With so much of California engulfed in wildfires these days, it’s becoming increasingly hard to place property insurance coverage in much of California. Our agency gets several emails a day from insurance companies banning fire insurance placement in many ZIP Codes throughout the state. One of the emails we received today from a very large, multi-state insurance company, banned binding of coverage in over 40 California ZIP Codes. As you can imagine, this creates a problem for anyone trying to close in escrow, trying to replace their insurance, and/or trying to buy a new policy. 
Not only are policyholders unable to bind coverage in these ZIP Codes, they are unable to make changes to existing policies. What does that mean? if you feel that your home is under-insured, and you decide to increase the limit right now, you are unable to change your policy. This is why it is very important to buy insurance with the correct limits at the policy inception as this type of “lock down” prevents policyholders from upgrading their policy just before their structure burns down.
Since many insurance companies buy similar underwriting data from third-party vendors, they often have the same restrictions in the same geographic areas. So, if you are frustrated with one carrier and you try to get another carrier to write your policy, you may find it difficult if not impossible to make a move.
If you need help placing insurance in one of the high hazard areas, please call us today as we have some other options to discuss. California has a plan available where you can buy a fire insurance policy regardless of location. It is a limited policy, but it does cover you for Fire. There may be additional options for adding some of the more traditional causes of loss with carriers that will exclude fire. We often call these Wrap policies.
