House Insurance Canceled due to Wildfires Potential

[brymoore]

I just received my second notice in the last few years of my house insurance being canceled due to the possibility of wildfires. It’s going to be a blanket cancellation for houses living in certain areas. I have the local fire department with a rig a half mile from my house and I live in an area of irrigated horse size properties. My house isn’t likely to burn down. The fire concern would be from embers, not from reaching the house from the ground. We have been put on evacuation notice a few times in the past.

I should be able to find a third insurance provider but it does cause concern for where the trend is heading. There may be some day I can’t get new house insurance or it will cost me an extravagant amount of money. I’m in a good position in that my mortgage is on the property only due to the low rate. I can pay it off. However, other home owners with big mortgages are going to have issues.

House values will go potentially down if insurance becomes a real issue too. Nobody wants to invest a lot of money on a tinder box.

 

[npaden]

I don't have a mortgage on my house and am honestly considering not insuring it. Premiums have gotten up to a little over $4,000 for a 2,800 sq ft home and the deductible is about half what it would cost to replace the roof due to hail. That's what's driving the premiums here in Texas - hail. I really need to do some shopping to find something with like a 5% deducible so essentially it becomes insurance for losing my house, not insurance for getting the roof replaced every 10 years.

 

[BigHornRam]

Saw this one take off Saturday afternoon from my house, when a front was coming through. Didn't see any lightning. Everything is dry as can be for this time of year. Fire wise construction and landscaping will be a requirement for insurance, going forward, in the arid west.

Wildfire burns in the Yellowtail Wildlife Habitat Management Area | Powell Tribune https://share.google/TlFlWs18jnJkFsQJV

 

[mountainlaurel3]

Thanks for the reminder, been meaning to check with my insurance agent to make sure we're not too underinsured, risk is going to be high this year.

Whenever I've had to talk to my car insurer, they give the "you can save by bundling your home and auto" spiel. I laugh and ask them to give me a quote based on my address. Then they hem and haw and apologize that they can't insure me.

(SW CO, 7800' in ponderosa and gambel oak)

 

[SAJ-99]

I should be able to find a third insurance provider but it does cause concern for where the trend is heading. There may be some day I can’t get new house insurance or it will cost me an extravagant amount of money.

Inflation in the cost of rebuilding/repairing is driving the premiums higher and I'm not sure what stops it. Mortgage lenders require insurance for the loan but I have heard of people quietly dropping the coverage. During large events it probably transfers risk to the FEMA and State disaster agencies, and thereby the taxpayer. So we have that going for us...

I doubt home values fall much because of insurance rates. I hope that people would stop building homes in fire prone areas for other reasons (loss of habitat) but there is a lot of money floating around out there. The calc is buy vs build. If building new stays expensive, no reason for the already built home to go down. Waiting for someone to start a thread on how trades people should be paid less.

 

[Deez Nutz]

I got the same notice last year. There isn't a naturally growing tree within 5 miles of my house and between here and there it is all pasture land that is grazed to the dirt.. Makes no sense.

 

[Nameless Range]

Definitely gonna get worse and worse. Homes being built right now won't be able to find insurance, or homes built in the past will lose their insurance or have high premiums with insufficient coverage. Don't know what the answer is - less flammable building materials, more fuels mitigation around residential construction, more resources into fire suppression - all of it expensive and unpopular.

I also have a fire dept a mile down the road, but being on the VFD I can tell you that makes little difference. If a couple of the dozen or so members can respond to a given call, get off work or leave their homes, drive to the fire hall and gear up, then head to the incident, whether the fire dept was one mile or 10 away doesn't make the situation much better.

 

[Wildabeest]

I’ve been cancelled twice in the past few years. HOA’s policy was also cancelled on a multi-family unit I own, and new policy was 4x more than what we were previously paying. Crazy times. I wonder how long before fire insurance in the mountain west becomes like flood insurance on the coast - big brother stepping in because private insurance views it as too risky.

 

[Addicting]

Makes it hard, the places I was looking at in FL were mostly uninsurable with the current market value. A ton of threads that wide swaths of homes were dropped because of future hurricane damage.

 

[Salmonchaser]

Been working on fire hardening our place for the last couple of years. Through the state forester we had an inspection done last fall. The inspector was very complimentary of the work we have done but we had to remove a number of trees that were too close to the house.
We are just outside the town but within the urban growth boundary. Few years ago the city requested a minor easement for a water line. No restrictions other than I couldn’t build over the top of it. They agreed to put a fire hydrant where the line enters our property. Turns out that was a good idea.
We’ve already had two small wildfires in our area of NE Oregon. It’s very dry for this time of year as well. Everyone is spooked about what fire season could shape up like.