A wildfire score decline is one carrier’s model telling you it does not want the risk at any price it is willing to file. It is not a finding about your house, it is not a statement that the home is uninsurable, and it is not the same answer you will get from the next market. The useful response is to find out what the decision was actually built on, correct anything factually wrong, document mitigation that already exists, and run a real market search rather than jumping straight to the backstop.
What nobody can tell you honestly is that any of that will produce an approval. Eligibility varies by carrier, by model and by address. What it does is change the facts in the file, which is the only part of this you control.
What a wildfire score actually is
Carriers do not usually decline a home because somebody looked at a map and decided the area feels risky. They decline because a model produced a number, and the number fell outside the band the carrier is willing to write.
Those models are proprietary. Some are built in house. Most are licensed from vendors. They generally combine some mix of the following:
- Fuels. Vegetation type, density and continuity around the structure, including the immediate zone against the walls.
- Terrain. Slope, aspect and position on the hill. Fire moves faster uphill, and a home at the top of a chute is a different risk than one on flat ground a quarter mile away.
- Weather and fire behavior history. Prevailing wind patterns, historical fire perimeters, and modeled spread under bad conditions.
- Access and egress. Road width, driveway length and grade, turnaround, bridges and single point access.
- Suppression capability. Responding department, distance, and available water. This overlaps heavily with the questions in homes with no fire hydrant.
- Structure characteristics. Roof assembly, vents, eaves, siding, decks and windows, where the model has data on them.
- Imagery. Aerial or satellite imagery of the parcel, sometimes recent, sometimes several years old.
Two things follow from that list. First, the same address can score acceptably at one carrier and poorly at another, because the weightings differ. Second, several of those inputs are things about your specific parcel that can be measured wrongly.
Where the law helps, and where it does not
This gets misreported constantly, so here is the part that matters to a decline, stated plainly. The following is information about the law, not legal advice.
Oregon’s ORS 742.278 restricts one input, a map published by an Oregon state agency, and it names three actions: cancelling, declining to renew, and increasing a premium. By its own words it does not reach declination of a new application. That distinction is the whole game here. If you were turned down on a new application rather than nonrenewed, the statute is not the tool for your problem, and neither is any argument built on it. It also never reached a carrier’s own model or a licensed vendor model, which is what actually produced your number.
Washington and Idaho have no equivalent restriction. If you own in more than one of these states, do not assume the Oregon framing travels. Multi state ownership has its own wrinkles, covered under multi home multi state insurance.
Oregon law does include a notice provision entitling a homeowner to property specific information about a wildfire risk determination. Ask your agent to request it in writing. Knowing which characteristics drove the score is the difference between guessing at mitigation and aiming it, and it is the single most useful thing you can do in the first week after a decline.
The full Oregon statutory picture, including SB 83’s repeal of the statewide map and what the Division of Financial Regulation has said about proprietary models since, is set out in placing a high value Oregon home with a wildfire score. That page owns the placement side. This one is about what to do after an answer has already come back no.
Documentation that can change an answer
Before spending money on brush removal, spend an afternoon on facts. These are the items we most often find wrong in a file.
The parcel boundary and the structure location. Models sometimes place the structure at the centroid of a large parcel rather than at the house. On acreage, that can put your home in the middle of timber when it actually sits on a cleared bench.
Stale imagery. If the model is reading aerial imagery from before you cleared, thinned or rebuilt, it is scoring a property that no longer exists. Dated photographs with GPS metadata, and a current survey or site plan, are the counterweight.
The responding fire district. Districts change boundaries, add stations and change staffing. A file that names the wrong responding department produces the wrong suppression input. Call the district and get the current answer in writing, including the protection class, the road mile distance, and what water supply exists.
Roof and vent assemblies. If the roof was replaced with a Class A assembly and the file says wood shake, that is not a judgment call, it is an error. Invoices, product specs and permit records fix it. The rest of the roof picture is covered in roof requirements for high value homes.
Prior mitigation you already paid for. Fuel breaks, thinning, ember resistant vents, enclosed eaves, deck replacement, water storage. If it is not documented it does not exist as far as an underwriter is concerned.
Mitigation, aimed rather than scattered
There is a rough hierarchy and it is not the order most people work in. The cheapest and highest value work is the first few feet against the structure, then the roof assembly, then vents and eaves, before anything that involves a contractor and a chainsaw on the wider acreage. The full order, with what each item actually addresses, is in placing a high value Oregon home with a wildfire score.
What is specific to a decline is the sequencing. Do not start work until you have the property specific determination described above, because the point is to fix what the model actually read, not to spend on the most visible thing. A file that shows targeted work against a named finding moves an underwriter. A file that shows general tidying does not.
Note carefully: Oregon’s statewide defensible space mandate was repealed with SB 83 and replaced with a model code that local governments may adopt voluntarily. Local requirements in some Idaho jurisdictions are stricter than the state picture suggests. Check what applies where the house actually is rather than what applies statewide.
The inspection
Wildfire files almost always draw an inspection, and often a wildfire specific one on top of a general property inspection. Expect photographs of the approach, the driveway, the structure from all sides, the roof, the eaves and vents, the deck, and the vegetation at several distances out.
Prepare for it the same way you would for any underwriting visit, using our inspection checklist. The addition for a wildfire file is to have the mitigation documentation physically present: invoices, before and after photographs, the fire district letter, and any community program participation records. An inspector who can photograph the paperwork alongside the property produces a stronger file than one who writes down that the owner said work was done.
Alternative markets, in the right order
Run these in sequence, not simultaneously in a panic.
Other standard carriers. A decline from one carrier is one model’s output. Appetites differ materially, and so do the models behind them. This is the step people skip.
Specialty high value programs. Several programs are built specifically for larger homes in exposed areas, and they tend to underwrite the individual property more than the territory. They also tend to require more inspection and more mitigation.
Surplus lines. Non admitted carriers can write risks the admitted market declines, with more flexible terms and different pricing. The trade offs are real: forms vary, there is generally no state guaranty fund backing, and coverage needs to be read rather than assumed.
The state residual market. Oregon has a FAIR Plan. It is a fire backstop with narrower coverage, and it is usually paired with a separate policy to cover what it does not. The Oregon path is covered in more depth in Oregon wildfire home insurance options.
If what you are dealing with is a nonrenewal rather than a new business decline, the sequence and the notice rules differ. That is covered under high value home nonrenewal.
Questions worth asking
- What exactly was the stated reason, and is it a score, a map, a model or an inspection finding?
- Which specific property characteristics drove it, and can I have that in writing?
- Is the structure location in the file the actual house, or a parcel centroid?
- How old is the imagery the model used?
- Which responding fire district does the file show, and does it match reality?
- If I complete specific mitigation, will this carrier re evaluate, and on what timeline?
- Which markets have not yet seen this file?
Where this fits
A wildfire decline is a starting point for a file, not a conclusion about a house. Correct the facts, document the work, understand which legal restriction actually applies in your state, and then run the market properly.
Full detail on how we approach these placements is on our wildfire home insurance page.
If you have a decline letter in hand, bring it to a coverage review and we will start by reading what it actually says.