25 Landlord Insurance Statistics Every Rental Owner Should Know
What it costs to insure a rental, who owns U.S. rental housing, the fire, water, and liability losses behind landlord claims, and the vacancy and eviction risks to rental income, in 25 cited statistics for landlords.
Owning a rental means insuring a building you do not live in, occupied by people whose habits you do not control. That changes the risk: a vacancy can leave damage undiscovered for weeks, a liability claim can come from a tenant’s guest, and a fire can wipe out both the building and the rent it produces. This report gathers 25 cited statistics on the size and ownership of the U.S. rental market, what it now costs to insure and operate a rental, the losses behind landlord insurance claims, and the vacancy and eviction risks that threaten rental income. Every figure comes from a federal agency, a regulator, or a research body, never a sales page.
Key Takeaways
- Rentals are mostly small properties - 82.9 percent of the nation’s roughly 19 million rental properties are single-unit homes.
- Big investors are a small slice nationally - large institutional investors owned about 3 percent of single-family rentals in 2022, though as much as 22% in some metros.
- Insurance costs jumped - apartment property insurance rose from $39 to $68 per unit per month between 2019 and 2024, after inflation.
- Owners absorb most of the increase - each extra dollar of insurance cost cut landlords’ net income by about 72 cents.
- Vacancy is climbing - the national rental vacancy rate reached 7.3 percent in mid-2026, up from 6.3% three years earlier.
- Weather still drives the losses - wind and hail produced 42.5 percent of homeowners insurance losses in 2023, the largest share of any peril.
How big the U.S. rental market is
1. 46.8 million households rent their homes
The U.S. had 46.8 million renter-occupied homes in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Census Bureau, making up 31.3% of the entire housing inventory. The homeownership rate stood at 65.0%. Each of those homes sits in a building whose structure is the owner’s to insure, not the tenant’s. That is a large and steady customer base for landlord coverage, and a large pool of buildings exposed to the same storms, fires, and lawsuits as owner-occupied homes.
2. The U.S. has about 19 million rental properties
The 2024 Rental Housing Finance Survey, released in February 2026, counted 18,965,000 rental properties containing about 49.7 million rental units. The survey, run by the Census Bureau for HUD, is the only data source with a comprehensive picture of mortgage financing for all types of rental properties, and it also tracks property values, rental income, and operating costs. Each property is a separate insurance decision, whether it is a single house or a 300-unit complex.
3. 82.9% of rental properties are single-unit homes
Most rental properties are small. Single-unit properties make up 82.9 percent of all rental properties, about 15.7 million of them, although they hold only 31.6% of rental units. This is the world of the small landlord: one house, one tenant, one policy. When a single rental burns or floods, there is no other unit’s rent to cushion the loss, which makes lost-rent coverage especially important at this scale.
- 1 unit 83%
- 2 to 4 units 15%
- 5 or more units 3%
4. Large buildings hold 39% of rental units
The picture flips when you count apartments instead of properties. Buildings with 50 or more units are just 0.4 percent of rental properties but contain 39.2% of all rental units. Properties with two to four units make up 14.6% of properties and 15.5% of units, which means about 97.5% of rental properties have four or fewer units. Small landlords own most of the buildings, while large owners house a large share of the tenants.
Who owns America’s rentals
5. Large institutional investors own about 3% of single-family rentals
Despite the headlines, Wall Street owns a small slice of the national single-family rental market. As of June 2022, 32 investors each owned more than 1,000 single-family rentals, for a combined total of nearly 450,000 homes, or about 3% of single-family rentals nationally, according to the Government Accountability Office. The five largest owned about 300,000 homes, nearly 2% of the market. The remaining 97% belong to owners with fewer than 1,000 homes.
6. In some metros, institutional ownership is far higher
The national average hides sharp local concentration. In a 2026 report using 2024 data, GAO found institutional investors owned 22 percent of single-family rental homes in the Jacksonville metro area, up from 7% in 2018, along with 13% in Phoenix, 9% in Dallas, and 4% in Seattle. The 2026 report defines institutional investors more narrowly, as firms with 5,000 or more homes across at least five metros. For a small landlord in Jacksonville, more than one in five nearby single-family rentals now belongs to a large corporate owner.
7. Institutional holdings surged, then dipped in 2024
Institutional ownership grew quickly in the Sun Belt. From 2018 to 2024, institutional investor holdings rose about 177 percent in the Phoenix metro and 114% in Dallas, each adding at least 16,000 homes, according to GAO. Yet ownership declined in all six metros GAO studied in 2024, and across those areas institutional investors held less than 1% to 3% of all single-family homes. For individual landlords, the competition for properties is real but local.
