The honest answer

Cars got more expensive to fix — a bumper is now a sensor array. Roofs got more expensive to replace, and hail keeps finding them. Reinsurance, the insurance that insurers buy, repriced hard after several catastrophe years. Carriers passed all of it through, some in one jump, some in stages. Your renewal went up because everyone's did.

Why that's not the end of the story

Every carrier passed costs through differently. One carrier's 20% increase in your state is another's 6%, because they entered the cycle with different books and different filings. Whole segments get mispriced for quarters at a time. That's exactly the gap a parallel re-quote finds.

The playbook

First, re-shop the whole market at every renewal — automatically if you're a Prime member. Second, re-examine deductibles: going from $500 to $1,000 on auto comp/collision often buys back most of an increase. Third, check your insurance score inputs — a lapse in coverage, even a short one, is one of the most expensive mistakes in the industry. Fourth, bundle deliberately: carriers still discount hard to own the whole household.

What not to do

Don't drop coverage to chase last year's premium — liability limits are the one place where saving $12 a month can cost you a house. Cut deductible risk you can afford; never cut protection you can't.