What home insurance actually costs in Texas
The Texas average was $3,506 in 2025, and it is a blend of counties that run from $1,818 to $5,560. Hail and wind set the number, not crime. Here is what moves a premium, and why two houses on the same street can quote differently.
How much is home insurance in Texas?
The Texas statewide average annual homeowners premium was $3,506 in 2025, a figure the Texas Department of Insurance publishes as preliminary. That is the number to start from and the wrong number to plan with, because it blends 254 counties whose averages run from about $1,818 to about $5,560. The direction of travel is not in doubt: the same TDI series puts the 2020 average at $1,987, so the statewide figure has risen roughly 76% in five years.
A rising average premium is not the same as a rising rate
TDI draws this distinction itself and the page is more useful if it holds to it. A rate is the price per unit of coverage. A premium is what you pay in total, which moves when the rate moves and also when the amount of coverage moves. Texas home values and rebuild costs have both risen, so a household can be paying a larger premium for the same house at a rate that did not change. Every figure on this page is a premium figure.
- Texas Department of Insurance, homeowners insurance data and average premium series: tdi.texas.gov
Average premium by county, and why the spread matters more than the average
County averages are where a statewide number stops being useful. TDI publishes an average annual premium for every Texas county, and the 2025 view carries a legend running from roughly $1,818 at the low end to roughly $5,560 at the high end. That is a spread of more than three times inside one state, and it is not random: the coast and the hail belt are different insurance markets from the rest of Texas.
| County | 2025 average premium | Average coverage | What the pairing shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas | $4,363 | $512,000 | The hail belt, with high rebuild values behind it. |
| Bexar (San Antonio) | $2,806 | $398,000 | $1,557 less than Dallas, on roughly $114,000 less coverage. |
| Low end of the state | about $1,818 | varies | El Paso sits at the bottom of the published legend. |
| High end of the state | about $5,560 | varies | Aransas, on the coast, at the top of the same legend. |
Why are Texas home insurance costs so high?
Weather, and specifically hail and wind. This is the part most articles get wrong by reaching for crime or litigation, and TDI's own loss data settles it. In 2024, the last year with complete figures, hail accounted for 48.3% of paid Texas homeowners losses and wind for a further 21.7%. Between them those two perils are roughly seven in every ten dollars paid out. Reinsurance is the other named driver, which is why premiums can move in a year with no famous storm: Texas insurers buy their own cover, and what they pay for it arrives in your premium a season later.
Hail is the peril that sets the North Texas number
Hail does something unusual: it damages a great many roofs at once without making national news. That produces frequent, moderate, highly correlated claims, which is the worst combination for a pricing model. It is also why percentage deductibles are common on Texas policies, where the deductible is a share of the insured value rather than a flat sum. On a larger home that is a materially larger number than the flat deductible most people picture, and it is worth reading before signing rather than after a storm.
On the coast, one policy may not cover wind at all
A standard Texas home policy covers wind, hurricane and hail everywhere except the Gulf Coast, where those perils are frequently excluded. A coastal buyer therefore carries two or three policies rather than one. The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association exists to write that excluded wind and hail cover across 14 named coastal counties plus parts of Harris County, and it is an insurer of last resort rather than a first stop. The practical consequence for anyone comparing an inland house with a coastal one is that the quotes are not comparable until you know how many policies each number represents.
How does Texas compare with the rest of the country?
On the closest like-for-like the national data offers, Texas is meaningfully above the national figure. The NAIC's most recent published report, covering data year 2023, puts the average Texas HO-3 premium at the $250,000 to $274,999 coverage band at $2,306 against a countrywide average of $1,350 in the same band. Comparing a band to a band matters, because most state-versus-state insurance comparisons quietly compare different amounts of coverage and different policy forms.
The caveat that belongs with every comparison of this kind
The NAIC states plainly that its state averages should not be read as a straight price comparison, because the mix of coverage, deductibles and construction differs between states. Texas adds a second complication: it runs its own policy forms and reports its own data, so a Texas form and a form sold elsewhere are not always the same product. The honest version of the comparison is that Texas is clearly more expensive on matched coverage, and the size of the gap is less precise than a single pair of numbers implies.
How the premium changes the payment a lender counts
The premium is not a side cost that sits outside the mortgage. On most loans it is escrowed, which means the lender collects a share of it every month alongside the loan payment, and that combined figure is what underwriting works from. Lenders call it PITIA, for principal, interest, taxes, insurance and association dues, and the debt-to-income ratio is built on it. Federal rules count creditor-required property insurance as a mortgage-related obligation for exactly this reason. So an insurance quote does not sit beside the mortgage decision. It sits inside it, as one input among several, and an underwriter decides eligibility on a real address rather than on an average.
What a lender will require before closing
The requirements are consistent across lenders because they exist to protect the lender's collateral rather than to inconvenience the buyer. Expect a policy in force and paid ahead at closing, escrow for taxes and insurance on most first-lien loans, flood insurance where the property sits in a designated flood zone, and coverage at least equal to the insurer's replacement-cost minimum. None of these is negotiable. All of them are shoppable, which is a different thing, and with close to 160 companies writing homeowners cover in Texas there is a real market to shop in.
One number that is moving in the other direction
Something changed in 2026 that has not reached most articles on this subject. Filed rate requests with TDI turned negative across both of its recent reporting windows, including June to August 2026. Filed requests are not the same as what anybody pays, and a filed decrease takes time to reach renewals, so this is not a promise that a quote will fall. It is a genuine change in direction after several years of increases, and it is the freshest thing available on the topic.
Why two houses on the same street quote differently
This is where Brad's argument and the state's data agree. His version, from a webinar: “Because depending on where what side of the street you're on, you have cheap taxes or high taxes, cheap insurance or high insurance.” Roof age, construction, distance to a fire station, claim history at the address and which side of a jurisdiction line the lot falls on all move the number, and none of them is a fact about the buyer. It is why he is blunt about the tools most people start with: “most of the mortgage calculators just can't figure it out, because payments in Texas are wacky, because we have very variable taxes and insurance costs.”
What to do with that, practically
Get a real quote on a real address before you fall in love with a house, and get it early enough that it can still change your shortlist. The work that follows is the part most buyers skip, and Brad describes it as the whole opportunity: “The opportunity that creates there is if we can just sit down and run all the taxes, all the insurance, all the scenarios on all the different homes in the neighborhood, then oftentimes we'll find one that we can smash into your monthly payment budget.” Two houses a street apart can carry a monthly difference large enough to matter, and the only way to find it is to price the addresses rather than the area.
Want this checked against your own situation?
The free class covers the whole picture in 45 minutes. Or take two minutes and see which programs are worth a look for someone in your position.