Where is home insurance the cheapest and costliest in Ontario?
Despite increasingly severe weather events, including rampant flooding in 2024, residents in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) pay some of the lowest home insurance premiums in Ontario, according to the latest Home Insuramap report from rate aggregator RatesDotCa.
By contrast, communities located in northern Ontario pay 30% to 80% more for home insurance than cities around southern Ontario.
“As of 2025, the average annual home insurance premium for a 45-year-old homeowner living in a 2,500 square foot home in Toronto is $1,523,” according to the report. “However, if they were to magically transport their home 2,000 kilometres northwest to Red Lake, a town near Manitoba, they could see their annual premium balloon to around $2,873.”
Based on the same profile above, Toronto’s rate is on par with the provincial average home insurance premium of $1,565. In fact, the Top 10 Ontario cities with the least expensive home insurance are located mainly in and around the GTA, including Woodbridge, Ajax, Markham, Milton, Guelph, and Bowmanville. Data show home insurance premiums in these cities are between 15% and 34% less than the Ontario average.
On the flip side, a homeowner living in Red Lake — a town with a population of just over 4,000 people — could pay a premium 84% greater than the provincial average. The Top 10 areas with the most expensive home insurance in Ontario are located far north of the GTA. Most are smaller communities like Sioux Lookout, James, Ingolf, Minaki and Wawa. Timmins — with a population of about 40,000 — is the biggest city in the Top 10.
Disparity reasons
Why is home insurance so much more expensive in northern Ontario?
“One reason for the insurance premium disparity is that residents in remote northern communities face intensifying climate threats, while living further away from essential fire services,” the report says.
“Depending on their location, homes in northern Ontario could have a greater risk of wildfire, flooding and other extreme weather events,” adds Steve Cohen, Rates.ca’s vice president of insurance and chief underwriting officer.
He notes insurance companies often factor in proximity to fire services when pricing home insurance policies. “Homes in rural and more remote areas tend to have an increased risk of major damage if there is a fire due to the lack of a nearby fire hydrant or fire station.”
Homes in more remote areas can also be more expensive to repair and rebuild, Cohen says.
RatesDotCa’s Home Insuramap is an interactive, online map allowing Ontario residents to see how their home, condo, or tenant insurance rates compare to those in other parts of their city or province. The map shows weighted averages based on real home insurance quotes pulled from nine different insurance providers, providing information for more than 180 cities and towns across the province. It uses a specific person profile, house size and age, construction material, etc.
Generally speaking, home insurance premiums are increasing across the province (and country), driven in part by increasingly severe weather patterns. “Damage exceeding $2 billion — a rarity in previous decades — is now an almost yearly occurrence,” the report says. In 2024, NatCat-related claims cost the industry a record $9.1 billion.
If climate-related incidents continue to intensify, says RatesDotCa insurance expert Daniel Ivans, “premiums in high-risk areas are likely to rise at a faster rate than in urban centres like the GTA and other major cities.”
