Between January 2019 and October 2022, the average Colorado homeowner’s insurance premium rose 51.7%. Meanwhile, 76% of Colorado carrier groups wrote fewer policies in Jan-Oct 2022 than the same period of 2021; 32% shrank by more than 10%.
None of those numbers is a forecast, a model output, or a political position. They are filings collected by a state regulator that describe what has already happened.
Climate risk reaches real estate as arithmetic long before it arrives as weather, and that math is currently missing from most underwriting.
Market Signal
Real estate markets are good at pricing what has already happened. Comparable sales, trailing rent growth, or historical expense ratios. They are considerably worse at pricing something that is changing steadily in one direction.
That gap has a name. Mispricing. And it runs in both directions, which is the part most commentary misses. Some assets are carrying risk nobody has charged for. Others are carrying a discount they no longer deserve.
Colorado is a useful place to see it, because the state regulator has documented the sequence in public filings rather than leaving it to inference.
The Colorado Division of Insurance found the average homeowner premium rose 51.7% between January 2019 and October 2022. Research from Colorado State University’s REDI Institute, published in August 2025, cites a 58% increase from 2018 to 2023, a figure it takes from Insurify. Two different windows, one direction.
The availability side moved with it. That same Division of Insurance work found that 76% of Colorado carrier groups wrote fewer policies in Jan-Oct 2022 than the same period of 2021, and the study reports that some carriers have placed new-business restrictions and non-renewals on the properties with the highest wildfire risk. The wildfire band it maps runs close to the densely populated areas of Denver, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins. That research was done before the 2026 fire season.
In summary, price rose, availability narrowed, and neither showed up in a comparable sale.
In April 2025, Colorado launched a FAIR Plan, a state-backed insurer of last resort offering up to $750,000 of residential coverage. It was projected to reach 20,000 to 29,000 policies, depending on the source, but only 55 policies had been written by August 2025, four months after launch.
That number deserves more attention than it has received, because a last-resort program sized for 20,000 to 29,000 homes that had written 55 policies four months in is telling you something - but what? The plan’s executive director gave three reasons in August 2025: coverage thinner than a private policy, buyers choosing fuller policies from nonadmitted carriers, and a program too new for agents and homeowners to know. Eligibility is also narrow, requiring three formal rejections from standard insurers, and the policy pays actual cash value rather than replacement cost.
Perhaps confusingly, an August 2026 report from an insurance marketplace describes premium growth slowing and competition returning to the residential private insurance market.
Note, though, that a deceleration in the rate of increase is not a reversal, and a competitive market can still decline to write a specific parcel. Price and availability are separate variables, and only one of them is cyclical.
Case Study
The following is a modeled composite comparing two market positions, not two specific transactions. The hazard and insurance figures have sources below; the purchase-price equivalence is a device to isolate the variable.
Take two properties, newly built and bought eight years ago, at the same price with the same rents and comps.
Property A sits in the Colorado Springs metro, closer to the Front Range foothills. Property B sits in Greeley’s University District, in northern Colorado.
On paper, they are interchangeable. Same basis, same near-term income, same comparable sales. Most analysis stops there.
Over a five- to ten-year hold, they are not the same asset, and the reason has nothing to do with the buildings.
Property A carries acute wildfire exposure. CoreLogic’s 2023 wildfire risk analysis counted 51,321 homes in the Colorado Springs metro at moderate or greater wildfire risk, a count the same vendor, now Cotality, put at 49,560 in August 2025, and the Front Range foothills are documented as a wildland-urban interface. That exposure determines insurance access, and insurance access determines financing.
Property B carries less wildfire exposure and a different problem. Greeley ranks among the top 10 for the increase in annual days above 100°F since the 1970s. That is chronic heat rather than acute hazard.
The point is not that one location is safe. The risks are different in kind; they flow through different line items, and only one currently appears in a pro forma.
Wildfire exposure flows through insurance premium and availability, then through debt service and covenant headroom, and finally through the buyer pool at exit.
Chronic heat moves through cooling load, equipment duty cycles, and capital replacement timing, which moves through operating expense and reserve adequacy.
Both end in the same place. First net operating income, and then value. They simply take different routes and arrive on different schedules.
Then 2026 tested the wildfire side directly.
The Aspen Acres Fire ignited on June 29, 2026, in Custer and Pueblo counties, south of Colorado Springs along the same Front Range corridor. It burned about 102,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 850 structures, including at least 337 homes, placing it among the ten largest wildfires in Colorado history by acreage. Several other significant fires have burned this season, including Ferris, at 64,881 acres in Dolores and Montezuma counties, Gold Mountain, at 39,744 acres near Ouray, and Willow, at about 7,200 acres near Leadville.
Sadly, the exposure was documented years in advance. CoreLogic had counted the homes. The Division of Insurance had recorded the carrier retreat. The fire simply arrived and collected on what the filings had already described.
