You have more time and more options than that letter makes it sound like you have. California requires your insurance company to give you at least 75 days written notice before a non-renewal takes effect, and it has to tell you why. Seventy-five days is enough to shop this properly if you start now. It is not enough if you wait until week ten.

I am Michael Canepa, an independent broker in North Hollywood, CA License 0H75788. Fire zone and brush zone homes across the LA foothills are most of what I do: Sunland, Tujunga, Shadow Hills, Sylmar, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, Topanga, Calabasas, La Crescenta, La Cañada, Altadena, Sierra Madre, Santa Clarita.

Here is exactly what to do, in order.

Do these five things this week

1. Find the effective date on the notice. That is your deadline. Count backward two weeks from it and treat that as your real deadline, because fire zone placements take time and some require an inspection.
2. Check whether you are in a moratorium ZIP code. If you are, the non-renewal may be illegal and the carrier has to rescind it. Details below. This takes five minutes and almost nobody does it.
3. Pull your current declarations page. All of it, including the DIC if you have one.
4. Walk your property with your phone. Photograph the roof, the first five feet around the entire structure, the vents, the eaves, the cleared slope, and any sheds. This is the single highest value twenty minutes available to you right now.
5. Get the address run through the market. Not the FAIR Plan. The market. Those are different things and the order matters enormously.

Check the moratorium first

This is the part most homeowners have never heard of, and it can make the whole problem disappear.

Under Insurance Code section 675.1, enacted by Senate Bill 824 in 2018, an insurer cannot cancel or refuse to renew a residential property policy based solely on wildfire risk if the property sits in a ZIP code within or adjacent to the perimeter of a governor-declared wildfire emergency. The protection runs for one full year from the date of the emergency declaration, and it applies whether or not your home suffered any damage at all.

A few things worth knowing about how this actually works:

• It binds both admitted and non-admitted carriers. Surplus lines companies are not exempt.
• It covers homeowners, condo unit owner, mobilehome, and renters policies.
• The Department of Insurance publishes the covered ZIP codes by bulletin. You can look yours up at insurance.ca.gov.
• Bulletins can reach backward, picking up cancellation and non-renewal notices issued in the window before the declaration. If your notice arrived shortly before a nearby fire emergency, look anyway.
• If your home was a total loss, the carrier owes you coverage for two additional annual renewal periods from the date of loss.
• As of January 1, 2026, the protection was extended to commercial policies, HOAs, condominium associations, affordable housing, and nonprofits.

If your ZIP code is on a current bulletin list and your non-renewal is for wildfire risk, the carrier is required to rescind it. Call them, cite the bulletin, and if they push back, call the Department of Insurance at 800-927-4357.

Understand what a moratorium buys you, though. It is a year, not a solution. When it lifts you are back in the same market, except now everyone in your ZIP code is shopping in the same month. The right move is to use the year to harden the home, document it, and get placed properly before the clock runs out.

What a non-renewal actually is, and what it is not

A non-renewal is the carrier declining to offer another term when your policy expires. A cancellation is the carrier ending a policy mid-term, which in California can only happen for a short list of reasons like nonpayment or material misrepresentation.

The difference matters more than people realize. A wildfire non-renewal is not a mark against you. It says something about the carrier's appetite in your ZIP code, not about you as a risk. Underwriters at the next carrier read it that way too. You are not damaged goods, and you should not accept worse terms as though you were.

What does follow you is a lapse in coverage. That is a real underwriting problem and an expensive one. Do not let the policy expire while you shop.

Why they dropped you

Almost always one of these, and usually not something you did:

• Portfolio rebalancing. The carrier decided it has too much concentrated exposure in your area and is shedding a percentage of it. Your file may be perfectly clean.
• A new wildfire risk score. Carriers now run parcel-level catastrophe models. A model rerun can move your score without anything changing on your property.
• Roof age or type. Wood shake is the most common single reason a foothill home becomes unplaceable.
• Brush proximity and slope. Distance to continuous fuel and whether the terrain funnels fire uphill toward the structure.
• Claim history, yours or the property's.

Your notice is required to state the reason. If it is vague, ask for it in writing, and specifically ask whether a wildfire risk score was used and what that score was. These models are frequently wrong about parcel-level detail: they miss a replaced roof, cleared slope, or new vents. If the score drove the decision, ask the carrier what its process is for reconsidering it. That conversation is worth having before you accept the outcome.

What not to do

Do not go straight to the FAIR Plan. It is the floor, not the starting point, and a lot of people land there without ever being run through the market that would have taken them. It covers fire, lightning, internal explosion, and smoke, and close to nothing else. No liability, no theft, no water damage, and typically actual cash value rather than replacement cost. It also needs a separate Difference in Conditions policy alongside it to approximate real coverage, and its dwelling rates rise an average of 29.1 percent on October 15, 2026. If you end up there, fine, but you should get there last and structured correctly, not first and half covered.

Do not let it lapse. If your lender does not receive proof of coverage, it will force-place a policy on your behalf. Lender-placed insurance typically costs several times what you were paying, covers the structure only up to the loan balance, and includes nothing for your belongings and nothing for your liability. The lender adds the premium to your escrow account. It is the worst coverage at the worst price and it is entirely avoidable.

