Wildfire Insurance Availability and Cost Estimator

Why wildfire risk affects whether you can buy insurance, not just what it costs

Wildfire is unusual among home insurance risks because it can affect availability, not just price. In much of the country, a higher-risk property simply pays a higher premium.

In parts of California, Colorado, and Oregon, and increasingly other Western states, a high-wildfire-risk property may not be offered a standard-market policy at all. Several major insurers, including State Farm, Nationwide Private Client, and Travelers, have paused new business or non-renewed existing policies across high-wildfire-risk parts of California in recent years, and similar strain has been reported in Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, Montana, and Washington.

Risk tiers used here follow California's own CAL FIRE Fire Hazard Severity Zone system, the most widely used classification in the country: Moderate, High, and Very High, based on fuel load, slope, and fire weather.

If your state does not use this exact system, it is still a reasonable way to self-assess your property, since most consumer wildfire risk scores and insurer underwriting guides map to a similar tiered structure.

Check with your county, insurer, or a real estate listing's wildfire risk score if you are unsure where your property falls.

On the cost side, the U.S. Government Accountability Office's most comprehensive federal analysis to date found that homes in severe or extreme wildfire-risk areas paid about 8% more, roughly $181 a year more in its national data, than homes in "major" wildfire-risk areas.

That gap has also been widening: premiums in severe or extreme wildfire-risk ZIP codes grew 6% to 10% a year on average since 2021, versus 1% to 4% a year in major-risk areas.

That is a national average, not a quote for your specific property, actual cost depends heavily on your insurer, construction, defensible space, and exact location.

High-wildfire-risk homes also commonly carry a separate wildfire percentage deductible, often 1% to 5% of the insured value, on top of the annual premium. That is a real added cost this tool does not calculate, since it applies at claim time rather than as an ongoing premium, but it is worth confirming with your insurer before you assume your coverage works the same way a standard policy elsewhere would.

If your risk tier and state put you at real risk of a non-renewal, or you already cannot get a standard-market quote, your state's FAIR Plan, where one exists, is the insurer of last resort.

It typically costs two to three times a comparable standard-market policy and covers less, see the FAIR Plan cost estimator for that comparison rather than treating this tool's estimate as a substitute for it.