Strategic Implications
Framing this as math rather than a climate argument is practical, not rhetorical. An underwriting committee cannot act on a worldview. It can act on a line item.
Climate risk reaches a real estate decision through four measurable channels.
Insurance. Premium and, more decisively, availability. A property that cannot place coverage cannot secure debt, and that is a binary rather than a price.
Capital. Lender screens, covenant thresholds, and the composition of the buyer pool at exit. These operate as eligibility tests, and a bid that never gets made is invisible in the comps.
Policy. Building codes, zoning, and land use. This is the channel most investors track least, and it moves fastest once it moves.
Materials and construction. What a compliant building now costs to build or bring up to standard, and what that does to replacement cost and, therefore, insured value.
Colorado has just demonstrated the policy channel. The state’s Wildfire Resiliency Code Board established Colorado’s first statewide wildfire building code just one year ago, in July 2025. Local jurisdictions must adopt it by April 1, 2026, and fully comply by July 1, 2026. Colorado Springs has proposed extending wildfire code requirements to the grassland on its eastern edge, an area not previously treated as interface.
Follow what that does to the two properties. New construction in the affected zones is now built to a higher standard, which changes its insurability and its replacement cost. Existing stock built to the prior standard is now competing against buildings that will insure more cheaply than it does.
That is a repricing, and it did not require a fire. It required a code board.
The same logic applies to the materials channel. When a code mandates ignition-resistant assemblies, the cost of a compliant building rises, replacement cost rises with it, and insured value follows. A supplier that already makes the compliant product is no longer selling a premium option. They are selling the only compliant one.
Future Signal
Three things worth tracking, and all three are observable without a model.
Whether the new code changes insurability, not just construction cost. A building standard earns its keep in this market when carriers price against it. If Colorado’s code becomes something an underwriter recognizes, it converts a compliance cost into an insurability asset. If it does not, it is a cost with no offsetting return, and that outcome is worth knowing early.
Whether FAIR Plan take-up rises toward its projection. Fifty-five policies against a projection of 20,000 to 29,000 suggests either a program that hasn’t been needed yet or one that hasn’t been found yet. Which it is tells you how far private capacity has actually withdrawn, and the 2026 fire season will test it.
Whether the softening holds through a bad year. Premium growth is slowing, and competition is returning. Both are real. Neither has been tested by a season like the one Colorado just had (and it’s not over yet), and the useful question is not whether rates decelerate but whether carriers keep writing the specific parcels they had started to avoid.
There is a fourth thing to watch that sits underneath all of them. Whether the two properties in this brief still trade at the same price in five years.
That is the only test that matters, and it is the one nobody runs, because it requires holding a comparison in mind for longer than a transaction cycle. The comps once told you they were equivalent, but they were built before any of this was priced.
The through-line is that none of this requires anyone to “agree about climate”. It requires reading filings, codes, and loss records and putting the results into the same model that already accounts for property tax and vacancy.
A property you can insure in year ten is a property you can finance in year ten. A property you can finance is a property you can sell.
Brief 1 takes this from Colorado to the national picture and traces how premium repricing moves through NOI into value. Brief 2 puts the same calculation inside a single acquisition.
As always, KNOW YOUR SIGNALS and BE CLIMATE READY!
Jamie
Run this on your own deal
The CRDF Signal Tracker™ built for this brief lets you log insurance, policy, and hazard signals in your own markets, translate each into a financial impact, and score which ones are actually moving your pricing. Free, no signup: Brief 0 - CRDF Signal Tracker™ (xlxs)
New to the framework? The blank master Signal Tracker and Deal Stress Test workbooks are at climatereadyre.com/tools.
Related briefs
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Brief 4 · How Much Does Coastal Hotel Insurance Cost? Florida Trends & Benchmarks - coming soon
Brief 11 · Hurricane Helene Aftermath: Western North Carolina Home Insurance Rates Rise 4.4% - coming soon
Brief 6 · The 30-Year Mortgage and Climate Risk: What the LA Fires Exposed About Loan Duration - coming soon
Next in sequence:
Brief 1 · Insurance Premium Hikes: Impact on Cap Rates & Property Value - coming soon
Sources
Every figure above includes the date the data covers, the publication date, and the date I verified it.
Colorado homeowner premium increase — the average Colorado homeowner’s insurance premium rose 51.7% between January 2019 and October 2022.
Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting for the Colorado Division of Insurance — Homeowners Insurance Availability Study · Data as of Jan 2019 – October 2022 · Published Mar 2023 · Accessed Aug 2026
Carrier retreat — 76% of Colorado carrier groups wrote fewer policies in Jan-Oct 2022 than the same period of 2021; 32% shrank by more than 10%. Some carriers report new-business restrictions and non-renewals on the highest-wildfire-risk properties; the wildfire band runs close to Denver, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins.
Colorado Division of Insurance — Homeowners Insurance Availability Study · Data as of Jan – October 2022 · Published Mar 2023 · Accessed Aug 2026
Longer-window premium increase — 58% from 2018 to 2023, a figure the report takes from Insurify.
