Does a concrete house lower your insurance? Mostly no, and here is what actually does

# Does a concrete house lower your insurance?

Direct answer. Not much, and not for the reason people think. Insurers do rate wall construction, but through a fire classification that was designed for the risk of a house burning down, and the premium difference between masonry and frame on that axis is typically in the single digits to low teens of percent. The big hurricane discounts, which can be a large share of the wind premium in Florida, come from the roof and the openings, and the state's wind mitigation form does not even ask what the walls are made of. If you are choosing concrete for insurance reasons alone, you are solving the wrong equation. If you are choosing it for durability, debris and fire, read on, because there are real insurance effects, just smaller and more specific than the sales pitch.

What insurers actually rate

A homeowners premium is built from a stack of factors. In rough order of weight for most U.S. homes:

1. Location and peril exposure. Wind zone, wildfire score, distance to coast, fire protection class (hydrants and fire department response). This dwarfs everything else.
2. Claims and credit history. Your record and, in most states, an insurance score.
3. Roof. Age, material, shape, and in hurricane states the documented attachment features.
4. Opening protection. Impact glazing or tested shutters, all openings or none.
5. Deductibles, especially the separate hurricane or wind-hail deductible.
6. Construction class. Frame, masonry, or superior/non-combustible, as described below.
7. Age of home, updates to plumbing, electrical and HVAC, protective devices, and so on.

Flood is a separate policy. The National Flood Insurance Program's Risk Rating 2.0 prices primarily on distance to water and flood type, first-floor height above grade, foundation type, replacement cost value, occupancy and number of floors; construction type (frame, masonry or other, determined by the walls of the first full floor above ground) is also a rating variable, and FEMA's own guide notes masonry walls perform better in floods than frame walls. The effect is real but secondary: one academic review of FEMA's published factors found a modest edge for masonry single-family homes, while raising the first floor one, two or three feet cut the base premium by roughly 10%, 19% and 27%.

The fire construction class

This is where concrete gets most of its credit. Insurers classify homes using Insurance Services Office (ISO) construction types. For residential rating the practical buckets are:

• Frame. Wood or light-gauge steel walls, including brick veneer, stone veneer and stucco over frame. Rated highest.
• Masonry (joisted masonry). Exterior walls of block, brick, concrete or stone with wood floors and roof. Rated lower.
• Superior / non-combustible / fire-resistive. Walls, floors and roof all non-combustible: concrete, protected steel, gypsum. Rated lowest.

Consumers' Checkbook summarizes the typical spreads: frame costs about 8% more than masonry where fire protection is good and about 20% more where it is poor, and superior construction runs roughly 15% below masonry. Some Florida agents describe a practical "two-thirds rule" for mixed construction, under which a house rates as masonry only if at least two-thirds of its wall area is masonry, so many two-story block homes with framed second floors rate as frame; confirm against the specific carrier's rating manual. Veneer never changes the class.

Two implications. First, ICF, SCIP, poured concrete and block all land in the same masonry class unless the roof and floors are concrete too, in which case they may reach the superior class. Second, the class discount is a fire discount. It has nothing to do with wind.

The wind discounts

In Florida, section 627.0629 requires insurers to give premium credits for windstorm-resistant features, and those features are verified on Form OIR-B1-1802 (nine questions since the April 2026 revision): building code era, design-wind region, roof covering, roof deck attachment, roof-to-wall attachment, roof shape, roof slope, secondary water resistance and opening protection. There is no wall question.

That is not an oversight. The state's loss-relativity studies by Applied Research Associates, which underpin the credits, modeled hurricane losses feature by feature. The 2002 study's feature list did include wall construction and wall-to-foundation restraint alongside roof and opening features; the credits that were adopted, and that the 2024 study revisited, are the roof and opening items, because that is where the modeled losses are. In the engineering record, the wall is rarely what fails in a code-built house; the roof and the envelope are.

Other states with mitigation credits (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Georgia, Texas) tie them to FORTIFIED designations or to similar roof-and-opening checklists, not to wall material. See the wind mitigation page for the state-by-state list.

Where the myth comes from

• Confounding. Concrete homes are more often newer, better roofed and better glazed than the frame homes they are compared with. The discount is real; its cause is the roof.
• Industry studies. Concrete and masonry trade groups publish insurance comparisons showing large savings for masonry. They are worth reading, but they are advocacy, and the biggest differences in them come from the superior class on commercial and multi-family buildings, not from single-family block walls.
• Case anecdotes. A homeowner who reports a large annual saving after building in concrete usually also built to a high wind standard with impact glass and a concrete roof deck. The anecdote is true and the attribution is wrong.
• Agent shorthand. "Block is cheaper to insure" is correct on the fire axis and gets repeated as if it covered everything.

Where concrete can raise your premium

In seismic regions, masonry and concrete houses pay more for earthquake coverage than wood frame, because they are heavier and stiffer and historically perform worse without engineered reinforcement; Consumers' Checkbook notes the earthquake premium for a masonry house is "substantially higher." See earthquake-resistant building. Some carriers also surcharge or decline unfamiliar systems, or require an engineering letter; ask before you build, not after.

What to do with this

1. Buy the roof and the openings first. Hip roof, sealed deck, rated covering, wraps or straps, impact glazing on every opening. That is the discount.
2. Document it. A current wind mitigation inspection on the 2026 form, or a FORTIFIED evaluation outside Florida.
3. Then decide the walls on their merits. Debris resistance, fire, durability, sound, maintenance, energy. Those are good reasons. "Insurance" is a small one.
4. If you build in concrete, get the class right. Make sure the policy shows masonry (or superior, if roof and floors are concrete), not frame; mis-classification is common on mixed construction. Check the construction type on your flood policy too.
5. Ask your carrier before an unusual system. Some underwriters have never seen a SCIP or ICF house.

Want the premium engineered down from the design stage? BuiltStrong's advisory specifies the roof, connection and opening details that earn credits in any construction system, and tells you honestly when a material choice will not move your bill. Start the intake · How the advisory works