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- Housing market is still passing through a home insurance shock, Cotality's chief data officer says
Housing market is still passing through a home insurance shock, Cotality's chief data officer says
Cotality expects average annual U.S. homeowner insurance premiums to rise another 8% in 2026, followed by an additional 8% increase in 2027.
Lance Lambert
November 20, 2025
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Housing market is still passing through a home insurance shock, Cotality's chief data officer says
John Rogers, the Chief Data & Analytics Officer of Cotality speaking at ResiDay 2025
John Rogers, the Chief Data & Analytics Officer of Cotality (formerly known as CoreLogic) returned to ResiDay this year to give a two-part presentation: first, how risk—insurance, climate, construction cost—is reshaping the housing market, and second, how AI is about to turn property professionals into “superheroes.”
In 2011, the firm was predominantly a U.S. mortgage-data company. Today, Cotality is a multi-country, multi-industry analytics platform that supports more than 1 million real estate agents, touches over 8 out of every 10 U.S. mortgages, and interacts with a similar share of property insurance policies. Across those businesses, Cotality collects data from 22,000 unique sources—from county recorders, to satellite imagery, to lidar scans on smartphones.
“I’m fortunate to look after this 21st-century data and AI manufacturing plant,” Rogers told the audience. He manages a team of about 200 data scientists and meteorologists.
Insurance now accounts for 9% of the typical U.S. homeowner’s payment—the highest share on record, according to Cotality. Several states have seen double-digit premium increases in just the past year.
Looking ahead, Cotality expects average annual U.S. homeowner insurance premiums to rise another 8% in 2026, followed by an additional 8% increase in 2027.
According to Cotality, three forces are putting upward pressure on home insurance:
—> Rising construction and material costs. Cotality tracks the exact reconstruction cost for every property in the country—“every nail and two-by-four.” During the Pandemic Housing Boom, there was historic overheating in both home prices and material prices, which has led to higher replacement costs. That’s still feeding into higher home insurance premiums.
—> More homes facing climate-related hazards. Roughly 12% of today’s U.S. housing stock sits in high-risk hazard zones—wildfire, winter storm, hail, and flooding—representing $4.3 trillion in hypothetical reconstruction cost. By 2050, that share rises to 20%, or $7.2 trillion. Cotality models the financial impact of each hazard on every property, giving insurers—and increasingly homeowners—risk scores that account for both current and future conditions.
—> Migration into high-risk areas. The densification of the U.S. housing stock mirrors the growth of homes in hazard-prone regions. “One in six Americans now lives in a high-wildfire-risk area,” Rogers noted. Florida and Georgia, which experienced rapid population growth, are among the states most exposed.
How better risk science can lower premiums
After showing video footage of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfire, Rogers turned to how science and data can reduce losses—and premiums.
—> Urban conflagration drove the LA losses, he says. Despite relatively low wildfire risk scores, neighborhoods in the Palisades burned because of building-to-building ignition. Cotality is now modeling this “urban conflagration” risk at the individual-property level, giving insurers a clearer view of how fires spread across aging housing stock.
—> Rebuilding communities like Paradise for a safer future. Following the 2018 Paradise fire, he says Cotality helped design a rebuilding blueprint that could: Reduce wildfire risk by up to 75%, and cut insurance premiums by over 50%. The blueprint includes IBHS-standard hardened homes, redesigned lower-density layouts with fire breaks, and risk-mitigation strategies around community perimeters.
—> Lower premiums through home-level resilience assessments. Cotality worked with the California Department of Insurance to evaluate every home using aerial imagery and AI. Attributes such as roof materials, closed eaves, setbacks, and non-flammable defensible space feed into resilience scores that insurers use to cut premiums by 20% or more. These resilience assessments are now being deployed beyond California, he says. One striking example: Seminole County, Georgia—far from coastal hazards—has six times the risk level of hardened-home counties in Florida, underscoring the power of building codes.
AI arrives: Turning property pros into “superheroes”
The second half of Rogers’ presentation focused on AI—and how, as he put it, “AI is helping us [real estate professionals] become superheroes, not replacing us.”
—> Listings in under five minutes. Cotality has deployed AI tools across the 520 MLSs it supports. Agents can now: Upload photos, Dictate notes, and select key features. The system automatically generates a full listing narrative—something that previously took an hour—and can instantly translate it into Spanish.
—> Lidar-powered floor plans using only a phone. By walking the property with an iPhone or Android, agents, appraisers, and home inspectors can generate detailed, accurate floor plans using built-in lidar and spatial sensors. Insurance adjusters will be added next year.
—> Toward a digital twin for every structure in America. Through partnerships with satellite, aerial, and geospatial providers, Cotality is building what Rogers described as “the path to a digital twin of every structure in the United States.”
Rogers offered a sneak peek of a research tool currently in development—a housing-data terminal powered by a conversational AI assistant named Ali. The challenge: large language models are strong with text, but struggle with wide structured datasets—like housing tables with hundreds of columns. Rogers says Cotality is close to solving that accuracy problem. Ali will be rolled out in Q1 2026.
You can watch Rogers’ full ResiDay 2025 presentation here.
LendingOne's Jaime Arouh on who’s building, funding, and buying into BTR
Speaking at ResiDay 2025 on November 7, Jaime Arouh, managing director of the Institutional Group at LendingOne, explained what he’s seeing in the build-to-rent market right now.
Watch Arouh’s full ResiDay 2025 interview here.
CHART ERROR
In our Tuesday article, we had a labeling issue that conveyed incorrect data. The corrected chart is below.
ResiClub PRO members can find our updated home price analysis—down to the ZIP-code level—in the ResiClub Terminal.