What it costs to insure and run a rental
8. Apartment insurance costs rose more than 75% in five years
Insurance has far outpaced inflation in rental budgets. A Federal Reserve analysis of multifamily operating statements found the average property insurance cost rose from $39 to $68 per unit per month between 2019 and 2024 in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars, an increase of more than 75%. Costs were highest, and rose fastest, in Florida and along the Louisiana and Texas coasts. The sample covers larger buildings with securitized mortgages, averaging about 172 units.
9. Insurance is still about 5% of rental revenue
Even after the jump, insurance is a modest share of what a building earns. Property insurance costs equaled about 5 percent of revenues for the average property in the Fed’s sample in 2024. The researchers note that insurance costs have grown relative to revenue, which signals that landlords are absorbing part of the increase rather than passing all of it on. For thin-margin properties, a few percentage points of revenue can decide whether a building cash flows.
10. Landlords, not tenants, absorbed most of the increase
The Fed estimates that each dollar of higher property insurance cost reduced owners’ net operating income by about 72 cents. Tenants did feel some of it: the analysis suggests rent paid by the average apartment tenant rose by $7 to $12 a month since 2019 because of higher insurance costs, less than 1% of average rent. In practice, rising premiums have mostly come out of landlords’ returns.
11. Running a single-unit rental costs $8,670 per unit a year
Insurance is one piece of a growing operating bill. Single-unit rental properties had mean total operating expenses of $8,670 per unit in 2023, compared with $6,194 in 2020 in the previous survey, roughly 40% higher, though the survey’s margin of error is wide. Large buildings with 50 or more units averaged $10,979 per unit. Taxes, insurance, maintenance, and utilities all roll into these totals.
12. The homeowners benchmark is $1,737 a year
No regulator publishes a national average premium for landlord policies, so the closest public yardstick is the homeowners market. The average HO-3 homeowners premium was $1,737 in 2023, according to the NAIC, while the regulator’s dwelling fire category, which covers owner-occupied dwellings with narrower coverage, averaged $1,019. A rental policy is priced on the same rebuilding costs and weather exposure, but quotes differ because the coverage itself differs.
13. Apartment property insurance rates fell in 2024 for the first time since 2017
There are early signs of relief. The National Multifamily Housing Council’s 2024 risk survey found that property insurance rates declined in 2024, the first decline since 2017, after 27 consecutive quarters of increases. The same report warns that liability insurance costs are still rising, driven by litigation costs and large jury verdicts. Property relief and liability pressure can now pull a landlord’s total premium in opposite directions.
14. Rebuilding costs are still climbing about 4% a year
Coverage limits have to keep up with the cost to rebuild. Verisk reports that residential reconstruction costs rose 3.8 percent and commercial reconstruction costs rose 4.1% from July 2025 to July 2026. Market expectations call for another 1.79% rise in residential costs by January 2027. A dwelling limit set when a property was purchased can fall well short of today’s rebuilding cost, leaving the owner to cover the gap after a total loss.
What damages rental properties
15. Wind and hail cause the largest share of property losses
Rental homes face the same weather as owner-occupied ones. In ISO data published by Triple-I, wind and hail produced 42.5 percent of homeowners insurance losses in 2023, followed by water damage and freezing at 22.6% and fire and lightning at 21.6%. These figures come from owner-occupied homeowners policies, but they are the best public guide to the perils that also drive dwelling and landlord claims.
16. Water damage averages $15,400 per claim
Water is a particular risk when the owner is not on site. Water damage and freezing claims averaged $15,400 from 2019 to 2023. In a rental, a slow leak under a sink or behind a washing machine can run for weeks if a tenant does not report it, and the delay adds drywall, flooring, and mold costs to the bill. Leak sensors and clear reporting rules in the lease are inexpensive ways to shorten that window.
17. More than half of surveyed apartment firms were hit by freeze events
Freezes have become a significant multifamily risk. In NMHC’s 2024 survey of 52 apartment firms, 56 percent said they were affected by recent freeze events, including Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and Winter Storm Elliott in 2022. Another 56% were affected by named storms, and 91.8% held properties in catastrophe-exposed states such as California, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Colorado. Burst pipes in a vacant or poorly heated unit are among the more avoidable large claims in rental housing.
18. Apartment fires caused $2.0 billion in damage in 2024
Fire is the peril most likely to destroy a building and its rental income at once. U.S. fire departments responded to 76,000 apartment and other multifamily fires in 2024, according to the NFPA, causing 340 civilian deaths, 2,290 injuries, and $2.0 billion in direct property damage. Across homeowners policies, fire and lightning claims averaged $88,170 from 2019 to 2023, the most expensive claim type by far.
19. Vandalism and other damage make up 10% of losses
Damage that does not fit the weather or fire categories is a meaningful slice of losses. All other property damage, a category that includes vandalism and malicious mischief, produced 10.0 percent of homeowners losses in 2023 and averaged $9,043 per claim from 2019 to 2023. For landlords, this is the category closest to tenant-caused and vacancy-related damage, though ordinary wear and tear is a maintenance cost rather than an insured loss.
