US Property Insurance Buyers Seize Best Market Conditions in Years as Capacity Returns: Artex

After years of painful rate increases and restrictive terms, US commercial property insurance buyers are finally enjoying a reprieve. According to Artex's Alternative View Spring 2026 report, insureds in the US property insurance space are 'eagerly taking advantage' of the most favourable market they have experienced in several years — a notable turnaround from the hard-market conditions that squeezed buyers through 2023 and 2024.

The drivers of the improvement are clear. With ample market capacity and carriers eager to expand their property portfolios after a period of strong profitability, competition among insurers has intensified. This has allowed many insureds to renegotiate previously restrictive terms and conditions and, in some cases, secure lower deductibles — concessions that were difficult to obtain during the hard market. Artex noted that catastrophe-driven layered and shared property programs, which had borne the brunt of higher-than-average rate increases, have finally experienced meaningful rate relief.

The favourable conditions stem largely from a benign 2025 catastrophe year. As Artex colourfully put it, 'From a NatCat-insured-loss perspective, 2025 came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.' For the first time since 2015, no hurricane made landfall in the US — an outcome that helped offset insured losses from the devastating January 2025 California wildfires. This absence of major hurricane losses allowed insurers to rebuild capital and profitability, fueling their appetite to compete for property business in 2026.

However, Artex flagged a significant and growing challenge: accurate property valuations remain difficult, and the issue is particularly acute for data centers — one of the fastest-growing segments of the commercial property sector. Across the US, hyperscalers and colocation providers are racing to build massive facilities to store and transmit digital information in response to the AI boom. One consulting firm has estimated that companies will invest nearly $7 trillion globally on data center infrastructure by 2030, with 40% of that spending deployed in the US. These high-tech facilities often carry total insured property values of $1 billion to $5 billion, depending on the servers, cooling systems, and other equipment they house. Because of their size and the concentration of high-value equipment, accurately valuing and insuring these facilities presents a complex underwriting challenge — and ties directly to the regulatory scrutiny now being applied to the credit ratings of data-center-related insurer investments.

The softening US property market mirrors the broader trend evident across specialty, reinsurance, and global insurance markets in 2026 — a cyclical shift toward buyer-favourable conditions driven by abundant capital and benign recent loss experience. For commercial property buyers, the message from Artex is clear: this is an opportune moment to review coverage, negotiate terms, and lock in favourable conditions while the market remains soft.