Colorado State University REDI Institute — Homeowners Insurance Trends in Colorado · Data as of 2018–2023 · Published Aug 2025 · Accessed Sep 2026
A different window and a secondary figure: the report cites Insurify, a quote marketplace, rather than regulator filings.
Colorado FAIR Plan — launched April 2025; up to $750,000 of residential coverage; projected at 20,000 to 29,000 policies depending on the source; 55 policies written by August 2025, four months after launch.
Insurance Business — Colorado launches FAIR Plan to aid high-risk property owners · Data as of Dec 2024 · Published Dec 5, 2024 · Accessed Aug 2026
Launch date and the 55-policy count: E&E News (POLITICO) — This state insurance plan has only 55 customers. Is that a problem? · Data as of Aug 8, 2025 · Published Aug 15, 2025 · Accessed Sep 2026 · Also reported via Bankrate and by latentinsure.com — Colorado Homeowners Insurance · Published date not stated · Accessed Sep 2026.
The two sources give different projections, and both are retained rather than reconciled: Insurance Business puts the plan at about 1% of state properties, or roughly 29,000; latentinsure.com puts it at roughly 20,000 by 2028. latentinsure.com is a vendor blog and carries low weight.
Colorado Springs wildfire exposure, current count — Cotality’s 2025 report puts 49,560 Colorado Springs metro homes at moderate or greater wildfire risk, with $23.1 billion of reconstruction value.
Cotality — 2025 Wildfire Risk Report · Data as of 2025 · Published Aug 19, 2025 · Accessed Sep 2026
Vendor model output, carried as attributed context. Same moderate-or-greater band as the 2023 count below.
Colorado Springs wildfire exposure — 51,321 metro homes at moderate or greater wildfire risk in CoreLogic’s 2023 report, with $22.1 billion of replacement value.
CBS News Colorado — Colorado wildfire risk report (CoreLogic data) · Data as of 2023 · Published 2023 · Accessed Aug 2026
Greeley chronic heat — Greeley ranks among the top 10 for the increase in annual days above 100°F since the 1970s.
Colorado Public Radio — Coloradans Prep To Deal With Health Impacts As Extreme Heat Surges (Climate Central data) · Data as of 1970s – 2016 · Published Sep 2016 · Accessed Aug 2026
Observed increase, not a projection. The above-90°F ranking in the same source belongs to Fort Collins, not Greeley.
Aspen Acres Fire and the 2026 season — ignited June 29, 2026, in Custer and Pueblo counties; about 102,000 acres; more than 850 structures damaged or destroyed, including at least 337 homes; among the ten largest Colorado wildfires by acreage. Ferris: 64,881 acres, Dolores and Montezuma counties; Gold Mountain: 39,744 acres near Ouray; Willow: about 7,200 acres near Leadville.
The Colorado Sun — Colorado wildfires tracker and map · Data as of Jun – August 2026 · Published 2026 · Accessed Aug 2026
Containment and acreage were still moving at the time of writing. Home counts from the Pueblo and Custer County damage assessments as reported by The Denver Post, July 11, 2026; Gold Mountain acreage from the West Slope Fire Info final update, August 30, 2026; Ferris and Willow acreage from Denver7, July 29 and August 1, 2026.
Colorado statewide wildfire building code — first statewide wildfire code established by the Wildfire Resiliency Code Board in July 2025, with local adoption required by April 1, 2026, and full compliance by July 1, 2026; Colorado Springs has proposed extending requirements to its eastern grassland edge (Colorado Politics, March 6, 2026).
Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control — Wildfire Resiliency Code Board · Data as of Jul 2025 – 2026 · Published 2026 · Accessed Aug 2026
Counter-signal on premium growth — Matic, an insurance marketplace reporting its own quote data, describes slowing premium growth and returning competition.
GlobeNewswire — Home Insurance Report: Market Turns a Corner As Premium Growth Slows and Competition Returns · Data as of 2026 · Published Aug 6, 2026 · Accessed Aug 2026
Describes deceleration in the rate of increase, not a price decrease, and does not address availability at the parcel level.
Two-property comparison — equivalent basis, rents and comps, diverging over a five- to ten-year hold.
CRREI modeled composite · Method: two real market positions compared with purchase price and income held constant to isolate hazard exposure as the variable · Modeled — not two specific transactions
Commentary and analysis only. Not investment, financial, legal, tax, or professional advice. CRDF tools are illustrative; examples are composites drawn from public data. Do your own due diligence and consult qualified professionals.
I run this analysis on specific deals. If you are underwriting an asset in a market exposed to wildfires, floods, hail, or heat and want the insurance and exit assumptions pressure-tested before you sign, book 20 minutes.
Jamie Wolf, MBA — Founder & Publisher, Climate-Ready Real Estate Investing, © 2026, CR REI Holdings LLC