After three years of significant homeowners rate increases, the pace is decelerating in 2026. Carriers are returning to profitability, reinsurance markets have eased, and renewal bumps are smaller than they've been in years. The agents who call first with that context are going to look very different from the ones who let clients find out from their bill.
The homeowners insurance market is not good yet — but it is better. After several years of premium increases that outpaced inflation by a wide margin, the pace of rate increases has slowed materially in 2026. Carriers that spent years absorbing underwriting losses are returning to profitability. Reinsurance conditions have eased. The frantic rate filings of 2023 and 2024 are mostly done.
Your clients do not know this.
What Changed
The hard market in homeowners was driven by a specific set of compounding factors: sustained underwriting losses, reinsurance cost spikes after consecutive above-average catastrophe years, construction cost inflation that drove replacement values higher, and carriers in several states pulling back entirely rather than continuing to write at a loss.
Most of those pressures have moderated. Major hurricanes stayed offshore last season. Reinsurers who tightened capacity in 2023 and 2024 have come back to the table at better terms. Carriers that achieved rate adequacy — and several did, even at the cost of losing clients — are now in a position to hold rather than push on renewal pricing.
That does not mean rates are going down. It means the increases are smaller, and in some lines and geographies, flat. For a client who has been dreading the renewal envelope for three straight years, that distinction matters.
The Call You Should Be Making Now
Most clients are mentally set for another significant increase. They've budgeted for it. Some have already started shopping. The agents who reach them first — before the renewal notice arrives — with an honest read on what to expect are not doing something extraordinary. They're doing the baseline of what clients wish their agent would do.
The frame for that call is not celebratory. It's honest: the market has stabilized in most areas, rate increases are smaller than they've been in recent years, and you've looked at their specific situation to make sure they're well-positioned going into renewal.
That call takes four minutes. The goodwill it generates is disproportionate to the effort.
The Clients Who Left
A meaningful number of clients who left during the hard market years — who shopped away when their premium jumped and you couldn't match the alternative — are approaching renewals with those replacement carriers now. Those carriers increased rates too. The client who left for a lower price in 2023 may be facing another increase in 2026 from the carrier they switched to.
That is a re-marketing window. If you know why they left and you have better options available today than you did then, they are worth a call.
What to Watch
Rate deceleration is not the same as rate adequacy in every market. Clients in coastal zones, wildfire-exposed areas, and markets with ongoing carrier availability issues are still in a different conversation than clients in stable inland markets. The story for a homeowner in the Midwest is different from the story for a homeowner in the Florida Panhandle or the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Know which clients are in which bucket before you start proactive outreach. The call that opens with good news lands very differently for a client whose carrier just non-renewed them.