Do not take the first quote that clears. In a fire zone the spread between the first available option and the right one is frequently thousands of dollars a year, and more importantly the coverage structures are not comparable. An E&S policy with full liability and loss of use is a different product from a FAIR Plan stack, even when the premiums look similar.

Do not assume your ZIP code decides it. Two houses on the same street can get opposite answers based on clearance, roof, and vents.

What improves your odds inside 75 days

In rough order of impact:

1. Replace a wood shake roof if that is what you have. Nothing else on this list comes close. If you were going to do it eventually, doing it before you shop changes the entire outcome.
2. Clear the first five feet around the structure completely. No bark mulch, no shrubs against the wall, no firewood stacked on the siding, no combustible fencing attached to the house. This zone matters more to underwriters than the outer hundred feet.
3. Install ember resistant vents. Most homes ignite from embers entering attic and crawlspace vents, not from a wall of flame arriving.
4. Enclose open eaves and clean the gutters.
5. Move sheds and woodpiles 30 feet out, or as far as the lot allows.
6. Document all of it. Photos and receipts. Undocumented mitigation does not exist as far as an underwriter is concerned. California's Safer from Wildfires regulation requires carriers to give credit for these measures, but only if they know about them.
7. Look at IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home certification. Some carriers now attach meaningful discounts and renewal guarantees to it.

Where you will actually land

Five paths, best to last resort:

1. An admitted California wildfire specialist. Admitted carriers built specifically for brush exposure, using satellite imagery and parcel level fuel modeling rather than drawing a red line around a ZIP code. Full HO-3 or HO-5, liability and theft and water damage included, replacement cost, one policy and one bill. This is where I start every fire zone file, and it is where homes land that three other agents said were FAIR Plan only.
2. A standard admitted carrier, usually packaged with auto. Homes on the edge of a hazard zone with good clearance frequently get written by mainstream companies, especially with the auto attached. Worth checking every time.
3. Excess and surplus lines. Not bound by the same filed rate rules, so they can price risk admitted carriers cannot. Not backed by the California Insurance Guarantee Association, which is a real tradeoff to understand. But it is a full policy, and for many foothill homes it beats a FAIR Plan stack outright.
4. High value and specialty programs if your replacement cost runs past roughly $2 million.
5. FAIR Plan plus a DIC wrap. The floor, built correctly.

Longer breakdown of all five here: home insurance in California fire zones, what your actual options are.

If you are in escrow or refinancing

A non-renewal on a property in escrow is a live threat to the transaction, and it surfaces late, when the buyer is committed and the loan is ready to fund. Get the address run the day you are in contract, not the week before closing.

If the file ends up as FAIR Plan plus DIC, both policies need the mortgagee clause and both declarations pages have to reach the lender together. Lenders routinely reject these files because they expect one dec page and receive two.

Frequently asked

How much notice does an insurance company have to give before non-renewing my home policy in California?
At least 75 days written notice before the policy expires, and the notice has to state the reason for the non-renewal. If the reason is unclear, you can request it in writing.

Can my insurance company non-renew me after a wildfire?
Not if your property is in a ZIP code within or adjacent to the perimeter of a governor-declared wildfire emergency. Under Insurance Code 675.1, enacted by SB 824, insurers cannot cancel or non-renew residential property policies in those ZIP codes based solely on wildfire risk for one year from the date of the emergency declaration, whether or not your home was damaged. The Department of Insurance publishes the covered ZIP codes, and the rule binds both admitted and non-admitted carriers.

Does a non-renewal hurt my ability to get insurance later?
A wildfire non-renewal is generally not treated as a mark against you personally. It reflects the carrier's appetite in your area rather than your record as a risk. A lapse in coverage is the thing that genuinely creates problems, so do not let the policy expire while you shop.

Is the FAIR Plan my only option after a non-renewal?
Usually not. Before landing on the FAIR Plan your address should be run through the admitted California wildfire specialists, standard carriers packaged with auto, and the excess and surplus market. Many homeowners were placed on the FAIR Plan during 2023 through early 2025 when there genuinely was nothing else, and the market has loosened since.

What happens if I do not replace the policy before it expires?
If you have a mortgage, your lender will force-place coverage. Lender-placed policies typically cost several times a standard policy, insure the structure only up to the loan balance, and provide no coverage for personal belongings and no liability protection. The premium is added to your escrow account.

How long does it take to get placed in a fire zone?
For a straightforward foothill home, usually two to five business days for real answers. Harder files that require a physical inspection can add a week or more. Start as soon as the notice arrives rather than near the effective date.

¿Hablan español?
Sí. Atiendo a clientes en español, y no es un traductor. Si recibió un aviso de no renovación, llámeme o mande un mensaje al (818) 823-5778 y revisamos sus opciones.

Send me the address and the notice

Send me your address, your declarations page, and a photo of the non-renewal letter. I will tell you what is actually available for your home, roughly where the premium lands, and whether you are sitting in a moratorium ZIP code that makes the notice void in the first place.

Call or text (818) 823-5778, or start here and I will call you back.

Michael Canepa, Principal Broker, Redline Insurance Agency, North Hollywood. CA License 0H75788.

Independent brokerage. Coverage is subject to carrier underwriting, eligibility, and acceptance. Nothing on this page is a quote or an offer of insurance, and nothing here is legal advice. Moratorium ZIP code lists are published and updated by the California Department of Insurance.