Risky Science Podcast · Risk Market News

Housing Prices, Climate Signals and Reinsurance Shocks with Dr. Philip Mulder

·50 min·3 clips

The reinsurance shock shows up where premiums rise fastest in places with the most correlated risk.

1. Risky Science Podcast centers on housing prices, climate signals, and reinsurance shocks with Dr. Philip Mulder. 2. Chris Westfall hosts, and Dr. Philip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin brings research on risk and insurance. 3. The episode asks how insurance pricing, climate risk, and housing values are changing who can afford to stay in risky places. 4. Mulder explains that his earlier PhD work studied flood insurance and the National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. 5. He says the NFIP still relies heavily on floodplain designations that can be outdated or wrong. 6. He notes that people often trust the map, assume they are safe, and skip flood insurance or home elevation. 7. Mulder then describes a newer project on homeowners insurance, which had been hard to study because average premiums were not available by zip code. 8. He and Ben Keys built a dataset from mortgage escrow payments, subtracting property taxes and principal-and-interest from total monthly payments. 9. That method produced zip-code-level homeowner’s insurance estimates from about 20 million mortgages across the United States, covering 2014 through 2024. 10. The paper compares three pressures on premiums: construction-cost inflation, insurer and reinsurer losses, and a hardening reinsurance cycle. 11. Mulder says the biggest premium increases appear in areas where risks are most correlated, which he labels a “reinsurance shock.” 12. He says the data also show that parts of Florida with greater construction-cost growth saw larger insurance increases. 13. He adds that some Florida zip codes have higher and lower correlations of risk, which helps explain why pricing varies within the state. 14. Mulder says wildfire-exposed areas stand out because the relationship between wildfire risk and rising premiums looks especially clear. 15. He contrasts that with hurricanes, where he says the climate-risk relationship is more uncertain and harder to quantify. 16. He says the main housing-market response in his data is slower home-price appreciation, even though prices still rose in many high-risk places after COVID-19. 17. The interview keeps a measured, technical tone, with Westfall pressing on market mechanisms and Mulder answering in economic and insurance terms. 18. It feels like an academic-policy conversation, with repeated references to models, mortgage data, California’s FAIR plan, Citizens, and TRIA. 19. People tracking housing affordability, insurance markets, or climate-adjusted real estate pricing should get value from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting light entertainment or a non-technical chat probably should skip it.

As heard by us

A market-level look at how insurance pressure can reshape who gets to buy a home.

The episode treats housing prices as a housing-risk story, with insurance costs adding another layer of strain to an already expensive market. Chris Westfall and Dr.

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You want to hear how rising property insurance costs can reshape the housing market.

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