Climate change is affecting insurance coverage, real estate sales

Xcel Energy is just one utility being bankrupted by insurance companies looking for culprits in human-caused disasters now that it's been determined all-day hurricane force winds drove the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado. And they're not small fires either as the Smokehouse Creek Fire Complex spread over 1.2 million acres of the Republican Texas panhandle where sixty counties face disaster declarations. NorthWestern Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, Xcel, Black Hills Energy, Hawaiian Electric Company and Public Service of New Mexico or PNM are all responsible for massive blazes often causing billions in damages. 

As utilities scramble to avoid liability for wildfires, insurance companies are bilking homeowners in the wildland urban interface and denying coverage interfering with mortgages, real estate values and property ownership. Since 2018 nearly two million home insurance contracts have been dropped as companies like State Farm and lobbyists like the American Property Casualty Insurance Association acknowledge humanity's role in a burning planet. 

In parts of Wyoming, Hawaii and California insurance company nonrenewals have increased as much as 1400 percent since 2018. In New Mexico some insurance premiums have gone up more than thirty percent while the state-run high-risk insurance program for homeowners who can’t find coverage on the private market is more expensive and highly provisional. In Grant County, New Mexico utilities, insurers the county commission, lenders and developers have allowed the building of tinder boxes packed so closely together that homeowners can see into each others bathrooms. 

The following quote is behind a paywall at the New York Times.

On a recent afternoon, Eric Casler, an assistant professor of natural sciences at Western New Mexico University, surveyed the neighborhoods that have grown up north of the city limits. “See all these scattered houses out here?” Mr. Casler said. If a wildfire started to burn through the area, “it’s going to be really hard for them to stop it.” Across Grant County, 51 home insurance contracts were not renewed in 2018, based on the data provided to the committee. That’s about one in 100 policies. By last year, that number had doubled to 100 nonrenewals, even as the county’s total population shrank. [Insurers Are Dropping Homeowners as Climate Shocks Worsen]

Driven by forty mile per hour winds a wildfire on Thursday and Friday cleared some 2800 acres of cured grasses near Broken Bow, Nebraska. 

In South Dakota Butte and Fall River Counties lead that state in nonrenewals and an unlocked interactive map is linked here.