If you own a home, the “fixed” in your fixed-rate mortgage only covers half the bill. The insurance piece bolted onto your monthly payment just hit an all-time high, and the whole escrow bill climbs whether your rate ever moves or not.
Most homeowners pay property taxes and insurance through escrow: your servicer collects a slice each month, holds it, and pays those bills for you. When the bills go up, your monthly payment goes up with them. Fixed rate, moving payment.
They went up again. Average annual home insurance payments rose 6.6%, about $149, in 2025, to the highest level on record, according to the ICE Mortgage Monitor. Property taxes climbed 7.4%. Insurance even outran the rise in the average mortgage payment as a whole, which was up 6.3%.
Now watch the spin. That same report leads with the reassuring angle: insurance grew at its slowest pace since 2020, and even dipped a touch at the end of the year. Translation: you’re still paying more for home insurance than any homeowner ever has. It’s just rising a little less fast than before.
It bites where you feel it. ICE found that the homeowners carrying the heaviest insurance loads were at least 22% more likely to fall behind on the mortgage than those carrying the lightest.
Here’s the part worth sitting with. Of the three things stacked into your payment, your rate is locked and your taxes are mostly out of your hands short of an appeal. Insurance is the one piece you can actually move. And homeowners insurance is a competitive market, which means the price you locked in three years ago is almost certainly not the best price on offer today.
Home insurance hit an all-time high in 2025, up about $149 on the year, climbing faster than the average mortgage payment as a whole.
Verdict: stop treating the escrow line as a fixed cost. It’s the part of “fixed-rate” that isn’t, and it’s the part you can shop.
At your next renewal, pull two or three home insurance quotes before you let the policy auto-renew. Same coverage, different carriers, and ask what bundling with your auto policy does to the price. Raise your deductible if you’ve got the savings to cover it, because a higher deductible usually drops the premium.
Then call your servicer and ask for an escrow analysis, so a shortage doesn’t ambush you with a payment jump. If your tax assessment spiked, file an appeal with your county. Run the real number on our mortgage calculator, and start at our mortgages hub if you’re weighing a refinance, because trimming a fat escrow can beat chasing a slightly lower rate.
One number behind the trend: in 2025 the cost per $1,000 of coverage rose about 2%, to $6.21, a far cry from the 14% jump over the prior two years. Higher coverage amounts and home values did most of the rest.
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