Home Insurance in California Fire Zones:
What Your Actual Options Are

If you got a non-renewal notice, or three companies declined you, or your agent said the FAIR Plan is the only thing left, this page is for you.

I am Michael Canepa, an independent broker in North Hollywood, CA License 0H75788. I place homes in brush zones and high fire hazard severity zones across the LA foothills. Sunland, Tujunga, Shadow Hills, Sylmar, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, Topanga, Calabasas, La Crescenta, La Cañada, Altadena, Santa Clarita. That is most of what I do.

Here is the honest picture of what is available to you right now, in order from best to last resort. Call or text me at (818) 823-5778 if you want me to run your address.

First, something with a deadline on it

The California FAIR Plan is raising dwelling rates an average of 29.1% on October 15, 2026. It applies to all new and renewal business from that date.

That average is misleading in an important way. The increase is concentrated in the wildfire portion of the premium. If your home is in a high brush score area, you are on the high end, not the average. Agents around the state are reporting 30 to 40 percent on real fire zone properties. Low risk homes will see much less, and some will see a decrease.

There is no action required for it to happen. If your renewal falls on or after October 15, the new rate applies automatically.

Here is why that matters more than it sounds. A lot of people went onto the FAIR Plan in 2023, 2024, and 2025 because there was genuinely nothing else. The market has changed since then. Some of those homes can go back to a regular admitted carrier today and the homeowner has no idea, because nobody has re-shopped it since the day they were placed.

If you have been on the FAIR Plan for more than a year and nobody has looked at it since, get it looked at before October. That is not a sales pitch, it is a calendar.

Why this happened

Insurance companies did not leave California because they are villains. They left because they were not allowed to price for the risk they were taking, and then the risk got much worse.

The January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires produced roughly $4 billion in losses for the FAIR Plan alone. The FAIR Plan had to assess its member insurance companies $1 billion to pay claims, the first assessment since 1994.

The FAIR Plan was designed to be a last resort of a few thousand policies. As of June 2026 it holds roughly 696,000 policies with $768 billion in exposure, up about 250 percent since September 2022. It is now larger than most private carriers in the state. That is not what it was built to be.

The state's response is the Sustainable Insurance Strategy. The short version: carriers are now allowed to use forward-looking wildfire catastrophe models and pass through reinsurance costs in their rates, and in exchange they have to commit to writing at least 85 percent of their statewide market share in wildfire distressed areas.

It is starting to work. Farmers joined in May 2026 and removed its monthly cap on new homeowners business entirely. Travelers signaled participation in April. FAIR Plan growth has slowed sharply, from 35,000 to 50,000 new residential policies a quarter down to about 16,000 in the first quarter of 2026.

Translation for you: there are more options in a fire zone today than there were eighteen months ago. Not many. But more, and most people have not checked.

Your five real options, best to worst

1. An admitted California wildfire specialist

These are regular admitted carriers built specifically for California brush exposure. They use satellite imagery, parcel-level fuel modeling, and mitigation data instead of just drawing a red line around a ZIP code.

This is the best outcome and where I start every fire zone file. Real HO-3 or HO-5 coverage. Liability included. Water damage included. Theft included. Replacement cost. One policy, one bill, one company.

If your home has a Class A roof, cleared defensible space, and ember-resistant vents, your odds here are much better than you probably think. I have placed homes that were told flatly by three agents that the FAIR Plan was the only option.

2. A standard admitted carrier, often packaged with auto

Some homes in nominal fire zones are not actually the exposure the ZIP code suggests. If you are on the edge of a hazard zone with good clearance, a mainstream carrier may write you, especially packaged with your auto.

This is worth checking every single time and most agents skip it because they assume the answer.

3. Excess and surplus lines

E&S carriers are not bound by the same filed rate rules, which means they can price risk that admitted carriers cannot. They are not backed by the California Insurance Guarantee Association, which is a real tradeoff worth understanding, and they typically cost more.

But it is a full policy. Liability, contents, and additional living expenses included. For a lot of foothill homes, E&S is a materially better answer than a FAIR Plan and DIC stack, and it is the option most homeowners have never heard of.

4. High value and specialty programs

If your home is above roughly $2 million in replacement cost, you are in a different market with different rules. These carriers write large fire zone homes that mainstream companies will not touch, and they typically want the whole household: home, auto, and either umbrella or a scheduled jewelry policy.

5. FAIR Plan plus a DIC wrap

The floor. Not a failure, and for some homes it is genuinely the only structure available. But you need to understand what you are buying.

What the FAIR Plan actually covers

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the single most important thing on this page.

A FAIR Plan dwelling policy covers fire, lightning, internal explosion, and smoke. That is close to the whole list.

It does not include:

  • Liability. If someone is injured on your property, you have no coverage.
  • Theft.
  • Water damage. Burst pipe, failed water heater, none of it.
  • Additional living expenses, in the standard form. If your home is uninhabitable, your hotel is on you.
  • Falling objects, vehicle impact, and most of the other named perils a normal policy includes.

The standard form is also actual cash value, not replacement cost, which means depreciation comes out of your claim payment. Residential dwelling coverage caps at $3 million per structure. If your rebuild cost is higher than that, you need a separate excess layer or you are self-insuring the difference.

Most people carrying a FAIR Plan policy believe they have home insurance. What they have is fire insurance. Those are not the same thing, and the difference shows up at the claim, which is the worst possible time to learn it.

