Ask an older homeowner what makes the house hard to keep and most will say property tax. It is the biggest bill, it arrives with a date on it, and everyone complains about it. But when we measured what actually changed in the budgets of older homeowners over the last several years, property tax barely moved. The bill that grew fastest was the one that protects the house itself: homeowners insurance.
The second bill of owning a home
For a homeowner who has paid off the mortgage, owning the house comes with two bills that a renter never sees. The property tax bill, and the insurance bill. Utilities matter too, but a renter pays those as well. Tax and insurance are the price of owning.
Our research, Staying Home, followed those bills for every household in the United States headed by someone 62 or older who owns their home. Between 2018 and 2024, after inflation:
- Property tax rose about 3 percent. It is still the largest single housing bill, about $4,000 a year.
- Utilities rose about 3 percent.
- Homeowners insurance rose about 24 percent. In Oregon, about 30 percent.
Over the same years, older homeowners with incomes under $50,000 saw their income fall by about 4 percent after inflation, while their insurance rose by about a quarter.
None of this is a criticism of how insurance is priced. Rebuilding costs rose. Weather losses rose. Reinsurance rose. Premiums followed. But the customer on the other end of the renewal notice is very often a person whose income is fixed, and for that customer a premium that rises faster than everything else is the bill that turns a tight budget into an impossible one.
What that does to your policyholders
Staying Home compares each older homeowner's income with the Elder Index, which measures what an older adult needs each month for housing, food, transportation, health care and other basics in their state. By that measure, about 13.5 million households headed by someone 62 or older who own their home, roughly four in ten, either cannot cover their basic costs or are barely covering them.
Two things about them matter to an insurer.
Most of them own their homes outright. Of those who cannot cover their basic costs, nearly six in ten have no mortgage. There is no lender escrowing the premium. When money runs short, the decision about the insurance bill is theirs alone, and that is where coverage gets reduced, deductibles get raised, or a policy lapses.
And many of them move. Financial pressure drives about 120,000 moves by older homeowners every year. Almost none are foreclosures. The house is sold, the family helps, a smaller place is found. For the insurer, a long-tenured customer with decades of claims-free history simply leaves the book.
An older homeowner who cannot keep up with the cost of the house is not a pricing problem an insurer can solve by itself. But she is a customer an insurer can help keep, if the income side of her budget changes.
Where home sharing comes in
The income side is exactly what home sharing changes. An older homeowner with a spare bedroom rents it to a home seeker who needs a safe, affordable place to live. The rent arrives every month. The house stays hers.
Staying Home measured how often that is enough. Of the 13.5 million older homeowners at risk, about 11.9 million have a spare room. At an affordable rent, averaging about $500 a month, about 3.1 million of them could cover their basic costs and stay. At a market rent, about 4.2 million.
Put that beside the premium. A room at an affordable rent covers the average older homeowner's yearly insurance bill in less than four months, and keeps paying for the rest of the year.
The question your agents already get
There is a practical reason insurers belong in this conversation, and it is one your agents already hear.
A homeowner thinking about sharing a room asks a sensible question: does my policy still cover me? The honest answer is that it depends on the policy. Many standard homeowners forms treat renting part of the home to a small number of roomers or boarders differently from running a rental business, and regulators have long advised homeowners to talk to their agent before they rent any part of the house. The details vary by company and by state.
For a 74-year-old deciding whether to open a room, "it depends" is often where the idea ends. Nobody wants to discover a coverage gap after a loss.
An insurer that answers the question clearly, with plain guidance on what a policyholder should do before sharing a room and, where it fits, an endorsement written for it, removes one of the most common reasons an older homeowner never tries. That is not a marketing claim. It is a service to a customer at the moment she needs it.
What we are not going to claim
It would be easy to say that a second person in the house means fewer losses: someone to notice the leak under the sink, the smoke alarm chirping, the furnace that stopped. It may well be true. We have not measured it, and we are not going to put a loss ratio in front of an underwriter that we cannot defend.
What we can say is simpler. Home sharing keeps homes occupied by the people who own them, and it keeps those people able to pay their bills, including yours.
What sponsorship supports
HomeShare Oregon and its national platform, HomeShare Online, connect home providers who want to stay in their homes with home seekers who need a safe, affordable place to live. The platform verifies identity, runs background checks in both directions, introduces people on how they actually live, and provides a written agreement built for shared homes. The process takes about three months, and home providers decide who moves in.
A sponsorship from a homeowners insurer supports three things.
- Reaching the homeowner before the renewal notice does. Outreach to older homeowners in the years when the pressure is building, rather than the week the house goes on the market.
- The infrastructure that makes a match safe. Verification, screening and agreements are what turn a spare room into a sound arrangement. They cost money to run, and the homeowner should not be the one paying for them.
- Clear guidance on coverage. We would like to publish, with an insurance partner, plain-language guidance for home providers on what to ask their insurer before sharing a room. Your name on the answer to the question your customers are already asking.
Your policyholders spent decades paying for the protection of a house they intend to keep. A sponsor can help make sure they get to keep it.
Read next
Staying Home has the figures for every state and DC, including what has happened to insurance, property tax and utilities for older homeowners in each.
When Your Customers Are Aging in Place, Where Is Your Brand? sets out what sponsorship looks like beyond a logo.
Sources
- Change in housing costs and income for older homeowners, 2018 to 2024, after inflation: HomeShare Oregon, Staying Home, 2026, from the American Community Survey 1-year Public Use Microdata Sample. Households headed by someone 62 or older who own their home. Insurance is the average across all such households, including those with no insurance cost recorded.
- At risk, spare rooms and "could stay": HomeShare Oregon, Staying Home, 2026, measured against the Elder Index (Gerontology Institute, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2025). The affordable rent is HUD's FY2026 Low HOME Rent and the market rent its Fair Market Rent, each divided by the home's bedrooms.
- Moves driven by financial pressure: HomeShare Oregon, Staying Home, from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 2010 to 2025. A central estimate within a range of about 61,000 to 207,000 a year.
- Months of rent to cover the premium: about $500 a month in rent against average 2024 insurance of about $1,680 a year for homeowners 62 and older, both from Staying Home. An illustration, not a figure for any particular household.
- Coverage for renting part of a home: National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Insurance Implications of Home-Sharing: Regulator Insights and Consumer Awareness, December 2016. Written mainly about short-term rentals; it notes that standard forms commonly carve out renting part of a residence to a small number of roomers or boarders, and advises consumers to speak with their agent. Policy terms vary by company and state.