Nearly 33M Coastal Homes at Risk From ‘Very Active’ Hurricane Season, Report Says

Potential losses — both insured and uninsured — could reach trillions of dollars, information services company reports.

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 SchaferSenior Editor
  • 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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MacKenzie Korris
Reviewed byMacKenzie Korris
MacKenzie Korris
MacKenzie KorrisInsurance Copy Editor

MacKenzie Korris is an insurance copy editor with years of experience in print and digital media. He strives to craft actionable, inclusive copy that fosters smart decision-making through reader autonomy. He has a journalism degree from Saint Louis University.

Published June 12, 2024 at 5:00 AM PDT | Reading time: 3 minutes

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Hurricane season is here, and more than 32.7 million homes on the U.S. Gulf and East Coasts are at risk from hurricane damage. If the almost unimaginable happened and all sustained catastrophic damage, it would cost nearly $11 trillion to rebuild them, according to a new report by CoreLogic.

The information services company looked at rebuilding costs for single- and multi-family homes in communities from Texas to Maine. Not surprisingly, the regions CoreLogic found to be most at risk for catastrophic weather events also have high homeowners insurance costs.

“The difference in reconstruction cost value and insured value is widening,” the report concludes. “Coverage cannot keep up with the rising amount of risk, whether because of changes in natural disaster activity (e.g. climate change) or shifts in exposure (e.g. more development, people moving to disaster-prone areas like the coast).

Spreading home insurance crises

High winds and storm surges are the most commonly faced risks of hurricane season, and homeowners rely on home insurance and flood insurance to help them rebuild when disaster strikes. But states across the U.S. are experiencing rising home insurance rates, and some have reached crisis levels.

California’s and Florida’s home insurance crises are spurred by the areas’ high risk of climate-change-related weather disasters. Both states have also experienced a shrinking home insurance marketplace, as multiple insurers either stopped writing new policies or left the states altogether.

The increase in risk and the reduction in insurance options means homeowners in affected states are seeing higher home insurance and flood insurance costs.

For example, 73% of California homeowners with flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program will see an increase of $120 per year, while 4% are facing annual increases of $240 or more. And Florida homeowners pay the highest insurance rates in the country: $10,996 annually, according to Insurify data.

Wind damage risks

Researchers assessed property exposure to damage from hurricane winds and storm surges, the main risks of any hurricane season.

In its 2024 Hurricane Risk Report, CoreLogic found that:

  • More than 32.7 million homes are at moderate or greater risk, with potential reconstruction cost value (RCV) greater than $10.8 billion.

  • Nearly 22.8 million homes have a high or greater risk, with a potential RCV of more than $7.1 billion.

  • Close to 15 million homes have a very high or greater risk and an exposure greater than $4.1 billion.

  • At extreme or greater risk applies to more than 6.4 million homes, with a potential RCV of $1.68 billion.

Storm surge flood risks

Approximately 7.7 million homes threatened by wind damage are also at risk of storm surge flooding, CoreLogic reports. Homes at the greatest risk are most likely to suffer flood damage in less severe storms, such as Category 1 hurricanes. But a catastrophic storm, such as a Category 5, would likely affect all at-risk properties.

Storm Category
Affected Homes
Reconstruction Cost
Home’s Risk Level
11.3 million+$396 billionSevere
22.8 million+$875 billionHigh
34.5 million+$1.4 billionModerate
46.6 million+$2.04 billionModerate
57.7 million+$2.34 billionLow
Source: CoreLogic Hurricane Risk Report 2024

The U.S. averages 17.7 hurricane strikes per decade — 5.6 of which are major — according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

From 20112020, the U.S. had 19 hurricanes, which included just four major storms and only one Category 5, NOAA data shows. By comparison, the U.S. has had four direct hurricane strikes since 2021, but three of them were major storms of Category 3 and higher.

“There were few landfalling and damaging hurricanes in the U.S. in 2023, despite the record warm Atlantic Ocean [sea surface temperature] and the resulting highly active season,” CoreLogic notes in its report.

What’s next: Active hurricane season ahead

NOAA and other weather experts have predicted an exceptionally active 2024 hurricane season. The administration expects 1725 total named storms, with 813 storms likely evolving into hurricanes, and four to seven reaching land as a Category 3, 4, or 5, NOAA says.

Forecasting service WeatherBELL Analytics put it bluntly, predicting a “hurricane season from hell” in 2024. Areas that escaped hurricane impact in 2023 should prepare for “very high levels of activity,” the service warns.

WeatherBell forecasts three to five major hurricane impacts in the U.S.

In its report, CoreLogic refers to an infamous series of hurricanes that made landfall in the U.S. in 2005: Katrina, Wilma, Rita, Dennis, and Ophelia. Those storms claimed 1,408 lives and caused damage totaling over $100 billion. If those storms occurred in 2024, the ground-up damage value would be nearly $160 billion, CoreLogic says.

Homeowners, communities, and insurers should take steps to prepare for the season ahead, the company recommends.

“The 2024 hurricane season will likely be a very active season, potentially even more so than 2023 with a shift to La Niña conditions. The necessary ingredients will be present, so mitigation tactics should be top of mind in order to prevent significant losses should a storm make landfall in a coastal metropolitan area.”



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 SchaferSenior Editor
Chris Schafer
Chris SchaferSenior Editor
  • 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.

Featured in

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MacKenzie Korris
Reviewed byMacKenzie KorrisInsurance Copy Editor
MacKenzie Korris
MacKenzie KorrisInsurance Copy Editor

MacKenzie Korris is an insurance copy editor with years of experience in print and digital media. He strives to craft actionable, inclusive copy that fosters smart decision-making through reader autonomy. He has a journalism degree from Saint Louis University.