20. Liability claims average nearly $30,000
Landlords are responsible for conditions that injure tenants, guests, and passersby, from broken stair railings to icy walkways. Homeowners liability claims averaged $29,880 from 2019 to 2023, with bodily injury and property damage claims averaging $37,174. A single serious injury can exceed a standard liability limit, which is why many rental owners add an umbrella policy above their landlord coverage.
Vacancy, lost rent, and evictions
21. The rental vacancy rate reached 7.3%
Empty units mean lost income and higher risk. The national rental vacancy rate was 7.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026, up from 7.0% a year earlier and 6.3% in the second quarter of 2023. About 3.7 million units were vacant and for rent. Rising vacancy means longer gaps between tenants, which is exactly when undetected damage and policy vacancy limits come into play.
Data
| 2020 | 5.7% |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 6.2% |
| 2022 | 5.6% |
| 2023 | 6.3% |
| 2024 | 6.6% |
| 2025 | 7.0% |
| 2026 | 7.3% |
22. Vacancy is highest in the South
Vacancy risk varies widely by region. In the second quarter of 2026, the South had 9.5 percent of its rental stock vacant, the highest of any region:
- South: 9.5%
- Midwest: 6.9%
- Northeast: 5.9%
- West: 5.3%
Many Southern markets also sit in hurricane country, so a vacancy there can combine lost rent with elevated storm risk.
23. Many insurers stop coverage after 60 days of vacancy
A vacant rental can lose coverage without the owner realizing it. Most insurers stop coverage when a house has been vacant for 60 days or more, though they usually keep liability coverage in place, according to the Texas Department of Insurance. Vacancy is also a permitted reason to nonrenew a policy in Texas. Landlords facing a long gap between tenants should ask their insurer about a vacancy permit or endorsement before the deadline passes.
24. The median vacant unit asks $1,531 a month
Lost rent is often the hidden cost of a covered loss. The median asking rent for vacant units was $1,531 a month in the second quarter of 2026. If a fire or burst pipe takes a unit offline for six months, that is about $9,200 of rent at the median, on top of the repair bill. Fair rental value coverage on a landlord policy is designed to replace that income while the property is being repaired.
25. Landlords file about 3.6 million eviction cases a year
Tenant turnover is not always voluntary. The Eviction Lab at Princeton estimates that 3.6 million eviction cases were filed in 2018, in its 2022 national data release, matching the annual average from 2000 to 2018, and that nearly 6 of every 100 renting households were threatened with eviction that year. Evictions bring legal costs, unpaid rent, and turnover vacancies, which makes tenant screening and cash reserves part of a rental’s risk plan.
How to protect a rental property and its income
The data points to a practical checklist for rental owners, whether you own one house or a portfolio:
- Insure to rebuild, not to purchase price. With residential reconstruction costs up 3.8 percent in the past year, review the dwelling limit at every renewal.
- Plan for every vacancy. Coverage can stop after 60 days vacant, so tell your insurer before a long gap and winterize empty units.
- Require renters insurance in the lease. A landlord’s policy will not replace a tenant’s personal possessions, so a tenant policy protects your residents and reduces disputes after a loss. See what tenants pay in our renters insurance guide.
- Add liability depth. With liability claims averaging $29,880, an umbrella policy adds protection above the landlord policy limit.
- Shop the policy every few years. Premiums and underwriting rules vary by company, so start with our carrier comparison, read landlord insurance cost and best landlord insurance companies, then compare quotes for your property.
- Check our sources. Every figure here is verified as described on our methodology page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does landlord insurance cost compared with homeowners insurance?
No regulator publishes a national landlord premium average. The closest benchmark is the average HO-3 homeowners premium of $1,737 in 2023. For apartment buildings, the Federal Reserve found property insurance averaged $68 per unit per month in 2024, up more than 75% since 2019 after inflation.
Who owns most rental properties in the U.S.?
Mostly small owners. Single-unit homes make up 82.9 percent of rental properties, and investors with more than 1,000 homes owned only about 3 percent of single-family rentals nationally in 2022, though their share reaches 22% in Jacksonville.
Does landlord insurance cover a vacant rental?
Only for a limited time. Most insurers stop coverage after a home is vacant for 60 days or more, though liability usually continues. With the rental vacancy rate at 7.3 percent in mid-2026, ask your insurer about a vacancy endorsement before a long gap.
What are the most common landlord insurance claims?
Weather and water lead. Wind and hail produced 42.5 percent of homeowners losses in 2023, water damage and freezing produced 22.6%, and water claims averaged $15,400. Fire is less common but far more costly, and vandalism and other damage made up 10.0% of losses.
Does landlord insurance cover my tenants’ belongings?
No. A landlord’s policy covers the building, and it won’t replace a tenant’s personal possessions or pay their living costs after a loss. Tenants need their own renters insurance policy, which landlords can require in the lease.