12% Rate Hike on the Way for Thousands of California Home and Condo Owners

State Department of Insurance approved increases for California Automobile Insurance Company policyholders.

Evelyn Pimplaskar
Evelyn PimplaskarEditor-in-Chief, Director of Content
  • 10+ years in insurance and personal finance content

  • 30+ years in media, PR, and content creation

Evelyn leads Insurify’s content team. She’s passionate about creating empowering content to help people transform their financial lives and make sound insurance-buying decisions.

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Chris Schafer
Edited byChris Schafer
Chris Schafer
Chris SchaferDeputy Managing Editor, News and Marketing Content
  • 15+ years in content creation

  • 7+ years in business and financial services content

Chris is a seasoned writer/editor with past experience across myriad industries, including insurance, SAS, finance, Medicare, logistics, marketing/advertising, and many more.

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John Leach
Reviewed byJohn Leach
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John LeachSenior Insurance Copy Editor
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  • 8+ years editing experience

  • NPN: 20461358

John leads Insurify’s copy desk, helping ensure the accuracy and readability of Insurify’s content. He’s a licensed agent specializing in home and car insurance topics.

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California Automobile Insurance Company won state approval for a 12% rate increase that will affect nearly 600,000 homeowners, condo owners, and renters in the Golden State.

The rate hike, which will spawn an average annual premium increase of $236.50 for CAIC homeowners policies, takes effect on March 26. It will apply to new and renewing policies.

CAIC is the fifth insurer in recent months to receive approval from the California Department of Insurance (CDI) to increase property insurance rates.

Impact on CAIC policyholders

The CDI approved an overall rate increase of 12% for CAIC, but percentage increases vary by policy type. Californians with HO-3 policies (homeowners insurance) will see an increase of 12.3%, while those with HO-6 (condo) policies are in line for a 9.4% increase. HO-4 policies (renters insurance) are subject to the lowest increase — 7.5%.

Average annual premium increases for 441,761 affected homeowners range from $76.86 to $237.90. The total average premium increase for 70,223 condo owners will be $80.57 per year, according to CAIC’s rate filing. And 85,935 renters will see little to no impact from the rate increase.

CAIC cited “poor loss experience” as driving its request for rate increases.

California’s current home insurance market

In the last quarter of 2024, the CDI approved multiple rate increases for insurance companies selling homeowners, renters, and condo insurance in California, including:

  • USAA: 16% increase for homeowners policies and 31% for condo owners policies

  • USAA Casualty Insurance Company: 25% for homeowners and 40% for condo owners

  • Amica: 21% for homeowners, 4.5% for condo owners, and 1% for renters

  • American Modern Home Insurance: 42.2% for renters insurance

  • MAPFRE Insurance Company: 6.5% for homeowners insurance

Altogether, the approved increases affect more than 967,000 policyholders in the state.

California’s property insurance market has long been in crisis. A tight regulatory environment and catastrophe-driven losses inspired multiple insurance companies to reduce or eliminate the business they did in the state.

But under Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s Sustainable Insurance Strategy, the state has implemented regulatory changes aimed at making it easier and more rewarding for property insurers to operate in California. Among the measures:

  • Insurers may now use predictive modeling (which uses damage projections rather than historical experience data) in rate-setting.

  • Insurance companies must increase the amount of business they do in wildfire-prone regions, reaching at least 85% of their statewide market share.

  • Capping the amount of reinsurance costs companies can pass on to policyholders.

What’s next

The CDI says these regulatory changes will help stabilize California’s home insurance market and ensure property owners have more insurance options. At least one insurer has resumed doing business in California.

Farmers Insurance announced in December 2024 that it would begin increasing the number of new home insurance policies it sells in the Golden State by 2,500 per month. In 2023, the insurer limited the number of new home insurance policies it would issue in California and paused new policies entirely for its other property insurance lines.

Evelyn Pimplaskar
Evelyn PimplaskarEditor-in-Chief, Director of Content

Evelyn Pimplaskar is Insurify’s director of content. With 30-plus years in content creation – including 10 years specializing in personal finance – Evelyn’s done everything from covering volatile local elections as a beat reporter to building fintech content libraries from the ground up.

Before joining Insurify, she was editor-in-chief at Credible, where she launched and developed the lending marketplace’s media partnership’s content initiative and managed the restructuring of the editorial team to enhance content production efficiency. Formerly, as tax editor for Credit Karma, Evelyn built a library of more than 300 educational articles on federal and state taxes, achieving triple-digit year-over-year growth in e-files from organic search.

Her early career included work as a content marketer, vice president and managing officer of a boutique public relations agency, chief copy editor for 14 weekly Forbes publications, reporting for large and mid-sized daily newspapers, and freelancing for the Associated Press.

Evelyn is passionate about creating personal finance content that distills complex topics into relatable, easy-to-understand stories. She believes great content helps empower readers with the information they need to make important personal finance decisions.

Chris Schafer
Edited byChris SchaferDeputy Managing Editor, News and Marketing Content
Chris Schafer
Chris SchaferDeputy Managing Editor, News and Marketing Content
  • 15+ years in content creation

  • 7+ years in business and financial services content

Chris is a seasoned writer/editor with past experience across myriad industries, including insurance, SAS, finance, Medicare, logistics, marketing/advertising, and many more.

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John Leach
Reviewed byJohn LeachSenior Insurance Copy Editor
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John LeachSenior Insurance Copy Editor
  • Licensed property and casualty insurance agent

  • 8+ years editing experience

  • NPN: 20461358

John leads Insurify’s copy desk, helping ensure the accuracy and readability of Insurify’s content. He’s a licensed agent specializing in home and car insurance topics.

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