Facts + Statistics: Renters insurance

The average homeowners insurance premium rose by 3.1 percent in 2018, following a 1.6 percent increase in 2017, according to a January 2021 study by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the latest data available. The average renters insurance premium fell 0.6 percent in 2018 marking the fourth consecutive annual decline. Renters insurance premiums fell 2.7 percent in 2017.

Nationwide, 45.1 percent of renters spent at least 30 percent of their household income on rent and utilities in 2019, according to the U.S. Census. In Florida the percentage was 52.4 percent of renters, the highest among all the states.

The renter share of all occupied housing units in the United States increased steadily from 33.4 percent in 2010 to 36.4 percent in 2016, according to the Census Bureau, but dropped in the next three years to 35.4 percent in 2019. In 2019 people under the age of 30 accounted for 49 percent of people in rental housing, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC).

In 2019 metropolitan areas with the high proportions of renting households included New York (27 percent), Los Angeles (24 percent), San Diego and Miami (both 21 percent), and San Jose (20 percent), according the NMHC’s analysis of U.S. Census statistics. Metropolitan areas are regions that consists of a city and surrounding communities that are linked by social and economic factors, as established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and are much larget than the city for which they are named. On a state-by-state basis New York had the most people living in rental units (24 percent) followed by California and North Dakota, both with 17 percent, Maryland with 15 percent and Nevada with 14 percent. 

Renter household growth seems to have plateaued by 2019, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ America’s Rental Housing 2020. Meanwhile the number of high-income renters has continued to climb between 2016 and 2018, a sharp reversal of trends in the 2000’s when low-income households drove 93 percent of renter growth. In addition, renting is now more common among age groups and family types such households headed by 35-64 year olds and those with children which in the past were more likely to own their homes.