FACT SHEET: Nevada’s Home Insurance Crisis
Last Updated: 10/5/26
Climate change is pushing Nevada property insurers to raise rates and cancel policies. Between 2020 and 2025, home insurance rates in the Silver State increased by more than 30%, and the nonrenewal rate increased by 198% between 2018 and 2025. The increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in the state are a major driver of Nevada’s home insurance crisis. Trump’s cuts to emergency preparedness and response and to the U.S. Forest Service, alongside his far-reaching tariffs, will make Nevada’s home insurance crisis even worse.
NEVADA’S HOME INSURANCE RATES HAVE SOARED IN RECENT YEARS, AND COSTS CONTINUE TO GROW
- Between 2020 and 2025, home insurance rates in Nevada increased by 30.4%, and in 2025 alone, rates in the state increased by 7.7%.
- In just the first half of 2025, more than 100,000 Nevada homeowners were expected to see insurance rate increases of up to 25% as the state Department of Insurance approved rate changes for 12 insurers – many of whom had already raised rates only months prior.
- As insurance rates have risen, so has the rate of Nevada homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments: the rate of mortgages 90 to 180 days past due in the first quarter of 2026 was up more than 14% from the same period in 2025.
- Higher premiums increase the likelihood of mortgage delinquency, with a 2024 study finding that a $500 increase in annual insurance premiums was linked to a 20% higher mortgage delinquency rate.
INSURERS ARE REFUSING TO RENEW HOMEOWNERS’ POLICIES IN NEVADA
- In 2025, about one in every 51 households in Nevada received an insurer-initiated nonrenewal, up 198% since 2018.
- In 2024, 149,000 policies in Nevada were canceled or nonrenewed, with 2,703 specifically related to wildfire risk, the largest annual total ever reported by the state.
- In 2024, about 13,600 requests for new coverage were declined in Nevada – up from 2,400 declinations in 2022.
- On January 1, 2026, Nevada became the first state in the country to give insurers explicit legal authority to remove wildfire coverage from standard home insurance policies, an experimental attempt to keep insurers writing policies in the state rather than exiting entirely following a surge in wildfire-related nonrenewals.
- A 2026 report found 13.6% of Nevada homes, 101,508 total, were uninsured.
- Nationally, 14% of Latino homeowners and 11% of Black homeowners do not have home insurance, compared with 6% of white homeowners.
- As of 2024, Latino and Black people made up 29.6% and 9% of Nevada’s population, respectively.
- Nevada does not have a state-backed insurer of last resort, leaving homeowners without options on the commercial home insurance market to buy riskier surplus lines plans or go uninsured. In 2025, legislation was introduced to establish a FAIR Plan, but the bill died in the Assembly.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTREME WEATHER ARE DRIVING NEVADA’S INSURANCE CRISIS
- In 2025, the Nevada Division of Insurance reported that climate disasters were becoming more costly and occurring more often in areas that had historically not been affected.
- Once limited to late summer and early fall, Nevada’s fire season now spans nearly the entire year, placing property at risk for longer.
- Over the past 40 years, wildfires have burned nearly one-fifth of Nevada’s land area.
- As of 2026, Nevada ranked first nationally for wildfire risk and third for vulnerability to wildfire-related insurance stress.
- About 3.1 million Nevadans – nearly the entire state’s population – lived where wildfire poses a high or very high risk to homes.
- Wildfires in the Western U.S. have increased in volume and magnitude near urban cores, and in Nevada, wildfires are increasingly impacting infrastructure.
- Between 2010 and 2026, Nevada saw 17 billion-dollar extreme disasters, including droughts, wildfire, and one winter storm.
TRUMP WILL MAKE NEVADA’S INSURANCE CRISIS EVEN WORSE
- Trump’s tariffs were expected to increase home insurance costs in Nevada by $55.
- Tariffs were expected to make rebuilding after disaster more expensive. The National Association of Home Builders estimates a cost increase of $10,900 per home due to tariffs on construction materials.
- As of September 2026, USFS had lost about 6,000 employees, or 15% of its workforce, during Trump’s second term, hampering efforts to clear brush and thin trees to reduce the risk and intensity of wildfires, and stunting the agency’s capacity to stop the spread of wildfires when they break out.
- In 2026, Trump’s chaos and cuts at USFS led to reductions of 44% in prescribed burning and 40% in fuel-reduction work – two leading strategies for wildfire prevention – ahead of fire season.
- In addition to staffing cuts, nearly 37% of firefighting jobs in the Forest Service’s Intermountain region, which included Nevada, were unfilled as of July 2025.
- Trump’s attempts to gut FEMA programs, undermine NOAA research and forecasting, and cut disaster relief at the Department of Housing and Urban Development would all contribute to higher home insurance costs.