A California homebuyer who thought he was closing on a suburban house instead found himself forced onto a little-known insurance policy with a $25,000 fire deductible.<\/p>\n
His experience shows how the state’s home insurance crisis has spread beyond remote mountain communities and heavily wooded wildfire zones.<\/p>\n
Here’s what to know<\/p>\n
According to the Los Angeles Times<\/a>, tech worker Alex Hwang could not get a standard insurer to provide the coverage his mortgage lender demanded as he tried to buy a nearly $700,000, six-bedroom home in Menifee’s Cimarron Ridge development. He ultimately relied on a surplus-lines policy with a $25,000 deductible for fire claims.<\/p>\n Cimarron Ridge is bordered by scrub and rolling hills, not the dense forest many people associate with California’s worst wildfire danger.<\/p>\n Hwang told the Los Angeles Times he felt boxed in by the market. “I hate the $25,000, but I didn’t really have a whole lot of choice. None of the big-name insurance companies were writing,” he said.<\/p>\n He told the Los Angeles Times that the insurer itself was unfamiliar to him, saying, “I call it ‘no-name insurance,’ because I have never heard of these people.”<\/p>\n More background<\/p>\n In a Los Angeles Times review of 396 ZIP codes, low-risk homes accounted for 90% of the policies added to the California FAIR Plan between March 2025 and June 2026. That stretch brought more than 11,000 additional low-risk properties onto the insurer of last resort, which already covered 138,000 such properties.<\/p>\n Homeowners who cannot find private coverage can fall back on the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort. But the protection is limited: it generally covers only fire, leaving homeowners to seek separate coverage for theft, water damage, and other common hazards.<\/p>\n Wildfire-related losses, rising construction costs, and more expensive reinsurance have prompted major insurers to scale back in California. As they pull back, surplus-lines insurers that operate outside many of the state’s usual insurance regulations are increasingly filling the void.<\/p>\n For another Riverside County buyer identified only as Louis, the process also became stressful. After conventional carriers declined to cover him and his wife, they ended up purchasing a policy with a $14,000 fire deductible.<\/p>\n What’s being done?<\/p>\n California has introduced insurance reforms to encourage insurers to issue more policies in wildfire-distressed areas while allowing them to factor catastrophe models and reinsurance costs into their decisions.<\/p>\n The California Department of Insurance has pointed to the scale of major fires since 2015 and growing climate-related risks as major strains on the insurance market. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times found FAIR Plan enrollment around Menifee was up fivefold from 2024 levels, while neighboring Hemet posted a 660% increase.<\/p>\n At the same time, surplus-lines insurers have expanded rapidly, growing from about 1% of California’s home insurance market in 2021 to roughly 7%, according to Weiss Ratings. The shift can leave families with steep deductibles and unfamiliar providers.<\/p>\n Where can I learn more?<\/p>\n The pressures behind this Riverside County home purchase are playing out across California and other western states, including insurer pullbacks and the growing fallout for homeowners trying to keep coverage.<\/p>\n \u2022 In Los Angeles, thousands of homeowners were dropped<\/a> before the Palisades Fire hit.<\/p>\n \u2022 In California, a major insurer stopped offering<\/a> policies to new homeowners altogether.<\/p>\n \u2022 In Nevada, homeowners found they can’t get insurance<\/a> after carriers abruptly halted coverage.<\/p>\n \u2022 In New Mexico, lawmakers say catastrophic fires are reshaping<\/a> the future of homeownership.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A California homebuyer who thought he was closing on a suburban house instead found himself forced onto a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,186376,13766,101108,159223,3285,47,63],"class_list":["post-473932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cimarron-ridge","tag-home-insurance","tag-insurance-market","tag-insurance-policy","tag-insurer","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}