How Insureability works
Home insurance in California has become hard to get in many places. Insurers have stopped writing new policies in some areas and dropped existing customers in others. Insureability shows you, for any ZIP code, what has actually been happening there, using the state's own records.
Who it's for
- Buying a home. Check the address before you make an offer so insurance doesn't surprise you in escrow.
- Got a non-renewal letter. See whether it's happening to your neighbors too, and how your area compares.
- Real estate, insurance and mortgage agents. Answer the "can it be insured?" question before a client asks it, and hear first when your ZIP codes change.
The rating
Every ZIP code gets one of three ratings from one number: the share of insured homes on the FAIR Plan, using the FAIR Plan's latest quarterly count.
- Hardest 15% or more of insured homes are on the FAIR Plan.
- Harder 2% to 15%.
- Easy Everything else. Statewide, about 8% of insured homes are on the FAIR Plan.
The rating describes the area. For a specific address, the report also looks at the fire hazard class at the house: a home in a High or Very High zone is rated one step harder than its ZIP code.
The terms we use
- FAIR Plan
- California's insurer of last resort. It's a state-created pool that covers homes no private company will. It covers fire only, costs more, and usually has to be paired with a second policy for everything else. When a large share of a ZIP code's homes are on the FAIR Plan, it means private insurers have mostly left. We show the FAIR Plan's own policy count for each ZIP code, updated quarterly, as a share of the ZIP code's insured homes. That share sets the rating.
- Fire hazard zone
- CAL FIRE rates land across the state as Moderate, High or Very High fire hazard. Insurers use these maps when deciding where to write. We show how much of each ZIP code's land falls in each class. It's about land, not houses: a ZIP code can be 90% Very High wildland with most homes in the safer 10%.
- Flood zone
- FEMA maps the 100-year floodplain as a "Special Flood Hazard Area." If a home is inside it, a lender will require flood insurance. We show how much of each ZIP code's land is in one, plus how many federal flood policies are in force there, because levee-protected neighborhoods can look safe on the map and still flood.
- Typical home value
- Zillow's estimate of the value of a typical home in the ZIP code (the middle third of the market), and how much it changed in the past year.
Where the numbers come from
All of it is public: the FAIR Plan's quarterly policy counts and premiums, the Department of Insurance's announcements, rate filings and moratorium bulletins, CAL FIRE and FEMA maps, Zillow home values. We check for new data every day and label every number with its source. Full details are on Our data.
What Insureability is not
We are not an insurance company, agency or broker. We don't sell insurance, quote prices, recommend companies, or take applications. Nothing here is advice about any policy.