The homeowners insurance picture has gotten meaningfully worse in the last six months, according to Kin’s 2026 Midyear Homeownership Report.

Kin surveyed 1,000 homeowners to see how sentiment has shifted since its January 2026 Homeownership Trends Report.

In the earlier report, Kin Founder and CEO Sean Harper predicted a more stable market for home insurance premiums in 2026. “Elevated inflation was one of the big drivers of premium increases in previous years, but inflation is now occurring at a more predictable pace. Substantial premium increases were the story in 2024, but they weren’t the story in 2025 except in a few places like California. And they won’t be the story in 2026.”

Related story: Insurance Costs, Climate Concerns Factor Heavily in U.S. Home Buying Decisions

However, 45% of homeowners nationwide said they’ve found it difficult to find affordable insurance in the last six months—12% report it was “very difficult” with few or no options, and 33% said it was “somewhat difficult.”

The share of homeowners uncertain about maintaining coverage at all has grown from 31% to 37% between December and May.

Most homeowners (86%) expect their premium to go up in 2026. While 43% of homeowners predicted premium increases between 1% and 5% in December, that number has shrunk to 38%. Meanwhile, 20% predict an increase of 11% or more, compared with just 16% six months ago.

Only 3% of homeowners said they expect their premium to decrease in 2026.

Two in five homeowners have been personally touched by a nonrenewal or cancellation—8.5% had their own policy dropped, 22% know someone who did, and 9.5% experienced both.

“That’s a pretty alarming statistic,” said Kin Chief Insurance & Compliance Officer Angel Conlin. “The risk map has changed. Areas that were once considered low-risk are generating the kinds of catastrophic losses that, not long ago, were concentrated in a handful of high-exposure markets.”

Rising costs are impacting whether people are planning to buy or sell homes in 2026:

• 56% of homeowners said high home prices would be their single biggest concern if buying or selling in the next six months, above mortgage rates and climate risk.
• 64% said that insurance prices moderately, seriously or very heavily weigh on their home purchase decisions.
• 50% of homeowners said they would need mortgage rates at or below 4%—levels not seen since 2021—before they’d consider buying a new home.

Predictions for H2 2026

Conlin believes the second half of 2026 may bring modest relief in some markets. “I don’t anticipate conditions becoming significantly more difficult in the second half of 2026. The market tends to move gradually, so homeowners should expect relative stability — with the possibility of some incremental improvement in select markets.”

The locked-in homeowner problem isn’t resolving on its own. Harper frames it in stark terms: “The K-shaped economy is real, and homeowners are on the upper end of it. Home values have appreciated significantly. The people who are struggling are the ones who can’t afford to get in — and that gap is only widening as rates stay elevated.”

Methodology

Kin commissioned Pollfish to poll a nationally representative sample of 1,000 American adults between the ages of 18 and 65 who currently own a single-family home in the United States. (For the purposes of this survey, apartments, condos, mobile and manufactured homes did not qualify as single-family homes.) The survey was performed online on May 25, 2026. Percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.