Insurance

Nearly one-in-five homeowners have to borrow to pay unexpected expenses related to their property, although 24% claim to have a rainy day fund, according to Bankrate.

Unusual spikes in property taxes and insurance in many areas are causing servicing concerns that mortgage companies may not be used to managing.

There's temporary leeway on formal compliance with replacement-cost value requirements in order to sort out insurer concerns with a recent re-emphasis on them.

Above and beyond the obvious damage, wildfires levied a hidden cost on the finance industry: Mortgage lenders and investors lost more than $30 billion between 2020 and 2022, due to both accelerated defaults and prepayments following disastrous blazes.

Technology is helping carriers to better manage their risk portfolios when it comes to underwriting and managing weather-related property risks.

"Lax regulation and monitoring of property insurers makes Florida mortgage markets far more exposed to climate risk than people might think," said Parinitha Sastry, an author of a working paper by researchers at Harvard University, Columbia University and the Federal Reserve.

Prevention through new building standards and mapping technology aim to keep home insurance rates down but mortgage bankers see challenges.

The National Flood Insurance Program would ideally be approved yearly, but instead it has gone through 29 reauthorizations since 2017.

State restrictions on the use of credit scores appear to help a wide range of consumers cut homeowner insurance costs to varying degrees, according to Matic.

Cost of property coverage rose more than 55% over the last five years and it'll likely keep rising through 2024, a report from Guaranteed Rate found.