”
Jon Schneyer, Director of Research and Content at CoreLogic, says that In 2024, CoreLogic estimated that damaging hail fell on more than 567,000 single- and multi-family homes in the contiguous U.S., with a combined approximate reconstruction cost value (RCV) of $160 billion. Schneyer says that about 72% of the homes damaged by 2-inch hail in 2024 were located in Texas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.
For 2025, CoreLogic’s Hailstorm Risk Score estimates over 41 million homes face moderate or greater risk of hailstorms producing one inch or greater, equating to an estimated RCV of $13.4 trillion.
Texas leads the top of the list with 8,699,137 homes at risk, worth $2.75 trillion in RCV. It’s followed by Illinois (4,074,341 homes worth $1.64 trillion in RCV), Missouri (2,313,962 homes worth $764.7 billion in RCV), Indiana (2,195,936 homes worth $764.1 billion in RCV) and Minnesota (1,904,568 homes worth $527.9 billion in RCV).
Golf-ball-sized hail
Oklahoma, for example, saw the country’s worst hailstorm last year where 35,000 homes experienced golf-ball-size hail. Per WSJ’s reporting, insurers dropped nearly 3,400 homeowners in the Oklahoma City area in 2023.
“For 2025, CoreLogic’s Hailstorm Risk Score estimates that over 41 million homes face moderate or greater risk of hailstorms producing one inch or greater, equating to an estimated RCV of $13.4 trillion,” Schneyer said. “Two-inch hail can result in very large claims. A complete roof replacement for a single home could cost as much as $30,000.”
Deep Sky climate data scientist Max Dugan-Knight says that the probability of hail size increasing is high. “There’s a high probability of these hailstorm hailstones becoming greater than four centimeters, and once they’re that large, they cause a lot more damage,” he explained. “There’s sort of this tipping point where you go above a certain size of hailstone, and it goes from no damage to potentially breaking windows and damaging cars and homes. So that trend is really concerning for homeowners, and, by extension, concerning for insurers who are having to adjust the whole way they treat hail because those big hail storms used to be so rare that it wasn’t always specifically dealt with by insurance policies.”
The easy solution, Dugan-Knight says, is to invest in roofs designed for hail resiliency — another added cost onto high premiums. “As this risk grows over the next few years, those numbers might become so high that they’re unaffordable for people to afford home insurance,” he said. “And what happens if you can’t afford the home insurance is kind of a slippery slope, because if you’re buying a house and you can’t afford home insurance, then you might not be able to get a mortgage, which means you might not be able to go through with the actual purchase.”
Unseen damage
Damage doesn’t stop with hail, Schneyer says. “Even smaller hail stones can cause significant, but unseen, roof damage. Damage to the shingles may not be visible, but the water tightness of the underlying sealant layers can be compromised. Maybe hail storms come with rain, and it’s easy for water to intrude into the home, causing supplemental damage down the road,” he said.
Schneyer added that the highest concentrations of at-risk homes are in Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and Minnesota — primarily Midwestern states typically known for affordable housing.
“Many insurers have added stricter limitations on hail coverage, such as higher deductibles for wind and hail damage, actual cash value settlements instead of replacement cost and mandatory roof inspections and age-based exclusions which can deny full coverage for older roofs regardless of their condition before the storm,” Lopez said, noting how the “tactics” add a price tag onto already-increasing premiums. “This often leaves policyholders underinsured and vulnerable after a storm,” he added.
Homebuyers nationwide may feel the effects
Matt Brannon, a data journalist at Insurify, an insurance comparison website, noted that while 2024 saw fewer hailstorms than anticipated, severe hail still increased by 21% from 2022. “Homeowners in hail-affected areas [should] expect to pay more for their insurance. While insurers have historically factored in hail damage in places like Texas and Colorado, frequent and severe hail events are making insurers consider pricing for hail damage in more of the country,” Brannon said.
Akin to Schneyer’s observations, Brannon said that Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Texas saw the sharpest 3-year increase in severe hail. “Climate change is simply contributing to larger hailstones,” he said. “Research shows that hailstones within a storm are now spending more time building up ice before eventually falling to the ground and damaging structures.”
Dugan-Knight added, “The fact that insurance companies across the country are raising premiums, increasing deductibles, even stopping providing insurance entirely in some places is a worrying sign for homeowners almost everywhere in the country. So I think it’s also an important point that insurance companies have the most up-to-date data. The fact that they’re worried means we should all be worried.”