What a DIC policy is, and why you almost certainly need one

DIC stands for Difference in Conditions. It is a second policy that sits alongside the FAIR Plan and fills every gap listed above: liability, theft, water damage, additional living expenses, and often replacement cost instead of actual cash value.

FAIR Plan plus DIC is meant to approximate a normal homeowners policy. It is two policies, two bills, two declarations pages, and two claim processes, but together they get you close to whole.

A DIC typically runs somewhere around 25 to 60 percent of your FAIR Plan premium, depending on the home and the limits.

If you are on the FAIR Plan without a DIC, that is the most urgent thing in your insurance file right now, ahead of the October rate increase and ahead of price generally. Pull out your declarations page. If you only have one, call me.

One practical note if you are financing or refinancing: lenders sometimes reject the file because they expect a single declarations page and receive two. Both policies need the mortgagee clause, and both declarations pages have to go to the lender together so the escrow officer can see the package is intentional.

What this costs

I am not going to put a number on your house from a web page. Anyone who does is guessing, and in a fire zone the guess will be wrong by thousands.

What I can tell you is what moves the number:

  • Brush proximity and slope. Distance to continuous fuel, and whether the terrain funnels fire toward you.
  • Roof. Class A composition, tile, or metal is a different conversation than wood shake. Wood shake is the single most common reason a fire zone home cannot be placed.
  • Defensible space. Documented clearance in the first five feet, thirty feet, and one hundred feet.
  • Home hardening. Ember-resistant vents, dual pane windows, enclosed eaves, non-combustible siding. California requires carriers to give credit for these under the Safer from Wildfires regulation.
  • Replacement cost, not market value. What it costs to rebuild, which in the foothills is frequently different from what you paid.
  • Claim history, yours and the property's.
  • Whether the home is occupied, and whether it is a short term rental.

Two identical looking houses on the same street can be thousands apart on premium because one has a cleared slope and documented vents and the other does not.

What actually improves your odds

If you want to be more insurable, in rough order of impact:

  1. Replace a wood shake roof. Nothing else on this list matters as much.
  2. Clear the first five feet around the structure completely. No bark mulch, no shrubs against the wall, no firewood stacked on the siding. This zone matters more than the outer hundred feet.
  3. Install ember-resistant vents. Most homes burn from embers entering attic and crawlspace vents, not from a wall of flame.
  4. Enclose open eaves and clean out the gutters.
  5. Photograph everything and keep the receipts. Documented mitigation gets credit. Undocumented mitigation does not exist as far as an underwriter is concerned.
  6. Look at IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home certification. Some carriers now offer renewal guarantees and meaningful discounts for it.

Take photos before you call anyone. It genuinely changes what I can do with your file.

If you are buying a house in a fire zone

Your insurance needs to be bound before your close of escrow, and in a fire zone that is a real timeline, not a formality. Escrows die over this, and they die late, when the buyer is already emotionally committed and the loan is ready to fund.

Start the insurance the day you open escrow, not the week before closing.

Send me the address as soon as you are in contract. I will tell you within a day or two whether it is placeable, roughly where the premium lands, and whether you have a problem. If there is a problem, you want to know while you still have contingencies.

One more thing worth knowing this fall: if you are in escrow now on a FAIR Plan property, you may be quoted one price in August and pay a different one in October. Build that into your numbers.

Frequently asked

My insurance company non-renewed me for wildfire risk. What do I do? Do not wait, and do not go straight to the FAIR Plan. California requires 75 days notice on a non-renewal, which is enough time to shop properly if you start now. Have your declarations page, your roof type and age, and photos of your defensible space ready. There are admitted California wildfire specialists writing brush zone homes today that most agents do not have access to.

Is the FAIR Plan my only option? Usually not, and that answer has changed in the last eighteen months. The FAIR Plan is the floor, not the starting point. Before you land there you should have been run through the admitted wildfire specialists, standard carriers packaged with auto, and the E&S market. Many homeowners on the FAIR Plan were placed there when there genuinely was nothing else and have not been re-shopped since.

Is the FAIR Plan enough coverage by itself? No. It covers fire, lightning, internal explosion, and smoke, and typically on an actual cash value basis. No liability, no theft, no water damage, no additional living expenses. It needs a DIC policy alongside it to approximate a real homeowners policy.

Can I get home insurance with a wood shake roof in California? It is the hardest common situation in the state. Some E&S carriers will consider it with strong mitigation elsewhere, and the FAIR Plan will write it. Most admitted carriers will not. If you are planning to replace the roof anyway, doing it before you shop changes the entire outcome.

What does high fire hazard severity zone mean? It is a CAL FIRE designation, mapped by fuel, slope, and weather, in tiers of moderate, high, and very high. Carriers use it as one input, alongside their own models. Being in a very high zone does not automatically mean you are uninsurable, and being outside one does not guarantee you will be written.

How long does it take? For a straightforward foothill home, usually two to five business days to get real answers back. Inspections on harder files can add a week. If you are in escrow, tell me the close date up front and I will work backward from it.

¿Hablan español? Sí. Atiendo a clientes en español, y no es un traductor. Llame o mande un mensaje al (818) 823-5778.

Send me your address

I will tell you what is actually available for your home, what it will roughly cost, and if the answer is the FAIR Plan I will tell you that too, and structure it correctly with a DIC instead of leaving you half covered.

Call or text (818) 823-5778. Or start the form 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.